Hello, what courses would you recommend a rising high school senior take who wants to go to med school he is done with AP bio, chem, and is taking anat and physio in the senior year. Can he take any introductory courses to medicine in community college?
Be cautious with dual enrollment. All those classes have to be listed on the AMCAS application and can affect his Med school application GPA.
Has he take physics yet?
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Yes he has done honors physics and AP physics 1
I would stay away from community college as a high school student as it can affect his GPA as the previous poster said. Make sure he’s taking all his core courses but otherwise take high school courses that are interesting to him. Don’t overload the senior year. College applications take a lot of work.
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Ok, I agree there with you but the kid just wants to keep going I will try to reason out with him. I am proud that he is motivated but also worried about overload.
Editing this post to make it more accurate - poor memory on my part, sorry!
My medical guy took Microbiology at our local CC his junior year, fall semester. It was a course nurses usually take, so a 200 level vs a 100 level. He loved it, got an A, and had a great LOR from the Prof for his applications.
It didn’t cause a problem at all with med school acceptance as it’s not a pre-req class, but he enjoyed the knowledge he gained from it.
Choose wisely, work hard.
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Agree with avoiding CC dual enrollment classes.
Has he taken statistics? Most med school require a stats class now.
My older D took anatomy & physiology her senior year. (Taught at the high school, but taught by a college instructor.)
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My kid also took anatomy and physiology her senior year of HS. It was taught by a college instructor at the high school. She did get community college credit.
But she applied to medical school as a non-traditional applicant.
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Ah, my boy just reminded me he took the Microbio class his junior year of high school, not his senior year along with Public Speaking. He only took English there his senior year.
His memory beats mine. Sorry for the mistake.
All three courses were As and both professors from his junior year wrote LORs for him.
ETA Public Speaking was a superb course to take with its info on human perception and practice with public speaking. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s going to have significant interviews or presentations in their future, including doctors.
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ASL or a foreign language? A family friend is about to start her residency and said that her language fluency came up at each interview…She matched with a prestigious urban medical center with a significant immigrant patient population…
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Yes there is an anat option which he is going to enroll in. He has not applied for statistics yet I will recommend this to him. Makes so much sense now
Meaning good if the grades are A or A+, bad if the grades are B+ or lower.
Also, some medical schools look down on important pre-med courses taken at community colleges.
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That I agree with you being looked down upon having taken courses at community colleges we will use as super last option only if we exhaust our options with colleges
I mean my kid did a full time dual enrollment program and got into Stanford, Brown (and their PLME program), Dartmouth, Duke and a lot of others. I don’t think the prestige affected it so much.
But I will say that the med school app/gpa/can’t repeat (like he would have to take higher level courses)parts gave us pause. Luckily with PLME he got a guaranteed spot so we are good there.
The caution to people regarding DE vs AP is that one ought to have As in DE. AP med schools don’t really look at because they are fully high school grades.
Many students think their B or worse in a DE course is overlooked because they are still in high school - it isn’t.
Be cautious. Work hard.