Would these count as BCPM classes?

[geronimo_SK]

I'm in the final stretch before applying to medical school, so I'm trying to take some level 300 classes to boost my GPA. The classes I can take are: botany, population, resources, and pollution, civilization chemistry, and environmental chemistry. All of the classes are offered by the bio or chem department, BUT they are considered gen-ed classes. If I took them and did amazing in them, would med schools still count them towards my BCPM gpa?

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[cbrons]

This belongs in pre allopathic. Plants and People sounds like a terribad class, good luck w dat.

 

[643320]

I applied this past summer. Here's how it worked for AMCAS (the application for MD schools):

You self-report all your classes and grades. You indicate what field of study each were in. BCPM is based on course content, not registration number, as many of my classmates falsely believed. So you report what you want it to be, but they review the application and will contact you if they disagree. At that point, I believe that you are allowed to argue why you think it should be what you indicated (not 100% sure because it wasn't an issue for me).

Here's a link to their guide: https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fast...ab328dc/amcas_course_classification_guide.pdf

Regardless take what classes you want. A few of those sound interesting just to learn about. But yeah, Plants and People sounds like it sucks.

 

[Ismet]

moving to pre-allo

 

[GrapesofRath]

I'm in the final stretch before applying to medical school, so I'm trying to take some level 300 classes to boost my GPA. The classes I can take are: bio 303: Plants and People, bio 300: population, resources, and pollution, chm 300: chemistry and civilization, and chm 316: environmental chemistry. All of the classes are offered by the bio or chem department, BUT they are considered gen-ed classes for non-science majors. If I took them and did amazing in them, would med schools still count them towards my BCPM gpa?

Class designation is based off department. Bio and Chem courses will count. Note as a general rule, AMCAS is more flexible and laid back about these things than SDN suggests. Even if this was a borderline case(and its not), if you list a borderline course or even one which the better argument is that it's not a BCPM class in your sGPA, the odds are AMCAS will just leave it as such and give you the benefit of the doubt.

 

[sharkbyte]

The class designation does mostly depend on course content. I took a stats class in the psychology department, listed it as Math, and it got approved by AMCAS since the entire course was math-based. Same thing if it's offered in other non-science departments such as business or econ.

However, if a class is already in a BCPM department like the ones you've mentioned, I think AMCAS will likely keep it there even if it sounds borderline. I took one bio dept class and one chem dept class, both of which were not really bio or chem, and it got approved by AMCAS as BCPM.

Who knows, sometimes they might be lazy too. I know someone who classified some ethics and psychology classes as BCPM and AMCAS never changed them, which seems weird.

 

[md-2020]

Considering I convinced an annoyed AMCAS reviewer that Sports Medicine was biology, I highly doubt anyone will disagree with those.