What psych courses can count towards science GPA?

[eggyolk4826]

Hello, I’m a current psychology and neuroscience major who recently switched into pre-med. I’m a little late switching into this, and I was recently shocked to learn that some psych courses can be used towards the science GPA for AMCAS. I had always thought it was pretty much solely based on what the actual course code meant (such as it being listed under ‘PSY’), and that psych is not ever able to be used for the sGPA. From my understanding, if a course is highly applicable to medicine or one of the other actual science categories, it can be counted to the sGPA, but I’ve heard very mixed things about what actually gets counted and the rules for everything. I was curious if anyone had any input on whether or not these psych courses could be used. My university doesn’t actually have a neuroscience department, it’s split between our psych and bio courses, so I have a lot of classes through the psych department that are used for my neuro degree.
Here are my classes that I think could MAYBE be used
- Intro to biopsych
- advanced biopsych
- cognitive neuroscience
- capstone in neuroscience
- psychopharmacology (studies major neurotransmitter systems and what drugs target them)
- psychological statistics
I also have classes in writing & research methods, intro to psychopath, and adult psychopath. These ones I think would be a little bit more iffy than the other ones, especially since I’ve heard very mixed things about whether or not psychopathology counts to sGPA (personally I don’t think it should lol), but I was just curious to see if anyone had any input on any of these courses

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[polymerization]

Yeah, I majored in neuroscience and I'm definitely planning on categorizing many of my neuroscience requirements as BCPM, even if they have PSY prefixes. At my school, we had course titles like "Biological Basis of Behavior," "Human Psychophysiology," "Computer Lab in Psychobiology," "Experimental Design & Statistical Inference" etc. I'm also considering adding courses like "Comparative Animal Behavior," "Comparative Animal Physiology," "Research Methods in Psychology," "Cognition," and "Psychology of Human Development" because they all have a major biological or math component.

From what I've read on the AMCAS Applicant Guide, they won't return your primary to you until they've reached 10 corrections; and from what I was reading they also generally do not correct the categories you list unless they are obviously wrong.

I'm sure the real answer is more nuanced...but this feels very above-board to me. My university was trying very hard to present as a neuro-centric kind of school, but like yours, it's more of a dual-effort from the biology and psychology departments than it is a pure neuroscience program.

 

[notEinstein]

Consider me confused. I thought Psych is unable to be confined for BCPM regardless of the course? I thought the list on the AMCAS website was strict?

 

[polymerization]

Consider me confused. I thought Psych is unable to be confined for BCPM regardless of the course? I thought the list on the AMCAS website was strict?

I think that's the conventional definition. I think it gets a little more complex when we're talking about interdisciplinary programs like neuroscience, where one focus is a BCPM study (biology/chemistry), and another is not (psychology).

That definition becomes strained in a class like psychopharmacology, where we spent 16 weeks going through receptors, ion channels, GPCR signaling at the graduate level and only ever discussed psychology within the context of disorders that certain drugs treat.

It would be, in my view, intellectually dishonest and just factually imprecise to call a course like this a behavioral science. Like the rest of neuroscience, we touch psychology, maybe enough to hold it—but it's mostly vocabulary for the "language" we use to analyze it—biochemistry.

I think AAMC acknowledges this to a degree and hedges a lot on defining this. I would even argue loose. But if they didn't do that, people like me would absolutely fight them on it, and we would bring syllabi and course descriptions. It would maybe be a nightmare at the verification office.

 

[bankedsynapse]

AAMC has this to say (emphasis mine): "Each course in the AMCAS application must be classified strictly on the primary content of the course[...]If you are unable to comfortably classify a course, or in the case of interdisciplinary courses, refer to the description on your school's website or consult with your prehealth advisor to choose the most appropriate classification." (Link)

I was advised by my pre-health advisor in undergrad that nearly all psych courses would not count. The only one I had that did count was a 'Psychology of Statistics' course, which was because the primary content of the course was statistical analyses with the psychology portion as more of a framing. For example if you look up the course description for psychopharmacology and it is almost all chem/ochem with the psychology portion as a backdrop I imagine you'd be fine, but otherwise I don't think it would fly.

 

[notEinstein]

I think that's the conventional definition. I think it gets a little more complex when we're talking about interdisciplinary programs like neuroscience, where one focus is a BCPM study (biology/chemistry), and another is not (psychology).

That definition becomes strained in a class like psychopharmacology, where we spent 16 weeks going through receptors, ion channels, GPCR signaling at the graduate level and only ever discussed psychology within the context of disorders that certain drugs treat.

It would be, in my view, intellectually dishonest and just factually imprecise to call a course like this a behavioral science. Like the rest of neuroscience, we touch psychology, maybe enough to hold it—but it's mostly vocabulary for the "language" we use to analyze it—biochemistry.

I think AAMC acknowledges this to a degree and hedges a lot on defining this. I would even argue loose. But if they didn't do that, people like me would absolutely fight them on it, and we would bring syllabi and course descriptions. It would maybe be a nightmare at the verification office.

So what do you do? Just classify a psych course under “Biology” or something?

What about statistics or accounting? Can we classify those as math? If so, my sGPA is about to skyrocket.

 

[polymerization]

So what do you do? Just classify a psych course under “Biology” or something?

What about statistics or accounting? Can we classify those as math? If so, my sGPA is about to skyrocket.

Yes. Here's the list of topics covered under those course codes per AAMC. I could argue accounting is a form of applied math:

Biology (BIOL)​

Anatomy
Biology
Biophysics
Biotechnology
Botany
Cell Biology
Ecology
Entomology
Genetics
Histology
Human Anatomy
Immunology
Microbiology
Molecular Biology
Neuroscience
Physiology
Zoology

Behavioral & Social Sciences (BESS)​

Anthropology
Economics
Family Studies
Psychology
Sociology

Mathematics (MATH)​

Algebra
Applied Mathematics
Biostatistics
Calculus
Geometry
Mathematics
Statistics

 

[anon2]

Having an accounting degree and a PhD in applied math, I can conclusively say accounting does not qualify as mathematics. Not even close.

The main subject content relates to classification and reporting of business transactions. The "mathematics" is grade-school arithmetic.

AAMC correctly classifies accounting under "business" in the list which has already been linked. Twisting this is unlikely to go well for you.

 

[notEinstein]

Having an accounting degree and a PhD in applied math, I can conclusively say accounting does not qualify as mathematics. Not even close.

The main subject content relates to classification and reporting of business transactions. The "mathematics" is grade-school arithmetic.

AAMC correctly classifies accounting under "business" in the list which has already been linked. Twisting this is unlikely to go well for you.

That’s my point. I’m not sure I understand it as any more of “twisting” than counting a psychology course as Biology. Which is to say that both are twisting.

Psychology, according to AAMC, is classified under Behavioral Sciences (not BCPM), which is the same category as economics (go figure).