<p>I have the opportunity to attend this dual enrollment program where I attend dual enrollment classes all day (jr & sr yr) at a Comm. college and get my associate's when I graduate HS. Does this seem better to med schools than taking all APs in HS? Will top schools (harvard, johns hopkins, etc) accept the dual enrollment science courses over the AP credits?</p>
<p>Med schools just look at your college GPA and MCAT score.</p>
<p>Med school doesn’t care about what you do in high school. Many elite schools will be more likely to accept AP credits (for which they have a standard policy and know the quality of the course) than community college courses.</p>
<p>However, for law school, they do take into account your GPA including any courses you may have taken at a community college, so that would be helpful.</p>
<p>A lot of the courses you’d take in year one or two (intro bio, intro chem, orgo, etc) med schools would rather see from a more challenging school than community college while in HS.</p>
<p>By the time you apply to med school - it won’t make any difference. It’s your college work/grades/scores that will matter. That’s all.</p>
<p>i know, but for the pre-reqs to get into med school, u need a certain # of credits in bio, chem etc. do they like me using aps or dual enrollment credits to fufill those pre-reqs more? do they care that i’ve spent half my undergrad in a CC doing dual enrollment instead of using ap credits to get that half done?</p>
<p>They like using credits from the institution you get your bachelor’s from to give you credit for those pre-reqs.</p>
<p>Don’t take prerequisites at a community college, if you can help it. Actually, don’t take any BCPM (Biology, Chemistry, Phyiscs, Math) classes at a community college, if you can help it. Fair or not, there is a stigma in med school admissions against community college classes. If you have to take community college classes as your prereq’s, you will have to take upper level BCPM classes.</p>
<p>Also, if you take AP credit for your prereq’s, you will have to take upper level BCPM classes.</p>
<p>Most prestigious colleges will still recommend that you take bio and chem and other basic science courses at their school even if you have APs because APs are still not the same as the real college course and if you are premed you need a really good foundation for Med School. Again, many of these colleges will not give you credit towards your major/ pre med requirements/ college distribution requirements for community college courses.</p>
<p>While the CC classes might help the GPA that gets factored into your applications overall, consider that their math and science classes may not be as competitive or comprehensive as the math and science classes offered by 4-year schools. When you take upper level math/science classes, you may therefore find that you are struggling or that your GPA is adversely affected at the upper-level program. </p>
<p>Also, if you were only considering taking those premed prereqs at the CC level, you could find that the CC math and science classes fail to give you the best foundation for the MCAT, hurting your chances even more significantly.</p>
<p>As already noted, if you were planning on majoring in a science field in a 4-year program, you are likely to find that most 4-year schools want you to take prerequisites at their own institution. You will not necessarily get credit for the math and science classes that you take at a CC anyway.</p>
<p>Spending two years of your college time at a CC may also limit opportunities to develop a strong resume for your medical school application. The CC may not offer research or TA opportunities, for example, that you might be able to find as a freshman or sophomore while in a 4-year institution.</p>
<p>My D is taking CC classes while in HS, and is building up a lot of credits. However, she’s just taking them to knock off college prerequisites so that she can lighten her load in a 4-year institution, or as preliminary intro-classes to upper level science and math classes (knowing that they won’t count and she’ll repeat them at her 4-year college eventually). She has considered whether some of those credits might be be useful to a dual major or a minor too. The 4.0 GPA doesn’t hurt, but she may not even mention the CC credits in her college applications since she doesn’t think they’re particularly important to her application. Dual enrollment is no big deal in our area, since so many kids do it. Once she’s admitted, she’ll work with her academic advisor to determine which credits will actually transfer to her 4-year college.</p>
<p>One more very important factor to consider is whether an AS degree will hurt your chances of getting financial aid. I never would have thought of this, but at one college presentation/tour that I attended with one of my kids, a girl asked how the 24-college credits that she had earned in high school would be transferred. She was clearly upset when the Admissions Officer doing the presentation said that most of her credits would probably transfer, but that she would not be eligible for the scholarships offered to entering freshmen since she would be viewed by this college to be a transfer student.</p>
<p>I never would have considered this. It may not apply to all schools, but you may want to investigate this further.</p>
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<p>This may be quite true. But I personally have some concern about having an undergraduate student as a TA. Just think about a hypothetical case: Suppose that the junior student A is a TA for a sophomore class, which the sophomore student B takes. If the student A applies to medical schools with a gap year but the student B applies without a gap year, we have the situation where one applicant essentially influences the grade of another applicant.</p>
<p>Do not tell me that it is the professor who decides the grade. I heard a horrible case that a professor even lets his TA to write the test in addition to grade the test, and the student complains that the challenge is to understand the questions as many questions are poorly phrased. A matter of the fact is that very often the TA has great influences on a student’s grade. Many students complain that they have a miserable life in a lab, not because of his/her professor, but because of his/her TA. Some even said that one benefit of joining a club like a fraternity is that you would know which TA to avoid. At many schools, there may be a high demand for a site like: pick-a-ta.com in addition to pickaprofessor.com.</p>
<p>The colleges try to make you believe that this is rarely an issue, But in reality is that it is because of huge money savings: TAs are cheap. (On the research side, aren’t “lab slaves” cheap too?)</p>
<p>Of course, when students join the honor class of being a TA to a pre-req class, they (and possibly their parents) will think otherwise. It is just another achievement on their CVs. It is true that they earn it because they have received a good grade on that class, but I still think we should avoid the situation where one applicant sort of evaluates another.</p>
<p>Well…think about it an another way, some lab technician who is hired as a full-time TA may be failed premeds; it may be even worse to have these as TAs. Looking at this in a positive way: it may be a good training for a future doctor to learn how to deal with some person who may be difficult to deal with, as a doctor has to deal with a difficult patient from time to time.</p>
<p>i meant harvard & JH for Med school, not undegrad.</p>
<p>undergrad at UF for 2 yrs, then transfer to a top med school, of course keeping backup med schools in mind. (another question - how many med schools to prospective students usually apply to?)</p>
<p>The answer is neither; both options would hurt you pretty severely. You should take those courses as part of your bachelor’s.</p>
<p>^ gangsta_ash: I admire your ambition when you said “undergrad at UF for 2 yrs, then TRANSFER TO a top med school” :-)</p>
<p>I do know a case: a student studied at Florida State for two years, transfered to a top UNDERGRADIATE school for the next two years, and then got into a top medical school. He was an high achieving student on every front, e.g., a quarterback while he was on the sport scholarship in Florida State and then got top grades everywhere he went and had VERY GOOD ECs because of his prowness in football.</p>
<p>I think most prespective students apply to 20-25 medical schools. Some over-confident ones maybe shoot for 15-20?</p>