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).

 

[bankedsynapse]

The key is the course content, not what the university calls it. AAMC has no control over what universities call a course, so the focus on primary content is to more or less tell you how AAMC would categorize the myriad class names. So contacting your pre-health advisor and reviewing the course descriptions isn't twisting anything, just allowing you to make a case that AAMC would have categorized the class differently. Twisting would be not bothering to check with anyone and just claiming Psych 101 counts as bio because you had an overview of the nervous system in the first week. IMO as long as you're arguing in good faith and have done your due diligence, you'll be fine.

 

[polymerization]

Twisting would be not bothering to check with anyone and just claiming Psych 101 counts as bio because you had an overview of the nervous system in the first week.

Thank you, exactly.

I was actually attacked by the Director of Pre-Health at my school a few years ago while I was trying to make a plan for academic repair. They didn't know what BCPM was; but when they refreshed their memory, they said only the intro courses for those disciplines counted toward calculated AAMC GPAs.

I smiled and pretended like I didn't notice that horrifying oversight and moved on, but I can remember an earlier (read: suggestible, naive) version of myself that would've taken that as gospel and maybe changed fields if I was being told there just wasn't a way forward.

All of this to say: no advisor has a corner on the English language. After all that CARS practice, it doesn't take much to just read and apply the policy.

Honestly, I think the best thing I could do for myself throughout this process is take responsibility over as much as I could. If I had a question, I would read and interpret policies myself. It's always nice to consult with someone more knowledgeable, but just because someone markets themselves as more knowledgeable doesn't mean they actually are. You have to be careful who you ask, and you have to know at least enough to clock BS.

In other words, it's your future, don't put it in anyone else's hands. Nobody is going to care about you as much as you are.