Opting out of the calculus requirement

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

So I’ve seen most schools require calculus for their applicants. However, I was hoping to use my AP credits and take a stats course instead. I knew for one of my minors I needed to take economic statistics so I figured I could knock out the med school math requirement and my minor requirement in one go and take this class.

However I think I saw that sometimes med schools only look at the course number and not the title. I’m worried that they might not recognize that as an actual stats course (even though my school counts that as an equivalent to the actual math stats for pre reqs).

Anyone have experience with this? Do I have to take another stats course?

2

“However, I was hoping to use my AP credits and take a stats course instead.” - This is exactly what my D. did at college. She did it for 2 reasons: Stats are really important for medical research. In fact, later on, when she was running her research project while at medical school, she had to work closely one on one with the statistician. Imagine the obstacle that she would have had communicating with proffessional if she never took college stats. Another reason was that the college stats was an easy class, very easy A. I am sorry, I do not know anything about “economic statistics”.
D. also made sure that this is all OK. She contacted the adcoms of the medical schools, that she was considering to apply eventually and confirmed with them that this was OK. Adcoms responded very quickly and she could rely on their responses instead of asking some random people (like here on CC) who all have very different experiences and formed their opinions based on these experiences.
So, while it was OK for my D., I recommend contacting medical schools adcoms and confirm with them that your plan is OK…

3

  1. Not all medical schools will allow you to use AP credits to fulfill admission requirements. Those that do may require you to take an additional course in the same discipline to fulfill requirements. You need to check the policies at individual schools.

  2. The statistics course required/recommended by med schools is biostatistics or general statistics. You need to check the topics covered in your econ statistics class to see if the material included will have any applicability to medical studies. If I understand correctly economic statistics largely deals with time series analysis whereas biostatistic deals largely with multi-level modeling and logistic regression. And never the twain shall meet. (IOW econometrics doesn’t use/teach multi-level modeling and logistic regression and biostats doesn’t use/teach time series analysis.)

  3. You can petition AMCAS to designate your econ statistics class as a math class when you apply. AMCAS will review the designation based upon the course description and content.

  4. Individual medical schools are free to make their own judgements as to whether economic statistics fulfills their admission requirements. There is no universal policy. Your best option would be to email Admission offices at several schools where you plan/hope to apply and ask.

4

The fact that calculus (which I have never used outside of calculus class) is a requirement, while statistics (which I use nearly every day) isn’t has always bothered me.

5

^^ Calculus is a training of your mind, Stats is a tool you should learn on your own, that is how med schools like to evaluate their candidates. :slight_smile:

6

I can’t really speak to if the med school will accept your stats class. But I can tell you that my daughter took stats for her business school and my son took it as a premed. 2 completely different courses. In fact she’s considering minoring in math and the economics stats class will not fulfil her statistics requirement for a math minor. She needs to take a regular math stats class.

7

https://www.tmdsas.com/Approved%20Stats%20Courses.pdf

Texas med schools which require a Stats class are very specific about their approved classes from each college to meet the requirement.

8

You will need Basic stats and/or Biostats for the MCAT. If you don’t take calculus 1 you’ll likely have to take another math course involving either stats or calculus or calculus-based stats. Some med schools may not accept econometric as a substitute for a second math class.