Does courseload difficulty matter to medical schools?

<p>Does it matter if I take the harder physics series or calc series?</p>

<p>Nope. Except that sometimes "harder" classes turn out to be easier, so be careful about checking into that.</p>

<p>I have talked to 2 people on med school admissions committees from different schools, and both say that the first and most important thing they see is GPA. They do glance at the classes you take, but in general you do not receive special consideration for taking "harder" classes.</p>

<p>It's often impossible for med school admissions officers to have any clue as to the difficulty of a course at a school they aren't familiar with. The UC's (since youre at Berkeley) may have some idea of the relative difficulty of the course sequences but not that much, and very few - if any - schools outside of CA are going to have any idea.</p>

<p>Besides, as BDM pointed to, sometimes "harder" classes are easier, and even within the same course, same school, different sections, taught by different profs can be harder or easier further compounding the problem of judging whether you took "harder" courses. My organic chem class was CHEM 252, and graded on a standard bell curve so only 5 students out of 200 got A's - average exam scores were in the 40% range most times. The class being taught next door also CHEM 252 and taught an hour after mine had an average class score of 75% on their tests and most people I knew got A's or B's - way more than 5 got A's. That said the hard prof was a much better teacher than the other guy and I knew a lot more about organic chemistry even though my friends in the other class had better grades...</p>

<p>so.........what do you guys think about HONORS classes then? im at community college, do you advice me to take honors classes, or as you guys said, they don't care..</p>

<p>at a community college I think they're probably a good idea. It may not matter, but if there is ever a question about your CC experience, you can at least point to the honors and say that you took the most challenging courses possible, even if you were at a school that many people consider to be easier...</p>