Course Load Confusion

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

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As long as your course load is somewhat within the normal range (variety of 14 to 18), adcoms don't care. But if you drop that far below the average, finish school in like 6 years, then you risk raising a red flag as they suspect you simply cannot handle rigorous course loads.

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[quote]
If you're taking 12 credits a semester, then yes, it'll look bad because it is far below the standard for a full course load. Take that extra class, 12 is not so different from 15 credits a semester. Take up research to fill that last 3 credits.

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<p>I get confused when I hear things like that. I'm unsure if those apply to my situation as well.
I go to a Canadian undergrad, which is in a quarter system. At my school, 9-15 is considered full time, and a majority of people take 9-12 credit hours. Below 9 credit hours entitles you as a part-time student.</p>

<p>Since there are three semesters in a year, I end up taking ~30 hours even if I take 9-12 credits per semester. This is equivalent to instances where people in semester system take 15 credit hours per semester, totalling 30 credit hours per year (because there are two semesters in a semester system).</p>

<p>Does your course load not matter as long as it's considered full-time at your school? Will adcoms at semester schools understand this, as well as qualify you for omitting certain grades?</p>

<p>The answer I got is that you're okay if you're okay in your school's standard.</p>

<p>But something is weird...</p>

<p>I was playing around with the AMCAS GPA Calculator program, and I found that the number of credit hours for each course is reduced if you apply the fact that you're in the Quarter system. For example, the AMCAS calculator treats a course with 3 credit hours in the Quarter system as 2 hours, and 4 hours as 2.7 instead; however, no change is applied to the number of credit hours of courses in the Semester system. In other words, 3 credit hours of courses taken in the Semester system are treated as 3 credit hours, 4 as 4, and 2 as 2; no modification is applied. Consequently, my total number of credit hours taken is drastically reduced. For example, if we assume that I took 30 credits in a year, then after applying the fact that I took all those courses in the Quarter system, the total number of credits becomes 20, which is 10 credit hours below what's considered the full time per year--30 credit hours.</p>

<p>I'm afraid this will make me look like I was a part-time student for all my undergrad career and therefore treated accordingly, when in fact I have always been a full-time student in my school's standard.</p>

<p>What is the AMCAS's approach to this in the actual admission process?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>well...duh. A quarter is much shorter than a semester. Why would a 3 credit quarter course be equivalent to a 3 credit semester course? No, you can't just take the bare minimum EVERY semester. Once or twice is okay.</p>

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<p>But even if I usually take 9~12 hours, I can graduate on time, though I'm not saying that I'm going to do this every semester. Can't this be a problem as long as you end up graduating on time?</p>

4

<p>I think most med schols require 90 semester credits for entrance. So budget accordingly.</p>

<p>I can't believe your school allows you to take 9-12 credits/quarter and still graduate on time.</p>

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<p>If I take 10 credits/quarter, then I end up taking 30 credits/year. After four years, this becomes 120 credits, which is the bare minimum to graduate at my school.</p>

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<p>look, the point is that you should be taking the average range for your school, regardless of how they measure the amount of classes you´ve taken. obviously ¨90 semester credits¨ translates differently between schools - brown just gives a straight one credit per class, for instance, so obviously I don´t need 120 ¨credits¨ or whatever</p>