Type of school for pre-reqs

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I'm back! In 2006 when I joined SDN a lot of things were different... I had no degree, a lot of debt, and the timing was not right.

I set some goals... paid off my debt, obtained a bachelors, spent 4 years working in clinical research, bought a house, now I'm in my last semester of a master's program, my two older kids are both now of college age (no more formal child support) and two younger ones are now in elementary school...

Now I have some options that did not exist before. Paid fellowship in Australia (competitive not a sure thing), doctoral program in the information systems field, medical school, and any number of other ideas.

What I don't have is the Bio/Chem/OChem/Physics courses. I found an every weekend (one month = one semester) school that's a 90 minute drive... http://www.integratedscienceprogram.com/ Is that kind of school legit for DO? Giving all those weekends, paying them $18,000, and etc is a huge commitment that would only be worth it if it were accepted and received well.

I've seen some posts around here talking about online prereqs - which surprised me because I would have thought you needed to be in a lab with microscopes to do labs. Does anyone have any information that could help me sort this out?

MedicNick,

I was going to hold off on answering for a while, but nobody else is helping out so I'll tell you what I can. This might be a little long. First of all, congrats on sticking to the dream and coming back after so many years. That's awesome. Second thing is I'm no further into this process than you. I still have all my prereqs to take and I'm deciding where to take them. I am no guru and haven't been through the application process, but I HAVE been doing very serious research and contacted many schools about what courses would count for the prereqs. I'm the one that has been posting all the online stuff that you read. I'll cover all that on here too, but I'l ltry to go in order of how you asked your questions.

It seems to me from the responses that I've got from schools is that their first concern is that the school you attended is regionally accreditted. Any brick and mortar that is regionally accreditted should be fine for most schools. From there it varies by school how they judge the institution. If they do care about where the classes were taken it usually goes University > CC > Online. Not all schools do this though. I'm starting to think that it is less important than most people on this site will make you think. At least for DO that's the case. MD are a little trickier. The school you posted on here claims to be regionally accredited because the courses are through USC. If that's reliable than this school should be good to go. One side note to all this is that not all schools will accept community college credits. There are MD schools that will only accept university credits and I'm not really sure where this school would fall. I'd also caution you about the extreme speed of that school. You'll be completing very intensive courses in less than a month. That would probably be tough. Last thing is they are crazy expensive.

Now for the online stuff. In the other forums you'll find that I e-mailed all the DO schools. I haven't heard from all of them yet, but the ones I did here back from all said they accepted online coursework including labs. I also bought the MSAR and it listed all the MD schools and whether or not they accept online courses. The DO schools were very accepting of them. The admissions person I talked to at NSU sounded surprised that I would even ask if online courses were accepted. She said "Yes, as long as they are from a regionally accreditted school." I replied "even the labs." She said "Yes, even we have online courses at NSU." and by the tone of her voice it sounded more like "of course we accept them it would be silly not to when we offer them ourselves." I felt very confident after that conversation.

As far as online schools go I have found a few. My favorite if money were not an issue would be UNE-COM's online post-bacc. They are an actual med school and created the courses with an emphasis on the medical side of the sciences. They have all the prereqs except physics II. They also have a few extras like biochem and I believe microbio too. They are about 600 dollars cheaper than the school you're looking at. If I were able to get financial aid I would go here in a heart beat. I assume you're going to be taking out a personal loan anyway so this might be a good option for you. Many people sing this school's praises.

Then there is CCConline. This is not actually a school itself. It is a online system that provides courses from 13 schools in the community college of colarado system. You enroll in one of those 13 and they become your "home school". You take the courses through CCConline and the credits are earned from your home school. They provide the transcripts and everything. The transcript and degree if you finish one will be from that school and won't say anything about being online. They have all courses except the organic chems. I think this is the cheapest option and since the transcripts don't say anything about being online some people might feel safer going here. The adcoms will never know unless they ask you at an interview. At that point you'll have your shot to sell yourself and the hard work you've done. The courses at these schools are 5 semester hours. That can be a huge GPA booster if you do well. For every 4 classes you take it is as if you took 5. Just think how an extra A could boost your GPA. I think this is also the cheapest option. They also offer financial aid and are fully accredited. This is the route I'm going. I'll be enrolled in Trinidad State Junior College. I believe all 13 schools offer Associates of Science, which will cover the prereqs except the o chem, but TSJC and a few others actually label it pre-med. I chose to go with the school with the pre-med because I can get a letter of recommendation from the "pre-med" advisor. This is required from a lot of schools as well as one from science professors.

I think I covered everything. Definitely call the schools you're going ot want to apply to to double check my research. Hopefully the forum where I listed all the schools that accept them is a good starting place for ya. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Al

Hi Allen - thank you very much for the detailed response, that is extremely helpful information for me!

The Colorado program sounds like a good option (unless there is a California equivalent for resident tuition) for me. Why did you pick TSJC? I can't find the 'pre-med' label anywhere and that would make me feel better, if you have a link could you share it?

