<p>I know the advising center has a policy to support that Chem 1a/3a/3b/MCB 102 as Berkeley’s pre-med chem track. There was one school who my DD connected with the Cal advising center and it seemed that school accepted the Berkeley statement as sufficient.</p>
<p>Sorry, I do not recall which school it was and whether that was one of the schools that gave DD an interview.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply.</p>
<p>When I looked up the course 3a (in one recent year), I found that 3a is indeed orgo I – The professor who taught the 3a class wrote the orgo textbook that was used in my child’s orgo class in his year (not at Berkeley). However, it is still beyond my understanding that why we could use orgo I to satisfy one semester of gen chemistry requirements.</p>
<p>I think the school name may carry some weight here: When the premed adviser from a well-known college speaks, the medical school adcom will likely listen and agree. It is also because, every year, that medical school admits more than one student from that college taking similar classes. This is the only reason I can think of that could explain this.</p>
<p>BTW, my child has the same issue as he happened to take one semester version of gen chem in freshmen. This is the reason why I am so interested in the answer to this very question. I suspect that I am not alone here. In the past, many premeds seem to have been puzzled by this. I really hope each medical school, AMCAS, TMDSAS could help clarify this on their web page once and for all so that future premeds will not be confused by this.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>It is odd that at Berkeley they tell the kids to enter chem 3a as the 2nd half of gen chem when the chem 3a course title on the transcrip is Ochem, but it did not seem to be an issue, other than one school which did accept university clarification.</p>
<p>Thanks to you, I have found a “proof” that a major university tells their students to do this and there is no problem for these students to follow their advice (at least for most medical schools.) I think that the premed advisers at my child’s school tell their students to do the same thing.</p>
<p>It is still not clear to me what an applicant should do if a medical school (e.g., UT San Antonio) considers biochemistry as a required BIOLOGY course:</p>
<p>[UT</a> System-Essentials For Applying](<a href=“http://www.utsystem.edu/tmdsas/essentialsforapplying.htm#PrescribedCourses]UT”>http://www.utsystem.edu/tmdsas/essentialsforapplying.htm#PrescribedCourses)</p>
<p>“For UT School of Medicine at San Antonio, 3 of the 14 hours of required Biology coursework MUST BE Biochemistry (taught in either a biology or chemistry department).”</p>
<p>“Texas Tech University HSC will only accept biochemistry if it is taught in the Biology department.”</p>
<p>I believe AMCAS says Biochemistry is a chemistry course (I think this is the main reason why both your D’s school and my S’s school ask their students to treat biochemistry as a chemistry course.) But contradictorily, TMDSAS (for UT San Antonio and Texas Tech at least) says the same course is considered as a biology course. All these differences drive me nuts!</p>
<p>Could your DS email or call admissions at one of the TX schools and ask? My DD got a TT interview with that Cal Chem track and no Chem AP course to offset it, so it must have been okay?</p>
<p>I wonder if grad schools see this kinda stuff all the time? For example, my D’s college offers Stats within individual academic departments, such as Econ-Stats, Psych-Stats, Sociology-Stats, Business-Stats, and those courses are required for the major, so a student could not take Math-Stats instead… (Yeah, I don’t get it either.) But the premed career office certifies that such classes are equivalent to fulfill the ‘Stats’ requirement for med school, even tho it might have an Econ (or Pysch) course #.</p>
<p>^ I would like to know the answer to this question too. My S happens to take one of these stat courses due to his schedule conflict issue. I remember seeing somewhere that medical schools may not like statistics offered for non-science students. So my S chose a version of statistics with the course name: stat - life-science. The first half of the class was offered by the statistics department, but the second half by the biology department. It goes much deeper than most introductory statistics classes do – I heard it covers a lot about ANOVA, experiment design and the techniques often used in genome research in the second half.</p>
<p>There is another version called “Stats - medical applications” which is much easier but my S decided against taking that version (following my suggestion, which I hope it is a good suggestion) because it does not include the word “science” in the course name and it sounds too vocational.</p>
<p>Well…Hopefully his class will be acceptable to medical school adcoms.</p>
