<p>What is the AMCAS methodology for calculating semester hours? Many schools require 90 semester hours of class before applying but my school is on a course unit system. How do I convert this to semester hours? Thank you.</p>
<p>Put it into AMCAS exactly as it appears on your transcript. AMCAS will take care of whatever conversions they wish to do.</p>
<p>Another question that I have: If I take placement credit for classes such as Gen Chem or Bio, and they appear on my transcript as credit given for those intro classes, but I take the labs corresponding to those intro courses, will med schools in general (i.e. top 50) require me to take an upper level course of chem or bio to satisfy the requirements?</p>
<p>Yes. Med schools do not accept AP credit for your prereq courses.</p>
<p>That is, some med schools do, but many/most don't, so you need to aim for the target as if they don't.</p>
<p>Let me clarify. The placement credit is received after I have taken deparmental exams to place out of those intro classes. From what I hear from school, they do seem to take credit if achieved through a departmental exam. Could somebody clear this up for me? I am not referring to AP credit.</p>
<p>I would guess that the policy is the same. You can't get away with not taking any science courses in college.</p>
<p>If anything, I would guess that placement exams are LESS well-recognized than AP credits. But this is all speculation.</p>
<p>btw, AP scores CAN satisfy requirements at certain schools. For example Harvard has a 1 year calc requirement but if you have taken AP calc BC, then you may be able to satisfy 1 semesters of calc.</p>
<p>From Harvard site:
"# 4. Mathematics: one year of calculus. Advanced placement credits may satisfy this requirement (Calculus AB - 1 semester, Calculus BC - 2 semesters). A course in statistics does not meet this requirement."</p>
<p>I guess the rule of thumb is just to double check with the med schools what can and can't be "AP'd" out of. Many of them give their AP policy on the websites.</p>
<p>The problem is that premeds have to apply to lots of schools, and enough of them refuse AP credit that you have to act as if none of them do.</p>
<p>So acting as if AP doesn't count, while not technically correct, does correctly summarize how premeds should act.</p>
<p>Well, from looking up the course prerequisities at many, many medical schools (over the summer I had a lot of time on my hands), I've found that AP credit for calculus is more commonly accepted than not. Many schools do not even have an explicit calculus requirement (instead just stating "math" so you could use statistics) - some don't even say they require math. Obviously, you're going to have to take math as a prerequisite to most of your science courses, but then if your institution accepts AP credit, it will count.</p>
<p>Basically, only a few medical schools require one full year of calculus AND explicitly state that AP credit does not count. One of them is WUSTL. But, I'd venture to say that if you took Calc BC and that counts as a year's worth of calculus at your institution, you could just take an additional year of stats or other math and only be excluded from applying to a few institutions.</p>
<p>I hope that made sense. From my Internet exploration, though, I do know that almost no schools consider science APs to fulfill any sort of requirement, because you need to do a lab component.</p>
<p>just wondering...what do you do your senior year/final year after you've applied to medical school? can you take pre-med required classes such as english during that year, or do you need to have all those done before you apply? also, where i am, the lab courses for science classes don't appear as separate grades on the transcript...they're all included within the overall grade for the course. i'm assuming this is ok because i have 6+ sem. hrs. for each course, but is it something to worry about?</p>
<p>1.) First semester senior year is spent travelling for interviews while trying to maintain your academic workload at a reasonable level.</p>
<p>2.) You could take some courses your senior year, but it's advised that you not do too many of those. Med schools rely on those as key indicators of your scholastic aptitude, and don't want to gamble too heavily.</p>
<p>3.) Ideally, your school would include some marker to indicate that it's a lab course. At my school, a course would be coded with an L - that is, Biology 25L is intro bio, and you know it's a lab because of the L in the code.</p>
<p>does the amcas factor in +/- grades (A-, A+) when it calculates the GPA, because my school's grading system does this.</p>
<p>Yes but not A+'s. They're counted as A's.</p>
<p>actually bdm posted an instructions thing on another thread for the amcas and it says that all + grades are counted on the application. a pleasant surprise...</p>
<p>In the calculation of your AMCAS GPA, your A+'s will be counted as 4.0's, not 4.3's.</p>
<p>That's a substantial mistake on my part if true.</p>
<p>NCG is exactly right. All +'s count, except for A+'s.</p>
<p>no it was actually from that pdf document of amcas instructions. it didn't really state if a+'s count to the gpa.</p>
<p>Having been through the process, I promise they didn't for me.</p>