I’m planning my courses for junior year, and have one empty spot. Should I take stats or anatomy? I’m already taking precalc junior year and AP calc senior year, but precalc at my school is pretty easy and a lot of people double it up with stats. I want to go into the medical field so I know i should take anatomy, but i think it will be really boring because its just memorization. Also I am not looking forward to dissecting a cat, shark, squid etc.
What should I do?
I’d recommend stats. It’s an incredibly useful subject for all kinds of things and I think there’s a lot of value in getting exposure to the material early, because it provides you with many useful perspectives and techniques for thinking about various problems and issues. Statistics is also useful and important for medicine (and you’ll likely end up taking more statistics classes in college), and both of these are good additional reasons for taking it now. Like you said, anatomy is mostly memorization, and I’d thus just learn that material when you need it (if you took it now, it’s quite likely that you’d forget a lot of what you memorized and then have to do the memorization all over again in college).
Either one is fine…if you don’t like memorizing A&P you won’t like medicine though!
For my own courses for next year, I chose A&P over Stats because i like science and am seriously considering medicine. But if memorization and dissections of A&P are boring to you, why does medicine appeal?
I think “rigorous courseloads” are overrated (not saying it shouldnt be a strong/rigorous courseload, but people take it wayy too far) , so dont take an AP Stats just because its AP and you need another course. That being said, stats actually is a pretty useful course in a lot of fields and isn’t a bad option.
I’d say anatomy because it could help you more than stats to know if you want to study medicine.
This is personally, my opinion, and I know many will disagree with me. However, unless you want to be a doctor or work in a pharmacy/medicine subject, I think AP Statistics is a better choice because AP Statistics can apply to almost every major available while A&P is really for the medicine field. It can help in the medical field too, as people who want to be doctors must be good at math. I am aware you said you are going into the medical field. What I will say to that as well is that if you’ve taken other medical courses such as AP Biology, AP Chemistry, or Genetics/Biotech, etc. you should be fine without taking A&P. When colleges want you to take classes corresponding with your major, they don’t need you to take all of the classes recommended. I think since you prefer Stats, AP Stats is a much better choice.
Have a good day!
What other classes are you taking?
What colleges are you aiming for?
What are your GPA and test scores?
Depending on what you’re aiming for, your choices will be different.
Note that being premed means declaring a goal - the classes you take in college aren’t related to medicine at all. You take General Bio 1+2 with bio majors and must score in the top 10%, take general physics 1+2 with physics majors and must score in the top 10-20%, take general chemistry 1+2 and must score in the top 10-20% , take English, calculus, statistics, psychology, sociology, biochemistry, a class that deals with America 's diversity… All while managing a major (can be Music, French literature, philosophy, economics, statistics, computer science - it doesn’t have to be a science.)
If you wouldn’t like Anatomy, would you like the medicine field? I don’t think so.
Statistics is useful for just about EVERY field of work. If you can only take one I recommend Stats, but obviously try to take both.
I I know I’m kind of late but thank you everyone! I ended up choosing AP stats but plan on taking anatomy senior year. I’m interested in medicine but I felt queasy at the idea of dissecting, but now I think I’m ready for it.