<p>Somemom, When the time is right for my S to do that (I do not know when though), he will ask the school. As a parent yourself, I think you are fully aware that the kids these days do not like “nagging” parents – Doing too much of that may turn out to be counter-productive 
Patience, patience, and more patience (for the parents)! Regarding the AP credit, although my S has it, it might not be useful for TMDSAS due to the way the AP credit shows up on his transcript (no equivalent course number is explicitly shown). It looks like he might decide to take another inorgo before he graduates, even though our suggestion to him is that he does not have to.</p>
<p>Since I last posted: post-interview “hold” at Vandy, waitlisted by Sinai, rejected pre-interview by UNC.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I’m drafting letter of interests/updates this week as well. I’ve only got two schools left I have yet to hear from, Penn and Wake Forest, and neither are places I have particular interest in so I’m not sure if I’ll send anything their way. Schools like Pitt will definitely get letters though, since I have some pretty significant updates from this past semester.</p>
<p>How is your daughter writing these? Email or snail mail? I’m leaning towards the former.</p>
<p>steeler, she sent her ignore schools by email. I don’t know her plan on the waitlist/hold schools but I’m betting she’ll do the same. What are you doing about fall semester grades?</p>
<p>I’m including grades in my update section (along with an authorship on a paper and a big service grant I got for one program). I don’t think I’ll include an official transcript though, unless a school officially asks for it.</p>
<p>As a testament to my abject boredom (after reading every motorcycle magazine I could find and watching enough bad football for a lifetime) I have combined the USNews top research med school rankings with the USNews top primary care rankings to achieve a composite Top 30 ranking (for those schools ranked in each category). If the rankings are useless , this should be at least doubly so. ;)</p>
<p>If anyone has any interest in the results, and I can’t imagine why not 
, I’ll slowly type it up and send it to you by pm.</p>
<p>I really need to heal enough to get back on a bike. I have cabin fever beyond belief. It was chilly today, but ride-able.</p>
<p>Well if the rankings are useless, they’ll be more useless for me seeing as I’m currently a year and a half into medical school. But I would definitely like to see the list.</p>
<p>I’m a little curious to hear your methodology. In particular, I can’t help but think that a five-year weighting is very important given the volatility of the Primary Care ranking.</p>
<p>Still, this is a little bit of a GIGO situation. USN’s Research ranking has a large focus on NIH dollars, while the primary care ranking is primarily focused on the proportion of grads entering what USN incorrectly feels is a “primary care” specialty.</p>
<p>And yet, somehow, I’m curious.</p>
<p>BDM, what are your thoughts on sending update / interest letters? How many / when to send to schools you are a) waitlisted at or b) waiting to hear from in March?</p>
<p>Also, for USNews rankings, why aren’t more schools ranked? I feel like I read somewhere certain schools don’t submit the required info to them and thus aren’t ranked. But browsing through the list it seems like some schools have all the required information but aren’t assigned a number. Are each of the rankings capped to how many they’ll list?</p>
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</p>
<p>Jeez. I’m bored but I’m not THAT bored. lol.</p>
<p>
I believe so.</p>
<p>One every couple months or so. You want to make sure to stay on their attention span. Waitlists, the key day is around May 12 or so. Otherwise just try to keep active in general.</p>
<p>Maybe y’all will find this interesting. As UVa is stubbornly remaining on my D’s short-list, and we are quickly moving to such mundane issues as howthehellcanIaffordthisschool, I certainly did. [Packaging</a> Policy](<a href=“http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/financial-aid/packaging-policy.cfm#B]Packaging”>http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/financial-aid/packaging-policy.cfm#B)</p>
<p>If anybody has anything similar from other schools, I sure would appreciate seeing it.</p>
<p>And I didn’t take this personality test (and my D is out ringing in the New Year on rookie drunk night in Houston :eek:) but …some of y’all might find it interesting in 2010. ;)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/specialties/TestStructure.cfm[/url]”>http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/specialties/TestStructure.cfm</a></p>
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<p>I love how they “budget” 18 grand of parental contributions. Uh…excuse me? The adults in question who are receiving this loan money are 24 years of age on average, and they’re factoring nearly twenty thousand dollars in parental contributions?! Seems backward and slightly deceitful to me.</p>