Is an A- in honors chem (A in ap/honors bio) an admissions disadvantage for people going for premed?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

  1. If I got an A- in honors chem and am going for premed in college, will I be at a disadvantage admissions wise at elite colleges? I’ve taken honors bio and AP bio and gotten an A in both of them, and will be taking a neurobiology elective next year as well as doing a research lab for neuroscience that our school offers in my senior year. If it’s a disadvantage, how bad does it look?

  2. I’m considering taking AP chem next year as a junior to make up for it (logic being that if I get an A in AP chem it’ll make up for the A- in honors chem), but I also know that taking AP chem next year will make my junior year schedule extremely hard to the point where it’s going to be hard to maintain good grades in my other classes next year. Should I take AP chem next year, or is an A- in honors chem going to look alright to elite colleges like HYPSM given good grades in honors and AP bio? Thanks!

2

Most top colleges want to see physics as part of your science sequence. Will you be taking physics next year?

3

No. First, premed is not a major. Second, few colleges admit by major. Third, if a college rejects you, it will not be because of an A-.

There is no “making up for it.” It is what it is.

I don’t see physics anywhere. You should have physics before expanding into science electives.

4

@skieurope @scholardad I’m taking honors physics next year as a junior (required course at my school, so I can take AP chem next year at the same time as an elective)

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^no need unless you have a burning desire to do more chem.

An A- is fine!

6

Here is another way to think about this.

Some colleges admit by major Some don’t.
Premed is not a major. You would major in Bio or Chem or Physology or Math or whatever you want (and you would need to add the pre-med classes {bio, chem, organic chem, Calc, etc)
You will need to be fairly strong in sciences to be premed
A- is a good grade and shows you do well in science.

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Bump… final exam did not go so well and I now have a B+ ;( Not sure how much to believe them but a lot of my friends and upperclassmen said that a B+ in chem is “bad” if you’re following a bio route- to colleges like HYPSM, does this B+ in honors chem make a significant difference in how I seem as an applicant? Would they hypothetically look at my transcript and think “bio focused classes but has a B+ in honors chem? Not very great”? (NOTE: sorry if these are annoying questions but I’m just freaking out after what a lot of upperclassmen were saying today and I want an honest opinion) Thanks!

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All you can do is your best. Then you apply to a range of schools that fit your profile and let the chips fall where they may. No point in spending the next two years stressing about things you can’t change.

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We see many posts that say “I got a B- one time freshman year will I get into an Ivy…oh no my life is over”.

I think it is more productive not to have everyone think “I deserve to go to an Ivy and any point I lose on a test takes away from that”, but to say “I am going to put effort into my school work and go to the best school I can that matches my GPA/SAT.”