I'm mostly ok with accelerated programs. My undergrad was online and I did 15-18 credit semesters. While very challenging it was also nice to be able to get it done quickly rather than feel like it took forever to finish. Taking the sciences a little slower though is probably something that would be good for me... I'm almost scared to admit that I bought all the Bio for Dummies, Chem for Dummies, etc books and read them when I first started thinking about this years ago

Thanks again!
Nick

I've never heard of Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU) but have heard of University of Southern California (USC). I'm generally leery of places that have names that are very similar to one more well known, to me that doesn't pass the sniff test and sets off a red flag. My first impression is that they are trying pull a fast one to trick/confuse people into thinking they are or at least affiliated to the more famous one. It also sounds like SCU has a lot of chiropractor/acupuncture/CAM programs, another red flag in my opinion (but I will admit to having a lot of bias). Western Association of Schools and Colleges seems to be somewhat of a questionable accreditation as well, I just did a quick search online and it seems like there are 2 of them, legitimate accreditation (SCU not listed) and a shadier place that does by the same name (refer to red flag 1).

If you are going to take classes there, I would strongly encourage you to do your own due diligence, at the very least contact CCs and universities in your area and ask if they accept transfer credits from that school (that would be the bare minimum of legitimacy).

Another point I'd like to make is that just because a med school will accepts those credits doesn't mean that they will be treated equally. That's the bare minimum, what you need to have your application even looked at by a human. Keep in mind that there's very large subjective element in the admissions process and the adcom member(s) reviewing your application may look at it more critically. It's impossible to have a perfect application and as a non-trad you probably have even more restrictions on your options compared to a more traditional student, but you should still strive to have the best application you can construct.

Originally Posted by medicnick

Hi Allen - thank you very much for the detailed response, that is extremely helpful information for me!

The Colorado program sounds like a good option (unless there is a California equivalent for resident tuition) for me. Why did you pick TSJC? I can't find the 'pre-med' label anywhere and that would make me feel better, if you have a link could you share it?

I'm mostly ok with accelerated programs. My undergrad was online and I did 15-18 credit semesters. While very challenging it was also nice to be able to get it done quickly rather than feel like it took forever to finish. Taking the sciences a little slower though is probably something that would be good for me... I'm almost scared to admit that I bought all the Bio for Dummies, Chem for Dummies, etc books and read them when I first started thinking about this years ago

Thanks again!
Nick

Nick,

You're very welcome. I'm trying to change how people view online courses on this site. I'm glad to see there are others open to it. Here is the link for TSJC's "pre-med". It is an associate of science with a premed emphasis. I'm not positive that the advisors are actually that in touch with the premed admissions process, but I figured I'd do the leg work on that and if I can get a LOR from an advisor that is called a premed advisor that's good enough for me. I picked it for this reason mainly and the fact that I actually spoke to the advisor there and she was very helpful and willing to work with me on this process. To be honest though I'm not sure if there is a huge difference between any of them. They are all run in accordance to the community college of colorado standards.
http://www.trinidadstate.edu/pre-meddental.html

That's good to see that you're already getting ahead of the game with those books. That's what I'm trying to do too. Are you aware of the MIT open courseware? MIT records their lectures and posts them online for free. It's amazing! They have 100s of courses covering all topics. I plan on going through each course before I actually take it for a grade this way class will actually be the second time I've heard the material taught by a professor.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/index.htm

I think UC-Berkeley has something similar. MIT and Berkeley can both be found on Itunes too.

Originally Posted by kami333

I've never heard of Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU) but have heard of University of Southern California (USC). I'm generally leery of places that have names that are very similar to one more well known, to me that doesn't pass the sniff test and sets off a red flag. My first impression is that they are trying pull a fast one to trick/confuse people into thinking they are or at least affiliated to the more famous one. It also sounds like SCU has a lot of chiropractor/acupuncture/CAM programs, another red flag in my opinion (but I will admit to having a lot of bias). Western Association of Schools and Colleges seems to be somewhat of a questionable accreditation as well, I just did a quick search online and it seems like there are 2 of them, legitimate accreditation (SCU not listed) and a shadier place that does by the same name (refer to red flag 1).

If you are going to take classes there, I would strongly encourage you to do your own due diligence, at the very least contact CCs and universities in your area and ask if they accept transfer credits from that school (that would be the bare minimum of legitimacy).

Another point I'd like to make is that just because a med school will accepts those credits doesn't mean that they will be treated equally. That's the bare minimum, what you need to have your application even looked at by a human. Keep in mind that there's very large subjective element in the admissions process and the adcom member(s) reviewing your application may look at it more critically. It's impossible to have a perfect application and as a non-trad you probably have even more restrictions on your options compared to a more traditional student, but you should still strive to have the best application you can construct.

Great post. I think that school actually tricked me too. I thought they were talking about USC and I didn't bother checking the accreditting body. To be honest I really got a bad feeling about that program too at first glance. The site just gave me a scammy vibe for some reason.

You're right about the online courses too. This is something to take into consideration. Some schools view them equally. I believe most of the DOs do. One did tell me that the online labs would not be as strong. I think I posted that in the other forum next to the school's name. I forget which one it is now though. And I'm pretty certain most MD schools will have somewhat of a bias.

Most online schools will not state that they are online though. Adcoms will probably recognize UNE and some of the more popular online degree mill types (but I don't think they offer prereqs), but the colorado schools and other CC's will go under the radar. That'll at least get the interview and if you've got to that point it's time to sell the crap outta yourself and the online courses if the question is posed.

I'm more than happy going DO and after my conversations with them I feel confident that if my GPA is strong, MCAT is decent, and I have no other red flags, the online courses will not be a problem at all.

That's just my gut feeling though. Always check for yourself.

Thank you again. Lots to consider... Cheers! Nick