The purpose of this investigation was to compare two different methodological techniques of a biology preparatory course in order to determine which curriculum's methodologies were most effective in preparing biology students for follow-up biology courses as measured by course grades. One was based upon laboratory hands-on experiences and the other upon mathematics and reading remediation. The results show that the hands-on course grades were significantly better than that of the control and the remediation-based groups. The document includes the abstract, introduction, background, student characteristics, a comparison of the two biology curricula, purpose of the study, hypotheses procedures and experimental design, data collection and analysis results, conclusions, discussion and significance, and a list of 13 references, 3 figures, and 7 tables. (KR)