AP credit

[applicant]

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Is it good to use AP credit for pre-dental courses such as intro bio and chem?

I have AP credit for one-year intro bio and one-semester of chem and I was wondering if it was better to use ap credit for those courses and take some other courses or if it was better to forget about ap credit and take them all over in college?

I really need advice on this since I have to decide on what courses I am going to take in college...so I would appreciate any help, any share of experience or information.

 

[gryffindor]

I don't know if AP credit can be used to substitute for the pre-requisites you have to take in order to apply to dental school. For example, if you get a 5 on AP Chem and your college gives you credit, I'm not sure if all dental schools will accept this for their pre-dental requirement of two semesters of general chem. My dental school accepted one semester of AP Physics for half of the requirement (2 semesters of college physics) and I had to take the other one at my college. They did the same for Calculus for me.

But, if your college is going to let you skip out of classes with AP credits, from my experience, I'd say go for it! I skipped out on two semesters of introductory bio my freshmen year and started taking upper level bio electives from freshmen year (I was a bio major in college). I don't regret my decision at all. By not taking Bio 101 and 102, I didn't have to compete for a good grade in a class that is designed to weed out the pre-meds. (IMO, that is the only purpose of a Bio 101/102 class - and there will be ultra-competitive pre-meds in this class gunning for the A). I was able to concentrate on areas of bio I wanted to learn more about, such as Histology, rather than have to learn everything all over again that I had already learned in AP that I wasn't interested in such as photosynthesis. Also, I think I learned in much greater detail every subject that is covered in Bio 101/102 at some point through the variety of Bio electives I took, so I don't feel like I missed out on anything by skipping it.

AP credit is a great thing to take advantage of - I was able to skip out on many of the required classes at my college and free up room to take interesting courses that I wanted to instead. Haven't taken a history class since high school, and never plan to go near history ever again. Good luck!