<p>I know that it's highly recommended that you take your pre med classes at your home school during the fall/spring semester. But would you rather take a class like physics at your home school and get a C or a D ? Or take it over the summer at a local school and get an A ? I'm talking about this because my physics professor is a terrible teacher and he's the only one that teaches the class. So I'm looking for a better teacher at a local university.</p>
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<p>Why do you think this is the case? Are you able to see the grade distribution from previous classes taught by this professor? He certainly must give some As and Bs. </p>
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<p>You are going to run across a wide spectrum of teaching styles and methods as you finish UG. This will continue into medical school. You can’t just quit whenever you don’t like a teacher. I certainly haven’t liked every teacher I’ve had, but I always find a way to work around the problems. What makes you think you won’t have the same issues at your “local university”?</p>
<p>If you are transferring, why not take physics at the new college?</p>
<p>^ I’m not transferring, I’m in the 2 + 2 program at Penn State. I’m going to U park next year where physics might be difficult. I was never a physics person so I might take physics over the summer at a cc. I want to know how much of an affect this will have on my app.</p>
<p>According to at least one adcomm member (who regularly posts on that other pre med board and who has been a extremely helpful and reliable source of accurate info for pre meds) says that OChem and physics are the 2 courses which adcomms scrutinize closely in student applications. </p>
<p>Before taking physics at a CC over the summer, you might want to think what kind of message this is sending about yourself… (“I’m not competitive.” “I’m afraid of competition.” “I’m afraid of tough classes/professors.” “I’m lazy.” None of them are the kinds of things you want to be announcing about yourself.}</p>
<p>What if its at a private school? And no one answered my question about what is the better situation. A c or a d in a home school physics class, or an A in a summer class whether it be a CC or private.</p>
<p>A’s beat B’s which beat C’s. But A’s in summer school come with an asterisk. A’s in juco’s also come with asterisks/flags. (What the asterisk means is that the adcom will place more emphasis on the grades at your 4-year Uni.)</p>
<p>Thus, A’s from top tier Unis are golden.</p>
<p>There are other resources than prof. who teaches class. There are study groups, Supplemental Instructors, private tutors, textbooks, GOOGLE (has been a great resources for any technical questions that I have ever had, so UG physics must be no problem researching on GOOGLE). Everybody have a bad prof. in some classes, but I bet every single class has at least few kids that end up with an A. Be that kid, whatever it takes and get used to various personalities / various ways of teaching, it is a very valuable skill to have, more so if you end up in Med. School and later when you are an MD.</p>
<p>My question still wasn’t answered. An A in a summer course or a C/D in a home school course?</p>
<p>If you cannot earn better than a D in a premed prereq, you should not be premed.</p>
<p>Okay how about a C</p>
<p>At least a C+, but only in one of the 2 required semesters–otherwise you’ll tank your GPA.</p>
<p>An A at your home school is best
An A in one pre-med req in summer school in your home town is probably fine, as long as you do not give the appearance of trying to get many pre-reqs at the local school, but doing it at a local 4 year would be better than a community college.</p>
<p>A C/D is never good anywhere!</p>
<p>How about I do physics one at my local CC and physics 2 at my home school?</p>
<p>What’s led you to the conclusion that you’d get an A at the community college and a C at the university?</p>
<p>“The class is harder at the University” isn’t an answer because 1) you’ve probably gotten an A in a hard class before, and there’s no reason this should be different 2) harder classes don’t necessarily mean worse grades 3) unless you have hard data to support the idea that this class is exceptionally challenging at the university, you’re probably just guessing at its difficulty and there’s no way to see if you’re right.</p>
<p>You will probably have to work hard to do well in physics. But the thing is, doing well in the premed prereqs isn’t easy. Fitting in all the extracurricular and finding what you’re passionate about isn’t easy. Studying and taking the MCAT isn’t easy. Choosing where to apply and putting together your application isn’t easy. And believe it or not, undergrad is a CAKE WALK compared to med school–but, if you’re a student who learns for the sake of learning and can persevere through some really tough stuff, you’ll probably love it. If it were easy and convenient, I’m sure a lot more people would be doing it. </p>
<p>Going to a CC isn’t always a gamble, but in your case, it is because you aren’t going there because of financial reasons or other reasons that are largely outside your control. As others have said, it’s a gamble because it appears that you’re gaming the system (which you are–avoiding the presumably hard class at the u and opting to take the easier version at the cc) and med schools tend not to like it when students game the system. How much gaming can you get away with? Who knows, but I know if I were in your shoes, I absolutely would not game the system with one of my main prerequisite classes. Maybe that’s just me though.</p>
<p>Don’t give adcoms reasons not to accept you!</p>
<p>kristin makes an excellent point. Med school adcomms are looking for any possible reason to reject you. They have way more applicants than they have seats for. Don’t give the adcomm a reason to dismiss your application before they’ve even read your file.</p>
<p>IMO, if you are looking for definite answer here, unfortuantely, it is not the place. Nobody can give you definite answer except for AdCom os each Med. School that you will apply. When my D. had questions, she contacted several of them. She got responses very quickly and in very definite form. So, why don’t you do the same?
Again, also in my very humble opinion, if you are so sure that you are getting C at your school, there is no way under the sky you can be sure that you will have an A at another, including CC. No chance whatsoever for you to know with 100% certainty that it will happen. However, there is a certain predictable chance that it will not.</p>
<p>If it makes you feel any better OP, I’ll share that I got a C in orgo 1 and a B in orgo 2 and fared just fine.</p>
<p>Also the premise that physics at a CC is 2.0 grade points easier than physics at a four year school is probably not correct. Physics at a CC must be rigorous enough and grade appropriately for the four year state university to have a reasonable basis to judge transfer admissions and for the course at the CC to be accepted for transfer credit. Yes, CC has a lot of marginal students, but they are either not taking transfer-preparation courses, or they get “weeded out”.</p>
<p>The difference in grading is probably only about 0.2 to 0.5 grade points at the GPA levels of interest to MD medical schools in the US, if one believes UC Statfinder’s (somewhat old) data, where CC students with 3.8 to 4.0 GPAs tend to get 3.4 to 3.7 GPAs on average after transferring to UC (however, the difference between pre-transfer CC and post-transfer UC GPAs shrinks and disappears at lower GPA ranges, although if your GPA is in those ranges, you may as well forget about MD medical schools in the US).</p>
<p>In other words, if you will get a C or D in physics at your four year school, you will probably get a C or D (maybe a C+ or D+) in physics at a CC.</p>
<p>^That is exactly my thinking which is also based on fact that I actually have degree from CC (my first one, the last is MBA). Apparently I took many classes at CC, including one few years ago while working. My very frst class at CC had weed out rate of 70%, yes, 70% of class were “weeded” out. In my last class (few years ago), only 3 people survived, everybody else dropped out, gone although it was small summer class to begin with. My classes were NOT more difficult than Physics class would be. They were Computer Language classes (programming). In my estimation Physics would be more challenging, I used to know Physics very well, one of my favorite class.
The best approach IMO is to stay where you are now and work harder. There are many resources in addition to teaching prof., use them all.</p>