How Important is AP Biology?

My daughter is homeschooled and will be a senior next year. She is interested in premed and will probably apply as a biology or biochemistry major. She has a 4.0 and a transcript that includes 14 hours of dual enrollment courses. She should have 28 hours of dual enrollment by the time she graduates.

One problem is that the co-op where she took science begins with physical science. So her science classes are:
-Honors Physical Science (9)
-Honors Biology (10)
-Honors Chemistry (11)

For senior year, she is planning to take Honors Physics, but I am wondering if it is important to change that to AP Biology since most honors students will have AP Biology before college.

Will not having AP Biology hurt her college admissions/scholarship chances?

She has science ECs. Her community college courses are spread across English, foreign language, social studies, and math.

I think she is better off taking high school Physics than AP Bio, lest she wind up needing to take college Physics without having done high school Physics. Premed requires college bio, college physics, and two years of college chem.

I hope that she is also planning on taking a standardized test. I believe that colleges really feel more comfortable with admitting homeschooled students with high SAT/ACT scores, to confirm and validate their homeschooled transcript.

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Is there any reason she can’t do AP Bio and Physics? Two of mine had three science courses their senior year. One was in PS, the other HS. If they’re heading toward the sciences, that’s not unusual around us.

Yes, she has taken the SAT and gets her test scores on Saturday.

I am concerned about overloading her. In addition to a few homeschool co-op courses, she is planning to take DE Cal 1 & 2 and DE Hist 1 & 2. I am concerned that 2 sciences will be overwhelming - especially with her job and EC’s and college app stuff.

Also, she’s not looking at any elite schools. Mostly instate publics, a few (non elite) privates, and a few (non elite) OOS publics that offer scholarships.

The difference with having solid Bio and Physics is she is thinking of possibly heading pre-med. You want the foundations to be strong there as grades count starting with the DE classes she’s already had and Science grades count more. History isn’t nearly as important. My med guy totally skipped history his senior year to have Physics, Bio at the AP level, and MicroBio (DE).

Yes, I have been thinking about that, too. I’ll talk to her. She did get her SAT scores this morning - 1440.

@Creekland Did your homeschooled kid use the PA Homeschoolers AP Bio?

No, but I’ve heard good things about it. I teach in a public high school (Math/Science). We did not need to outsource those - hence - not calling it an AP course, but Bio at the AP level.

I also chose to not have him take the AP test because he was going to a higher level research U and pre-med, so I wanted Bio 101 there, not at home (didn’t want the test to skip a course). Definitely no regrets with that choice. Good foundations (and a dedicated, intelligent nature) allowed him to do extremely well in college and med school.

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Note that a pre-med student with AP credit who takes the college intro course on the same subject (e.g. AP biology and college general biology) needs to mark “repeat” on the medical school application.

My daughter is an exercise science major, riding senior (going for DPT). She says not taking AP biology and AP chemistry (and no physics) in high school was a mistake. Introductory science classes, at least at her university but I suspect many, are weed-out, and classes are taught with the expectation that students took AP (she had honors freshman and sophomore year). Fortunately she learned to self teach fall of 2019, and continued to this day with online classes. She managed A’s and a B, she’s only there due to a nice merit scholarship, so needs to keep her GPA up. She took 9 AP classes but should’ve switched some out.

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Pre-med/health intro science courses (the ones for biology majors) are implicitly weed-out for pre-med/health goals, due to the high grades/GPA needed to get into medical and other health profession schools. The high school versions of the sciences are typically among the recommended prerequisites.

Thanks, everyone, for the info and advice! She’s going to adjust her schedule and take both physics and AP biology.

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My kids all took AP Bio. We all felt it’s one of the most important classes they took in high school, because it gave them the foundation to have some understanding of how the human body worked, so that they could bring more understanding to their own healthcare. So as long as she can handle the workload, taking both is a good idea.

BTW, very nice SAT score. Sounds as if all her schools are within reach, and possibly with merit.

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