Medical When should I take physics as a pre-med?

[lord999]

am currently in high school, but am able to take college level courses and have taken many before. I am thinking about majoring in biochemistry and would need a calculus-based physics class as a requirement (I have taken calculus I and II before and did fine at the college). I also have the option of taking it at the high school, but I've heard it is not taught that well. However, if I take it at the college level and get credit for it as a senior in high school, I'm worried that it I will forgot some of the material by the time I take the MCAT. Of course, I recognize that plans might change, but I do enjoy a challenge and learning about science, I'm mostly concerned about forgetting it before the MCAT since that's pretty much a 3 year time gap.

(I'm also worried that it will be very hard. I breezed through calculus I and struggled a lot in calculus II, but still did fine in the end. How hard is calculus based physics compared to calculus II?)

When your mathematics is ready for it. Also, many medical schools will not accept AP/IB credits for required prerequisites, so if you take it, you need to have dual enrollment or some university grades.

Really to say on difficulty. I find most people fail calculus because their trig knowledge is deficient in the first term, but the second when you start talking about series and partials are the first real issues in calculus where you can mess up by the concepts alone rather than a mechanical ability issue. For physics (as a non-physics major), I felt that the lack of math skills was what doomed more students than the actual subject matter. That said, you do need to think somewhat creatively in problem formation in physics more so than you have done in the past sciences. Physics problems lend themselves to too much information and hard to set up solution scenarios more so than Chemistry (until you learn mechanisms in Organic Chemistry).

If you have not taken AP Chemistry, you should do so even though you are going to repeat it in university studies. You want to have a good foundation walking into university with that as the freshman sections can be brutal due to the diversity of background knowledge brought in with a competitive curve scoring dynamic.

If you are majoring in Biochemistry, then you really ought to have AP Chemistry and preferably also some AP Biology (the old Campbell book that they tend to use is very decent at teaching fundamental Biochemistry that you will see again in a harder fashion later).

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[Mr.Smile12]

Any college academic advisor will be able to answer your question, and often a school will direct you to their prehealth advisor or office (website first) to address your questions.

Note that every undergraduate program may have policies with AP credits. I had to take an additional physics exam during orientation to see if they would give me credit.

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[Mr.Smile12]

I'm currently in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and would have completed both by the time I take this class. Would you say AP Chem, AP Bio, as well as the math classes that I have taken would prepare me (and I would not forget it by the time I take the MCAT)?

The current exam I would be less confident that the AP curriculum is enough, but you should check with prehealth advisors at the school you wind up attending. You now need more biochemistry, cell biology, psychology, and sociology.

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[MusicDOc124]

I'm very doubtful that AP classes will prepare you for the exam, let alone even for the college classes. I've seen numerous people with AP bio and chem go to college and get Cs or lower in the college courses. Albeit most had As or Bs, but so did the majority of the class who did not have AP courses prior. Maybe it will help at the very beginning with a more solid initial foundation, but over time, they don't really do much. They're not accepted for pre-reqs either anyway, and the timing of when you take the MCAT will be so dated compared to the timing of the AP, and even college courses, that it's a moot point as you'll have to restudy all of the material anyway.