Med. School Requirements

[Yuyukachoo]

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Hey everyone,

I'm signing up for my classes for next semester, having just transferred from one school to another. The problem I'm having is that most schools require a year of Bio. with lab, general chem. and organic chem. At my old school, the general chem. requirement was supposed to be filled by a semester of introductory chemistry, then a semester of quantitative analysis. My new school has an Introductory to Chemistry II course and the Q.A. course.

I've heard things from people on here about having problems fulfilling requirements at some medical schools because they took a weird series of classes and I didn't want to end up this way by taking the Q.A. instead, but I really don't want to go back and take a 100 level course just because I transferred. If this turns out to be a problem, then I'm also worried my old school's similar approach to the biology requirement has left me without my introductor biology II requirement filled.

TLDR: I want to take Q.A. for my general chem II req and use a higher level bio course for my intro. biology II req. Does this seem like a good idea?

(Also, General Calc II or Calc II with Analytical Geometry?)


Thanks!

 

[Morsetlis]

It's a good idea to take things in sequence and take higher level classes in your junior/senior years. It's not a good idea to jump ahead and have to take even harder classes your junior/senior years when you're also trying to complete the application process.

Now, if you actually don't know if you have the one year of bio/chem/ochem + lab each required, you should talk to your school's counselor about which courses are pre-med approved. If they don't know anything else, they should at least know that.

 

[Yuyukachoo]

Oh sorry, I should mention I'm going into my junior year right now.

 

[J ROD]

I would call and ask your local med school. I dont know about replacing prereqs with other classes. You might end up short come app time.

 

[Catalystik]

If your school has a pre med advisor, they might be most in tune of what med schools expect of an application coming from your current institution. As a backup plan, call the 3-5 med schools you'd plan to target as first choices and ask what they think. Some med schools are very rigid in their expectations and others will allow substitutions.

 

[flip26]

Your pre med advisory office should be able to steer you in the right direction.

 

[uhmm]

I ran into similar questions in terms of curriculum. I went straight into orgo freshman year and therefore never took gen chem and only found afterwards that most medical schools don't accept AP credits. So I scrambled to get some higher level classes together to substitute. I took biochemistry and inorganic chemistry to fill gen chem and only one semester of biochemistry &biophysics lab for the gen chem lab (did not feel like taking inorganic lab), was not asked about the gen chem requirement by any school except one this cycle, and even with the one that questioned my chem lab, I was able to waived the requirement at the discretion of the admissions dean and subsequently received an interview. So moral of the story, if you take higher level classes instead of intro prereqs, you should be fine. And the premed office at my school was not too helpful on this question, I guess most people take the general courses and then go up or are science majors and have plenty of science courses.

 

[ElegantWeapon]

I ran into similar questions in terms of curriculum. I went straight into orgo freshman year and therefore never took gen chem and only found afterwards that most medical schools don't accept AP credits. So I scrambled to get some higher level classes together to substitute. I took biochemistry and inorganic chemistry to fill gen chem and only one semester of biochemistry &biophysics lab for the gen chem lab (did not feel like taking inorganic lab), was not asked about the gen chem requirement by any school except one this cycle, and even with the one that questioned my chem lab, I was able to waived the requirement at the discretion of the admissions dean and subsequently received an interview. So moral of the story, if you take higher level classes instead of intro prereqs, you should be fine. And the premed office at my school was not too helpful on this question, I guess most people take the general courses and then go up or are science majors and have plenty of science courses.

+1 did something similar-hasn't been a problem, and I haven't been asked about it

 

[Raryn]

As long as you have at least a year of organic chemistry classes and another year of chem classes that aren't organic (usually gen chem), you should be fine.

Oh, and mathwise I'd just take general calculus. Do remember that the vast majority of schools don't even require calc II (I think I remember ~3 schools required it?). A handful more require a year of math, but a single semester of calc and a semester of stats is more than enough to qualify.