Advice for last semester? (retake at a different school)

[The Helpful Aye Aye]

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Long story short, I'm in a post-bacc at a different university. I just graduated from my undergrad so, for all intents and purposes, pretend this is my 5th year. I have a C in 1st semster Intro Bio and a C- in 2nd semester Intro Bio at Columbia and originally planned to retake the whole sequence at my post bacc (Hofstra). I am currently in the 1st semester of Hofstra's sequence and upon further investigation the content is 50% of the 1st and 50% of the 2nd of Columbia's sequence.

Given that there is meaningful overlap between the C- course I took 3 years ago and the Intro Bio course I'm taking, I have a degree in Neuroscience, a 32 in MCAT, and I plan to go to a SMP in Physiology this fall, is it really necessary to retake the entire Intro Biology sequence at Hofstra? Unlike at Columbia, Hofstra includes the lab course in the Intro Bio class meaning that I would have to sit through another redundant lab. Without the lab I would have time to take another upper div course and TA.

My advisor said I'd be fine not retaking the C-, but I'm skeptical.

 

[kyamh]

Some schools don't accept anything lower than a C for a required course. Look up all the places you would like to apply to.

Call admissions offices of your top choices and ask their opinion. I decided to not take the first semester of intro physics for a few reasons, including a high AP score. All but one of my potential schools either explicitly said they take AP tests or told me over the phone that I don't need to take it based on my other coursework (none directly in an upper level physics course).

Good luck in your postbac!

 

[The Helpful Aye Aye]

Some schools don't accept anything lower than a C for a required course. Look up all the places you would like to apply to.

Call admissions offices of your top choices and ask their opinion. I decided to not take the first semester of intro physics for a few reasons, including a high AP score. All but one of my potential schools either explicitly said they take AP tests or told me over the phone that I don't need to take it based on my other coursework (none directly in an upper level physics course).

Good luck in your postbac!

The problem for me is that, based on the syllabus, I don't really know which of my Intro Bio semesters I'm retaking- you see what I mean? It seems inefficient to retake the whole sequence when I could be taking other classes...

EDIT: On some level, I feel like taking two Intro Bio courses after getting a degree in Biology is sandbagging and wouldn't be looked at favorably by admissions people when I could have been taking upper divs....

 

[The Helpful Aye Aye]

Here's the advice I got from my (Columbia) advisor.

I would recommend focusing on upper level bio courses – that is a better use of your time and medical schools will accept this in fulfillment of prereq. They say you need a year of bio but don't specify. The reason that you take the intro sequence is so that you can get the knowledge that you need for MCAT etc., but given that you are beyond that portion, you should focus on acquiring new knowledge in upper level classes. I'd recommend Biochem for one and perhaps Genetics or Physiology if they have these.

I hope this helps.

It seems so counter to what I've been hearing on here that it had me worried. Then I took a step back and thought "Hey, she actually helps people get into medical school and isn't merely speculating like people do on SDN." Unless Goro or LizzyM want to chime in, I'm going with not retaking the entire Biology sequence...