I’m an aspiring pre-med student, who’ll start college in the Fall at the University of Florida. I’ll be majoring in Biology most likely. Thinking ahead to when I apply to med school, I know that all med schools have different requirements regarding AP and IB Credits. With that in mind, I’m not sure whether I should use my AP/IB credits to get out of preliminary Biology and Chemistry courses at UF. Also, I’ve gotten a 5 on both AP Calc AB and BC, so I don’t quite know whether I shouldn’t have to ever take math again, whether I should take Calc 1 again at UF, or take Calc 3 and be done with it. Any help with this would be appreciated, regarding the course selection so as to give me the best chance to apply to any and all top med schools in 4 years.
The first thing you need to do to read the AP credit policy for ALL the Florida medical schools. Your in-state schools are your best chance for an admission.
If your college records your AP credits on your transcript as equivalent to a UF course, most med schools will accept those credits. (Note I used the the weasel word “most”. You need to check specific requirements for the schools you are most likely to apply to. Spend $30 and buy access to MSAR to get all the info in one place.)
Medical schools are willing to accept upper level courses in lieu of the intro level classes. So instead of taking Intro bio, you can take a upper level bio with lab as an acceptable substitute. Ditto for your chem classes. Instead of a year of general chem, you can take a year of inorganic/analytic chem or a year of PChem.
I can’t think of any med school which doesn’t accept AP credit for calc so you probably don’t need to retake Calc 1. If you want to take more math–take calc 2 or calc 3. (You’ll need calc 3 if you take PChem.) You’ll also need a semester of stats or biostats for the MCAT. Many med schools now also list stats as a pre-reqs
Some top programs do require Calc 2 and the HST track at Harvard requires math through linear algebra. Do some reading to find what specific schools require what.