Reintroduction

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Florida Cracker

Florida Cracker

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  1. Pre-Medical
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Hi guys,
I just started haunting the forum again after a couple years away. Back in 2009 I was planning on returning to school to start my prerequisites, but I ran into trouble when my local university would not allow me in-state status. 10 grand per semester scared me away, but I'm back to contemplating another run at this. I've been contemplating become a doctor for most of my life, but for some reason in undergrad I was drawn toward social sciences.

I graduated with an MA in history in 2008 and I've been working at an adjunct since then. I also had a brief stint as an EMT-B back in the summer of 2009 (a job I left in hopes of starting school, d'oh!). Pickings are pretty slim for adjunct professors nowadays and surprisingly so for EMT-Bs as well. I'm currently only working about 20 hours a week, so I have time for some classes.

My academic background is in history and political science. I have a BA and MA in history from schools in Florida. My bachelor's GPA is 3.79, but with no real math or science classes to speak of, though I did well in my high school sciences. So I will have to start from scratch on the prerequisites.

My plan is to start them out at the CC near me and transfer to a 4 year university after this fall semester. I'm thinking of doing Bio, Chem, and Calc for the first semester which is 13 hours at this school. I'm hoping to test into Calc since I took Precalc in high school, but if I can't then I will do Precalc this summer. I'm slightly nervous about the math because of my experiences with it in high school (had some really bad teachers that scared me away from it), but I'm 10 years older and hopefully wiser. I know I'm a lot more determined now.

Anyway, I look forward to talking with everyone!
 
Florida Cracker said:
Hi guys,
I just started haunting the forum again after a couple years away. Back in 2009 I was planning on returning to school to start my prerequisites, but I ran into trouble when my local university would not allow me in-state status. 10 grand per semester scared me away, but I'm back to contemplating another run at this. I've been contemplating become a doctor for most of my life, but for some reason in undergrad I was drawn toward social sciences.

I graduated with an MA in history in 2008 and I've been working at an adjunct since then. I also had a brief stint as an EMT-B back in the summer of 2009 (a job I left in hopes of starting school, d'oh!). Pickings are pretty slim for adjunct professors nowadays and surprisingly so for EMT-Bs as well. I'm currently only working about 20 hours a week, so I have time for some classes.

My academic background is in history and political science. I have a BA and MA in history from schools in Florida. My bachelor's GPA is 3.79, but with no real math or science classes to speak of, though I did well in my high school sciences. So I will have to start from scratch on the prerequisites.

My plan is to start them out at the CC near me and transfer to a 4 year university after this fall semester. I'm thinking of doing Bio, Chem, and Calc for the first semester which is 13 hours at this school. I'm hoping to test into Calc since I took Precalc in high school, but if I can't then I will do Precalc this summer. I'm slightly nervous about the math because of my experiences with it in high school (had some really bad teachers that scared me away from it), but I'm 10 years older and hopefully wiser. I know I'm a lot more determined now.

Anyway, I look forward to talking with everyone!
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Welcome (back)!
Considering your nervousness about the math, and your obvious desire not to harm your GPA, you could consider taking Trig (pre-calc) and Stats to fill in the math requirements. There is no need for Calc, though some schools recommend it, and a good GPA in the actually required classes would be preferable to a poor score in Calc. Just my thoughts on the subject, though if you are confident you will do well, there is no real reason to avoid it. Good luck either way!
 
A few schools, such as Virginia Tech, require calc, but I agree that good grades in trig and stats will be better than bad grades in calc. No matter what, your undergrad GPA is excellent, and if you can keep up the good work on the science classes and do well on the MCAT you will be an excellent candidate.
 
Chip N Sawbones said:
A few schools, such as Virginia Tech, require calc, but I agree that good grades in trig and stats will be better than bad grades in calc. No matter what, your undergrad GPA is excellent, and if you can keep up the good work on the science classes and do well on the MCAT you will be an excellent candidate.
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Thanks for the correction. I thought Harvard was the only one to actually "require" calc, and they downgraded that to "recommend" recently. Good to know.
 
Since you're nervous about math, you might want to consider doing some refreshers on algebra and trig before taking your science pre-reqs. Chemistry and Physics require quite a bit of math. I did a post-bac as well and unfortunately, some of my classmates didn't do as well as they could have because (in some cases) they haven't touched math in over a decade..
 
Chip N Sawbones said:
A few schools, such as Virginia Tech, require calc, but I agree that good grades in trig and stats will be better than bad grades in calc. No matter what, your undergrad GPA is excellent, and if you can keep up the good work on the science classes and do well on the MCAT you will be an excellent candidate.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input, guys! I was under the impression that I had to take Calc because I needed to take the calculus based physics. I seem to remember that when I was looking at the requirements a few years ago more schools asked for calculus, especially the big ones like Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
 
Florida Cracker said:
Thanks for the input, guys! I was under the impression that I had to take Calc because I needed to take the calculus based physics. I seem to remember that when I was looking at the requirements a few years ago more schools asked for calculus, especially the big ones like Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
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Algebra-based physics satisfies the physics requirement for Harvard and Hopkins. None of the schools I applied to last cycle explicitly required calculus-based physics from what I remember. Hope this helps 🙂.
 
thlaxer said:
Algebra-based physics satisfies the physics requirement for Harvard and Hopkins. None of the schools I applied to last cycle explicitly required calculus-based physics from what I remember. Hope this helps 🙂.
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Non-calc based worked fine for me, and I believe most people take that unless they have to take the calc-based for their major.
 
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