<p>Hi all, </p>
<p>I got accepted by Cornell CAS yesterday, and I was wondering what courses would be ideal for a freshman on the premed track. Are there any links which I could use to find more information?</p>
<p>look at these two documents and you should get a pretty good idea. </p>
<p><a href=“Biological Sciences | CALS”>Biological Sciences | CALS;
<p><a href=“Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University;
<p>Thank you! These documents are fantastic!</p>
<p>Cornell will probably have you take intro bio and gen chem at the same time. I would NOT do this (so long as you can avoid it, which, depending on your major, you may not be able to do). These are probably the two hardest premed classes you will take at Cornell, in part because the material is tough, and in part because it takes some getting used to college classes. Being thrown into these two monsters together during your first semester, in my opinion, is a bad idea. This is why many people drop premed before really giving it a chance. These classes are totally manageable individually. </p>
<p>Taking gen chem freshman year and putting bio off until later was probably one of the best decisions I made at Cornell. If I took them together freshman year, I would very likely have dropped out of the whole premed thing (hell, I almost dropped out of it because of gen chem alone). But instead I’m now a first year at a top 20 medical school :)</p>
<p>Hi qwer0987,</p>
<p>I agree with you on that. My daughter had the same issue in Sophomore year. She had way too many challenging classes and ended up not doing so great.</p>
<p>what did kind of courses did you take freshman year instead of bio, qwer0987? when you say “individually” of course you really have 2-4 other courses that are just not as difficult in some way. I guess if you had a major besides biology then you could take the intro course to that.</p>
<p>I took bio, chem and calc Fall semester freshman year and that was either my worst or my second to worst GPA semester at Cornell.</p>
<p>I was a social science major, so I took into courses for that, and some other courses to fill distribution credits. By the way, OP, you should know that you certainly don’t have to major in bio to be premed. In fact, there’s probably no advantage at all to being a bio major. If you want to major in bio, go for it, but also feel free to explore other things. Freshman year is a good time to do that while you knock out one of the core premed classes.</p>
<p>And faustarp, I can imagine. Bio, chem, and calc together, especially freshman year, sounds pretty brutal.</p>