BCPM classes outside of Bio, Phy, Math, Chem departments

Stats?

Well they still count under bcpm, its just that astronomy is under the P (Physics) and physiological psych is under the B (Biology). It also depends how you classify them. Search for the link to AMCAS (somewhere in pre allo) and there's a pdf of exactly what is classified as a subcategory to BCPM.

Do any psychology classes count? We did a lot of neuroscience and biological processes in my Intro to Psych class (plus I got an A, so would like to have it in my BCPM!).. would I get away with listing it as BCPM, even though my school lists it as Psych?

I'm pretty sure Intro Psych would quickly get pulled back to non BCPM as soon as AMCAS reviews your application since the curriculum is pretty standard and it's going to be hard to argue that it's more biology than not.

You could get BCPM credit for some psych classes, I know I got it for Abnormal Psychology, Cognitive Neuropsychology and Psychophysiology. But Intro psych is probably pushing it.

When I asked AMCAS about which 'unorthodox' classes will or won't count toward your BCMP they said that they will look at the title of the course to decide if there is any concern. For instance,

"Intro Psych" will not be counted in BCMP, but
"Psychological Statistics" may be counted (Math).

hello would anyone have that link handy to the AMCAS list of courses that count towards BCPM?? I'm having some trouble doing a search...but i'm starting to think that the list may be buried in a 200 page pdf document!

Just looked at some other threads...thank you koercive!!

http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/a...structions.pdf

starts on page 76

extremely helpful btw bandaids, i'm thinking of taking abnormal psych over the summer, but looking at the AMCAS list, psych is classified under BESS...should i take my chances??

When I was going back in to put my coursework into AMCAS I saw that there was a clean breakdown in the psych classes between those that are bio-oriented (neurophysiology, biopsych, psychopharm, abnormal psych, sensory psych) and those that are purely psych oriented (animal psych, methods in psych, social psych, etc). It should be pretty evident once you are in these classes into which category it falls (bio or non-science) and like was previously mentioned psych stat falls under math . Understand that this grey area is one of those regions that AMCAS may actually be flexible I have heard of people having some psych classes taken off their BCPM and put into non-science but never the reverse. Although I did not do this myself since I performed better at the bio-pysch courses, it may be of some advantage to play with the margins and if you underperformed in a bio-psych course you could include it in your non-science and if it isn't moved back then it will not be there to harm your BCPM.

other classes you could take and that would really help with med school to boot are physiology, anatomy (some times place in the zoology department), and microbiology. But remember that lower level classes to pad are easily sniffed out so be sure to get to upper level stuff whenever possible.

braintrust said:

When I was going back in to put my coursework into AMCAS I saw that there was a clean breakdown in the psych classes between those that are bio-oriented (neurophysiology, biopsych, psychopharm, abnormal psych, sensory psych) and those that are purely psych oriented (animal psych, methods in psych, social psych, etc). It should be pretty evident once you are in these classes into which category it falls (bio or non-science) and like was previously mentioned psych stat falls under math . Understand that this grey area is one of those regions that AMCAS may actually be flexible I have heard of people having some psych classes taken off their BCPM and put into non-science but never the reverse. Although I did not do this myself since I performed better at the bio-pysch courses, it may be of some advantage to play with the margins and if you underperformed in a bio-psych course you could include it in your non-science and if it isn't moved back then it will not be there to harm your BCPM.

Click to expand...

thank you, excellent advice. you are right about the padding, i hadn't even realized i could take the lower division ones! [sigh]...so naive.

I thought that classes were assigned to bcpm vs. AO solely based on what department heading they're listed under. How is it possible to make abnormal psych a science class if its obviously under the psych department??

In some schools Abnormal Psych and other upper level psych classes are cross listed in the Neuroscience department, however this is irrelevant because AMCAS explicitly states that classification is based on content.

daisy44 said:

I thought that classes were assigned to bcpm vs. AO solely based on what department heading they're listed under. How is it possible to make abnormal psych a science class if its obviously under the psych department??

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Well, I'm pretty sure that the official way is that you can count a class as bio if it's 50% or more biology related, and teh same thing with math. A stats class may be taught in the psych department, but it's still pretty much math, so you can make it count if you want. They take a look at the course title for determining these things.

Has anyone ever tried to put an introductory engineering course in bcpm, or is that pushing it since the AAMC guide explicitly states that engineering falls under "all other"?

I mean, the class was entirely math and science.... i guess the worst that can happen is that they change it back?

Also, is there a place on the application where we can explain why the content of the course should qualify it as a bcpm course? or do they decide just based on the title of the class?

Bump

I'm not sure about them, try to put them into the physics classification. I know that engineering is almost entirely chem and physics but the AMCAS doesn't like it and classfies it as AO. Give it a shot but understand that engineering courses are less common in this process than the psych and if you want to fight it you can if they change it AO but you may be at the mercy of the person at AMCAS.

So you guys really submitted abnormal psychology as biology and they didn't change it? If that be the case, it would seem that cognition and human sexuality could also classify.

I never took either of those so I couldn't specifically vouch for how much biology was invovled. Human sexuality, as I understand focuses upon sexual behavior with some discussion of arousal but really I would classify it a behavioral. Cognition, although focusing upon parts of the brain (hippocampus for memory and frontal lobes for extrapolation) largely again I would understand most of this discussion to be less centered upon biology than abnormal psych. Abnormal psych as I took it was essentially the neurophysiology of the various disorders. Yes we discussed the behavioral implications of the pathologies but it was all due to the biology. Sensory systems again was focusing on the physiology of the sensory organs and processing by downstream neurons.

I would be careful about the two classes you mentioned for these reasons. Perhaps the way your classes were taught was different than I assume, then by all mean put them in your BCPM. However If you try to slide to many things that "normally" are in the AO catagory you could arose suspician for trying to pull somethin and could be penalized by AMCAS by the rejection of all of your psych from the BCPM. I don't know if this would happen only theorizing.

good luck