Med School - AP credit not accepted

<p>I found out on CC awhile ago that although undergraduate colleges accept AP's for credit, medical schools require that students take the class over in college. However, when I told my counselor this, she told me that medical school does accept them. I will hopefully have AP Chem, AP English language, and AP U.S. History. Will I be able to use these for credit towards medical school?</p>

<p>Med school for undergrad or grad? I think it depends on the school anyways.</p>

<p>using AP's for undergrad pre-med reqs and, from there on, applying to med school grad</p>

<p>Your counselor is right in the sense that you can use your credit to place out of classes without it hurting your chances in med school, BUT (cannot emphasize enough) you then have to take upper level classes (with labs if necessary) to make up for these classes. You still need to have your requisite semesters of chem, bio, physics, math, english, and orgo, they just don't necessarily have to be in the intro classes.</p>

<p>The overwhelming majority of med schools will not accept AP credit (and some do not accept community college credit either), so your counselor's advice as you have stated it is fundamentally flawed.</p>

<p>Whether it is advisable to place out of intro classes depends entirely on your school. Some places, the intro classes are easy, at others they are curved very harshly and made difficult as a means to filter out weaker premeds. In some cases it may be difficult to get an upper level class that has the lab requirement (I think this is mainly an issue with physics, but again, depends on school).</p>

<p>Edit: as far as your U.S. history credit is concerned, med schools couldn't care less about your using it to fill a graduation requirement or something since it would not take the place of a premed course.</p>

<p>thank you for your great response phillySASer08!!!</p>

<p>phillySASer08, do you know what one should if one were forced, e.g. UCSD, to use such ap credits? I really dont like Calc all that much and I'd like to review it rather than just skip onto multivariable calc which would butcher my gpa most likely. Do you have any advice for this situation or how med schools would view that?</p>

<p>well, if you're forced to use your AP credit, you pretty much have to take the upper level class to make up for it. In the case of calc though, very few med schools actually require two semesters of it anymore, you can usually get away with one semester of calc and one of statistics; and some don't actually require any, and a few require statistics. I usually suggest taking two semesters of calc and at least one of stat to cover all bases.</p>

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phillySASer08, do you know what one should if one were forced, e.g. UCSD, to use such ap credits? I really dont like Calc all that much and I'd like to review it rather than just skip onto multivariable calc which would butcher my gpa most likely. Do you have any advice for this situation or how med schools would view that?

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<p>JerrBear! Don't be self-defeating! Mulitivariable calc is no more difficult than calc 1 and 2. You use a bunch of formula's and it requires the same type of thinking. Multivariable may be a little tougher to visually comprehend but it is certainly not more difficult.</p>

<p>I don't have time to look for it now, but somewhere on AMCAS site I found that the exception to "not accepting" AP credit for prereqs is the math requirement. It stated that "most" med schools will accept AP calc for the prereq, but will not accept any AP credit in the sciences--as philly stated--must take upper level classes to make up for..</p>

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It stated that "most" med schools will accept AP calc

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While this is true, I still would recommend taking college calc. The problem is that you have to apply to such a broad swath of schools when the time comes that missing what some schools view as a prereq will be detrimental.</p>