<p>We are taking a look a the course of study info at the CAS web site. The info seems overwhelming and also confusing- so many requirements, distribution, breadth,PE, FWS, Foreign language, etc. And, the question of how AP courses fit in- do you get credit for those? e.g. over all credit requirements are 120- many AP courses seem to be given 3-8 credits (Ap Physics B gets you 8 credits??). Looks like if the student has APs in Physics, Calc, Stats, etc, s/he can get almost 15-20 credits just from APs! Does that mean that such students can graduate from Cornell by taking Cornell courses for about 100-105 credits only, and graduate in less than 4 years??? </p>
<p>Yeah, a bit confusing how this all works. If there are any existing bio/pre-med students who could post their schedules, and how they used their APs, it would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>CAS distribution requirements are pretty much typical for colleges of arts & sciences,so I’m not getting you on that point, whatsoever. If you’'re saying the website isn’t clear, could be, I didn’t look. But the requirements themselves are pretty typical, really.</p>
<p>I had to do some digging to find treatment of AP courses at some of my son’s prospective college choices, which were not Cornell, so it seems this is something a number of colleges could be more clear about. If in fact it is actually the case that CAS is not clear about it, which I haven’t verified.</p>
<p>I am sure Cornell has put as much info as possible to help it’s prospective students finalizing a course of study. It’s just that as we were looking at this, it seemed the info was so huge, with so much back and forth referencing, that it got confusing after a point. Things like “you can cover this in breadth, but if you do electives, it cannot be included…, and if you are interested in pre-health go to this web-site, and if you do summer course…”. For a specific example, the site says that you have to meet the 8-semester residency, but if you take courses in summer, I would think you can graduate a bit early. However, the web site also says summer courses do not count towards the residency requirement. Likely we are missing something. Given this back and forth referencing, it seems we might just form an understanding that is completely off.</p>
<p>This is our first time ever going to a college’s course of study website, so any sugestions that will us just get an idea would be appreciated.</p>
<p>As a rule, the only AP credit that will do you a LOT of good (aka excuse you from taking a class at Cornell) is language (this gives you 2 semesters, you still have to take a 3rd) and English (one semester).</p>
<p>Everything else just gives you placement… Eg you don’t have to take Calc I, but you still might have to take a MATH class at Cornell, depending on various factors. (You can get around taking a math class if you really want to… I guess…)</p>
<p>And yes in theory it means you can graduate with 100 Cornell credits in 3 years, but I have found that you will accumulate more credits than that just doing your major (probably at least 40 credits unless you are doing a complete BS major), the distro requirements, and a couple of fun classes/a minor.</p>
<p>The requirements can be confusing at first but after a semester or two you’ll have a good grasp of them. Yes, you can get up to 20 credits at CAS with your AP credit. This means you can take a lighter load. I would say that it’s still difficult to graduate in 3 years but you can certainly graduate easily in 4 years while taking less than 15 credits per semester as long as you come in with some AP credit.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. How about summers? Can a student take a course for credit in summer, or do most of the pre-meds end up doing some EC towards med school? Do some/most/all freshmen pre-med students do lab/research during the school year and/or summer? Is it relatively easy to get such positions- any advice on how a student can go about this?</p>
<p>Most students probably get involved with research as sophomores. It’s pretty easy to find research opportunities at Cornell. I would advise not wasting your summers taking courses. Do something impressive extracurricularly during the summer. </p>
<p>To find research positions, just email professors whose research you like. Don’t expect the response rate to be great (this is true of any school). But, if you email enough people, you’ll find someone to take you.</p>