Hi, All!
My S16 is trying to nail down his junior schedule, and we have a question about Health Academy science offerings vs. the standard AP sciences (Bio, Chem & Physics).
At S’s school, kids do a year of honors or college prep science as a pre-req for each AP science, so Honors Chem, then AP Chem, etc. There’s a Health Academy on campus, so S can also choose from offerings such as Medical Biology, Medical Terminology, Anatomy & Physiology, etc.
S has already taken Honors Physics, Honors Chem and Medical Biology (in lieu of Honors Bio, his choice). He adored Med Bio; his favorite class to date. He’s got 103% in Honors Chem but it bores him.
He would like to take AP Bio, Medical Terminology and Anatomy & Physiology as a junior, then either AP Physics or AP Chem as a senior. His schedule won’t fit both without a lot of shoehorning.
S is possibly interested in applying to BSMD/BAMD* programs, and he’s wondering if having the medical-related classes on his transcript will be a positive, and if it’s enough of a positive to lose one AP traditional science in order to fit them in.
His reasoning is that he will have to (re)do the chem and bio classes at the college level, so having one more AP science doesn’t seem worth the hassle. He’d rather have a really good grounding for college-level anatomy, for example, than skip it in order to take the extra AP science.
We are not worried about workload vis a vis the APs; we’re just wondering if the Health Academy classes might do more for him admissions-wise than one more AP.
What say you?
ETA: We’re looking almost exclusively at the high dollar NMF schools for undergrad, so if he’s already applying to OU, he might as well apply to their Medical Humanities program, too, right? Or is that a different thread?
*not accelerated; just the ones with a conditional pre-admit