Will a top medical school accept the IB Bio HL credit as a biology prerequisite credit?
I am also taking physics and chemistry at my local community college, will a medical school accept these.
IB AP credits can only be forwarded by a college on their transcript.
The community college credits have to be submitted in medical school applications since they are college credits. Whether you want to use them to fulfill your basic requirements for medical school - is upto you but they most likely will not help much with your MCAT.
Every medical school has their own requirements. You will not make it to top medical school using community college credits irrespective of whether they accept it or not.
AP/IB credits must appear on your transcript as credits equivalent to specific coursework at your undergrad. If your undergrad awards general credit you cannot apply those credits toward fulfilling admission requirements.
Even if you are awarded college credit by your undergrad, medical schools may not accept it as fulfilling admission requirements. AP/IB Policies vary by school. Even those programs that do accept AP/IB credit strongly recommend supplementing all AP/ IB with an equal number of upper level coursework credits in the same department if you want to be a competitive applicant–even at lower ranked medical schools.
Some medical school will not accept community college credits. Most strongly recommend you supplement all CC credits with additional upper level coursework done at a 4 year college. You will need to check the policies of all schools you are interested in applying to.
Wouldn’t the other potential trap with IB (and AP) credit be that if the undergraduate college grants course credit for it, but the pre-med retakes a college course on the same general material (e.g. general biology courses after IB biology HL or AP biology credit), the pre-med will have to mark “repeat” on the medical school application (looks like grade grubbing)?
Most colleges grade basic biology, chemistry and physics classes on a curve which means there are only 20-30% As and mess up the GPA of the other 70% right off the bat (whole reason for premed drop out). I have heard colleges claim they dont give credit for certain sciences because their basic class covers AP course in 2-3 weeks.
D’s “introduction to biology” class in her college was required for premed track or bio major freshmen who had gotten a 5 in ap class. It was the most difficult class in her whole 4 college years, the weed out rate was very high. It has no resemblance to what she took in HS.
D2’s undergrad does this. Honors freshman bio for required a 5 on the Bio AP as a pre-req. The class curve was centered at C+ which meant a ton of kids got weeded right off the bat.
The university also didn’t allow AP/IB credits in bio, chem or physics for pre meds or science and engineering majors.
That is brutal. Most med schools ignore candidates with a grade less than C.