<p>just checked mcat2 and you are correct. The qualifying score at H is now 700, or a 5 on the AP test. (It used to be lower, but perhaps that was back in the dark ages?) :)</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> College Freshman Dean’s Office Foreign Language](<a href=“http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3806&pageid=icb.page40309]Harvard”>http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3806&pageid=icb.page40309)</p>
<p>There is a rumor (or a myth?) that Y, as compared to H, tends to overwork their students</p>
<p>That would be news to my friend who complained all this past year that her Yale son seemed to have waaaayyy too much free time and his excuse was that the profs said that 85% of the students would get As…and he did. </p>
<p>This mom was upset because her son did have to study when he was in his high school, but didn’t seem to have to put in nearly the effort at Yale. Of course, he was only a frosh…but he is pre-med and taking the typical pre-med classes. Maybe high school APs adequately prepared him?? Maybe.</p>
<p>Wow…“85% of the students would get As”? for premed classes? If this were true, I guess we have just found a “dream school” for premeds – It is probably even better than Brown’s “every class can be taken P/F”. This is because premeds still need to show medical school adcoms their GPA. I bet most “grade efficient” premeds will prefer the policy “85% of the students would get As” to the policy “every class can be taken P/F” as both schools may allow the students to spend more time on ECs without sacrificing their GPAs.</p>
<p>fwiw, according to the data that I have seen, Y has a higher mean gpa than H. In fact, Y’s mean gpa is second only to Brown (3.6+), which is THE premed dream, since some/many? of its premed science courses are curved to an A- (at least according to some Brownies who have posted on cc). In contrast, Dartmouth, with arguably the exact same quality student body, has a mean gpa of <3.4.</p>
<p>Wow…“85% of the students would get As”? for premed classes? If this were true, I guess we have just found a “dream school” for premeds – It is probably even better than Brown’s “every class can be taken P/F”.</p>
<p>LOL…</p>
<p>I’m sure that this kid was greatly exaggerating and just trying to get his mom to back off. Probably one prof said this (and maybe not a pre-med pre-req) and the student took artistic license and applied it broadly to all his profs. </p>
<p>That said, he did emerge the year with a high GPA and little studying…which is why I suggested that perhaps his AP classes well prepared him.</p>
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<p>I have a BS in biology and my school required me to take 4 semesters of the same foreign language to satisfy gen ed requirements (which are not the same as major requirements). For ours, as long as you had taken 4 levels or 4 years of the same language in high school, the requirement would be waived (and no credit would be given, but none would be required). If you took AP, then you could get credit for some courses depending on your score on the exam. If you opted to take the placement test, you could test into a higher level (say, Spanish 3), and upon passing it, you would get credit for the lower levels (so if you used the placement exam to get into Spanish 3, once you passed it, your transcript would show “Spanish 3, A; Spanish 2, CR; Spanish 1, CR” and you would have something like 4h per class x 3 classes = 12 credits of your foreign language requirement completed.</p>
<p>The gen ed requirements should be available online. Make sure you access them through your son’s school (eg, my college, the College of Arts & Science, had different gen ed requirements than the College of Engineering–but both had the same requirements for foreign language. So there could be some variation.). Try calling an advisor if you can’t find it online–and if there’s anything like an office for new students (perhaps the group that organizes orientation?), try that too!</p>
<p>Edited to add: I used to be a peer advisor and an academic mentor and tutor for the athletic department–promise I’m not some freak of nature who just memorizes gen ed requirements for fun :)</p>
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<p>A premed who is scheming/playing the grade efficiency game (in order to allocate more time for ECs) would likely say: “This is GOOD.”</p>
<p>This likely means that a student only needs to compete against the students from their own UG school. The game then becomes more about who could build up better ECs on their application than their peer students from the same UG school, as the grade itself becomes less a distinguisher. (This may be just like that in high school in the sense that the SAT score at the high school level is rarely a distinguisher for a very top college because these colleges even boast about rejecting 2400 or close-to-2400 scorers. Poor high school kids!)</p>
<p>However, at the end of day, probably only one or two students out of 100 (premed or not) students could earn the ticket to get into any specific top school (e.g., JHU or the like.) So…working hard on your ECs and having a lot of “interesting life experience”, rather than running the risk of being labeled as an academic egghead, seems to be more important in order to get into a medical school.</p>
<p>BTW, I hapeen to know one kid from one of these schools who has like 3.6x (do not know her MCAT), but, even though she could get into a medical school, she could not get into a school that she would like to get into. Sometimes I think, just like the college admission, maybe the ranking (i.e., top 5 % from your school’s premed pool), rather than GPA, is more important, as the med. school adcom may roughly know your ranking at your school. (e.g., PBK = roughly top 5 %.)</p>
<p>Also, I think Brown is good because it seems to be able to attract or nurture “interesting” students/applicants – and these types of students are likely those many adcoms may favor.</p>
<p>“What schools do have foreign language requirements in BS degrees?”</p>
<p>-D. has graduated with BS in Zoology. She had to take only one semester of college Spanish, but it was reguired. I do not know if she would have needed to take more if she placed lower on her placements test. She has placed into 3rd year of college Spanish based on her placement test, which is required from everybody at her UG before they can register for first semester classes. She took Honors Spanish whatever number corresponds to 3rd year and it was one of the best and most usefull UG college classes. She could speak to native speakers even 2 years later after taking this class. Prof. did not use English during class at all. It was taught in Spanish.
I do not remember if D. had AP Spanish at HS or not. However, her HS had native Spanish speaker for teacher who used to teach at college.</p>