Calculus during summer for pre-med

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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My DD is completing freshman this year. Home state is Michigan and attending school in Ohio. Took 16-18 credits during last two semesters. Taking Sociology online during summer and thinking of Calc too. What are the best schools to take summer calc? We live near UofM. Thank you all! All other pre-req are already done or planned for next 3 years, thanks to the wonderful College Confidential Community. Calculus course @the present school coincides with her Genetics and Org Chemistry class, so there is no way she can take calc Fall Sophomore semester. Thinking of taking MCAT fall or spring semester Junior year. Thanks a lot for all the input!

Another question, she has Psycholgy AP=5…is it ok to transfer the credit? Will it be looked down upon by the med school adcom? Thank you all

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@ITMom56 Suggest 2 things.

  1. Review the requirements of DD Ohio school pre-med office. Plan to complete all those requirements in order to get the LOR from pre-med office.
  2. Visit the web site of few target MD school (MI or OH state) and get a feel for what courses and restrictions they have for admission.

Let me explain the reason for the suggestion by taking few examples from what my DD going thru and she is also a current freshman in out of state(OOS) and may target both OOS and CA MD schools. She also has AP Stat/Psyc/Call and all are 5. Her OOS pre-med office reqs are superset of OOS MD school. But still they fall short of what CA MD schools need in certain areas.

  1. pre-med wants 2 courses in Psyc. It gives credit for the first one due to AP. So she did another Psyc course.
  2. pre-med wants 2 courses in Calc but gives 2 courses credit for AP Calc. So she is not planning any courses in Math.
  3. pre-med wants 1 course in Stat. But it gives 1 lower course for AP-Stat in Psyc. It gives a option to do Stat offered either in Bio / Math / Psch departments. She choose Bio dept Stat.
  4. She did 1 CLEP and pre-med accepts that for Soc.Sci and also UG GE req it satisfies.

But when I look some MD schools req in CA, each school within CA itself will differ so much and here is the flavor.

  1. One school explicitly says must do a course in college for Calc.
  2. One says explicitly no CLEP course are allowed.
  3. One says explicitly Stat course must be done in Math dept.
  4. One says NO AP courses are accepted (UCLA)

Since 4 years is lot of time, plan and be liberal to cover the req of variety of schools needs since no one knows which MD school she will end up. GL.

Plan to do courses which are useful for MCAT prep. My DD OOS school does not need BioChem but her UG Pre-med needs. It is useful for MCAT and also later for MD. So she is planning to do BioChem. So do some courses which are relevant to that profession in the long run.

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@GoldenRock Thank you so much for the detailed info and sharing your experience :slight_smile:

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Golden Rock is right–every medical school has its own unique and specific set of requirements for admission.

Before going any further with your D’s summer plans, I suggest that she check that online classes are acceptable to any med school your D is likely to apply to in the future. Not all med schools will accept credits from online classes./u For example, OUWB says it will consider online classes on case-by-case basis only.

In general, it’s OK for your D to take calc during the summer. If you live close to the UM campus, taking it there certainly would be an option. As would taking at local CC.

When she goes to apply to medical school, she will need to have official transcripts sent from every college where she has taken coursework.

RE: AP credits–Again, this is something that needs to be investigated. Some med schools may accept her AP credits; others may require additional social studies classes to supplement them. And for her AP credits to be considered as fulfilling admission requirements, they must be listed on her official college transcript along with an equivalency to a course offered at her college.

Complicating all of this is the fact that UM and MSU are both already transitioning to competency-based admissions.
See: [AAMC Admissions Initiative: A Pathway to Competency-Based Admissions](https://www.aamc.org/download/308462/data/admissionsinitiativesummary.pdf)

See: [AAMC Core Competencies for Entering Medical Students](https://healthprofessions.wsu.edu/documents/2015/06/aamc-core-competencies.pdf)

Here’s UM’s discussion of how these Core Competencies may be fulfilled: https://medicine.umich.edu/medschool/education/md-program/md-admissions/requirements

Here’s MSU’s Pathway Models for fulfilling core competencies:
http://mdadmissions.msu.edu/ApplicationProcess/future/prereq_models.htm

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2 classes for psych? Is that 2 semesters??? Or 2 quarters?

I thought that the recommended req’t was 1 semester of psych and 1 semester of socio

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@mom2collegekids , that’s what I thought too.

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It differs so much with each school. In her school, Psyc is 2 semesters. 1 intro at freshman level course and she gets credit due to AP Psyc. But the second one is Personality at sophomore level and she has to take that and she did last sem. These 2 courses are different from SocSci 1 semester course.