I am a sophomore in high school, and an aspiring doctor. I am taking 4 APs next year (Phys 1, Psych, Lang, AB Calc), and I don’t want to stress myself out with chem, as I am getting Bs/B+s in chem honors this year. I just cannot get good grades on the “make up your own” labs, and ap chem is all about creating your own labs, which is why the class is intimidating to me. Additionally, chem is not nearly as interesting to me as biology, and I’m planning to take ap bio my senior year. How harmful would it be for me to not take ap chem but still remain competitive for elite/ top 100 colleges with a pre-med track?
PS- I realize I will have to take a lot harder chem classes in college if I’m going pre-med, but I will be more focused on learning the subject, since I would only take 3-4 classes a semester.
TL;DR
Is not taking AP chem harmful if I want to be considered as a competitive pre-med applicant for undergrad college acceptance?
Any advice is helpful!
To the best of my knowledge, you are not admitted as “pre-med” anywhere unless you are applying for a special program. Not taking AP Chem and shooting for a top 100 college is perfectly fine.
No, you don’t need AP chem to be competitive for pre-med.
But AP chem isn’t all about creating your own labs. The college board clearly outlines which labs you have to do, and although you have to understand what’s going on to write a lab report, the procedures are already outlined for you.
But I wouldn’t suggest doubling up on AP sciences, so if you do end up doing it, you should take honors or regular physics instead.
Would not suggest AP Chem if you had straight B’s in honors. It’s a really though class - considered the hardest AP besides BC.
@annana At my school, only AP and regular physics are offered, which is why I want to do AP phys. I’m also taking anatomy and psychology, so I’m already taking 3 science classes, which is why I’m not leaning towards chem.
The only reason I’m so paranoid is because a bunch of my friends are die-hard “I need to get into Harvard” types, and were talking about how you “have” to take AP chem or you won’t even get into a state school for undergrad or medical school, so I wanted to double-check on here.
Thanks for the input regarding the curriculum; I’ll check out the outline on the website, but I’m also awful at lab reports so another reason why I don’t want to take chem! Lol 
@anxioussenior1 Thanks for the input
@keggin That’s what I was thinking too… Thanks!
It is not a problem. However, AP Physics 1 has a really low passing rate – make sure your teacher is following the new curriculum (more conceptual than plugging equations). My suggestion for you is to take AP Bio for junior year and AP Physics 1 for senior year. That way, you can, possibly, get a better AP science score before applying to college.
Also, why in the world would your teacher force you to create your own labs…that’s just unnecessary IMO
@keggin That’s what I was thinking too… Thanks!
@Erikstotle At my school, you have to take either regular physics, ap physics, or regular geosystems (which is a joke class for underachieving kids) during junior year. So unfortunately, I will have to stick with ap physics next year .
The teachers are pretty good from what I’ve heard, and students perform decently throughout the course if they try, but a bunch of my friends said that the ap test was hard, so idk what that says about the teachers…
Regarding my chem labs: Approximately half of them are step-by-step instructions, which is standard for most chem classes. For the other half of our labs, our teacher gives us an objective/outcome to achieve and then just gives us a bunch of instruments, and we have to figure out how to find the outcome. It sucks, because none of the other chem classes have to do those!!
I think you are definitely fine without AP Chem! If you are getting a B/B+ in chemistry now, that is good but that means AP Chem might be more challenging.
I took Chem and Physics 1 at the same time this year, and I’ll just say doing one or the other and NOT both in one year is a great decision
AP Physics is difficult but the curve is on the generous side. I would highly recommend the youtube channel flipping physics to review for tests and such - didn’t find out about it until the night before the AP test 
Good luck next year!
@lamebridge thank you so much! i will definitely be checking out those vids next year