<p>So i'm taking an honors biology class this fall and spring at the university of texas which gives me credit for two semesters of biology and 1 semester of genetics. I was wondering whether i should switch to a regular freshman biology class and get an easy A or stay with honors and possibly get a B.... do medical schools take into account the vigor of the classes taken as they do take into account your school (i.e. community college vs. univ.)??? most of the kids in the honors class are dean scholars and such. to get an A in the class you only need an 85, but the test aren't standard test (multiple choice); the test are open ended and are more application questions rather than just "do you know your stuff". (everyone in the class basically got 5's on their Bio AP test) </p>
<p>The benefits of staying in the course are that i don't have to take genetics and that the closer relationship with the professor might be helpful in the future with letters of rec. n such and obviously a greater understanding of biology. </p>
<p>dropping the course obviously saves me a lot of study time which can be used for other subjects and basically gift wraps an A for regular biology</p>
<p>if someone can PLEASE answer this it'd be wonderful...i only have about another week or so to make the switch</p>
<p>Something that concerns me is how the credit will be listed on your transcript. You need to biology classes with labs, so if this is the only bio class that you intend to take I would be wary. Medical schools take into account rigor, but a single course isn’t going to be of much interest to them. If it is a one time thing (meaning like if it was the only B you ever get), they might read what course it is out of curiousity and then be like “Oh, well it was an honors class.” Adcoms don’t spend much time looking over class schedules. It’s all about trends more than individual data points.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if “honors” will be shown on the transcript. The class is two semesters long which gives credit for two semesters of freshman biology and a genetics credit. In essence, this will satisfy the “year” of biology not including labs. Labs are not taken in conjunction to the actual classes here at UT.</p>
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<p>No, generally they don’t.</p>
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<p>Frankly, often times courses listed as “Honors” are actually easier than the regular sections due to smaller class sizes and more generous grading.</p>
<p>Even if honors doesnt show up on the transcript, one could label it as such on your medical application. Not that it would probably matter.</p>
<p>mmmcdowe, I would imagine that the class names would be “corrected” during the AMCAS verification process.</p>
<p>There is a check box for marking it as honors. I marked several classes as honors despite there not being anyway for them to verify via the class title or via my transcript. The AMCAS people didn’t care, which probably shows how unimportant honors classes are ;)</p>