Community College Sciences

[Jamie407]

Hey there!

I moved to the US about 3 years ago from England, so I'm not overly familiar with the school system over here. I have been hearing lots of different opinions as to whether or not doing sciences at a community college, opposed to a full-blown university, is a bad thing. I already have a degree from a UK university, but I am missing many of the US pre-reqs, so I have been taking my non-science classes at a CC. I have found the teachings to be excellent, but I do hear many people say CCs have a stigma attached to them.

I emailed a few med-school admissions departments only to receive fairly ambiguous, and possibly politically correct, answers. However, the admissions officers do seem to err on the side of studying at a university. On the contrary, I have been hearing that "this is all a ploy for universities to get money" and that "CC sciences are fine". Confused! Are core sciences (in the 2000s) taken at university much more sought after than the same classes from community colleges? Any experiences?

Thanks for your help!

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[Catalystik]

Some US med schools outright state on their website that they discourage CC classes. Some won't accept them at all. But there are plenty left that don't care. The concern about CC classwork is that it may not be sufficiently rigorous to prepare you well for the MCAT or to give the groundwork needed to excel in upper-level university-level science courses.

So long as you continue to get high grades at the university level and get a great MCAT score, you won't be much disadvantaged in the US med school application process if you are a US citizen or permanent resident.