Freshman year I will be taking general chem, English, core curriculum requirements for my school, and either physics or bio. I would like to take physics freshman year and bio sophomore year because physics is more fresh in my mind (haven’t taken bio since I was a freshman in high school), but I heard that it would be too difficult to take physics and chem together freshman year, and now i don’t know if I should take bio or physics freshman year. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated!
At my son’s university, Chem is a pre-req for Bio and Calculus is a pre-req for Physics, so make sure you are eligible to take these classes. Also as an in-coming Freshman, it is helpful if you take a lighter load first semester/quarter to acclimate yourself to the pace of college classes and the overall college experience. Does the Chem class have a lab? Lab’s can be time consuming, almost as much as a lecture, so you do not want to overwhelm yourself with too many lab based classes the first year. I would try to a Math requirement instead and save Bio/Physics after you finish Chem.
@Gumbymom i am eligible for these classes at my school and chem and physics have labs but bio does not. Also I already have credit for calc 1 and 2
@Gumbymom actually I just checked and bio also has a required lab
Depending on your major, you may need to take a second lab class as a freshman in order to fulfill all graduation requirements on time. (Science and engineering majors especially have lots of pre-reqs and co-reqs you need to fulfill before you can move to upper level coursework.)
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to take 2 lab sciences/semester as a freshman. Both my Ds were science majors and the expected sequence of courses required each of them to take 2 lab sciences as freshmen.
If you have good time management skills and good academic preparation, then 2 lab sciences are very much manageable.
But if you don’t want to, then consider taking statistics as your 4th class. Stats is needed for the MCAT.
I’d recommend playing it safe for your first semester as a freshman. Take the two science classes with labs and one other class - either English or your core curriculum. That will give you a very manageable workload and time to make friends, check out new activities, and do really well on these entry level courses that are often graded to weed out pre-meds. You absolutely don’t want to be stressed out your very first semester in a new place.
If you want to make sure you can afford the lighter workload and still graduate on time, plot out a rough schedule with the pre-reqs for your intended major, the pre-med classes, and the distribution requirements at your school. If you plan to study abroad junior year, build that in too. You don’t have to be exact here - you just want to make sure you have ample room for everything. If you have AP credits, then you are almost certainly fine.
But before you do that, check to make sure that enrolling in only 3 courses are considered full time and check to see if it will disqualify you for any of your merit awards or other scholarships. (D2’s college required all scholarship winners to enroll in a minimum of 15 credits/semester–which is what the university considered “full time enrollment”.)
I would recommend Bio instead of physics because you want to start on Bio as early as possible as most pre-meds continue taking Bio for the rest of their UG years. It is not required, but could be helpful for the MCAT. D. said that it was helpful for her MCAT. Also, as physics was not my D’s favorite, she made sure to take physics right before taking the MCAT, actually she had junior year spring finals which included Physics and Physiology exactly 2 weeks before taking the MCAT and that was very helpful, both were very fresh in her mind.
But again, it depends on how you personally feel about each class.
…I also disagree with playing safe strategy. The earlier you know if you belong in the pre-med crowd, the less time you waste if you discover that you do not. I love that D’s program was designed to have a very tough weed out Bio class in the first sememster of freshman year. This Honors class made several HS valedictorians to change their mind, they did not waste time continue on the pre-med track as this class showed them that they did not belong there. Nope, it was NOT easier than physics, not by any measure, but physics was also tough. Actually the only easy science class that D. had in college was Gen. Chem.
I don’t buy the idea that if you get ‘weeded out’ early it just shows that you don’t belong in medical school or wouldn’t be a good doctor. Too many kids underestimate the difficulty of adjusting to college, overload their schedules and discover too late that they have sabotaged themselves when in fact they would have done well if they had paced themselves better early on. S always adjusted his course load as an undergrad to account for both the intensity of the classes and the demands of his athletics program (light load during the season). He’s at the top of his class in med school. It would have been a shame for him to have gotten ‘weeded out’ in freshman year just because he didn’t manage his schedule well.
There’s a couple of sayings that regularly crop up as to applying to med school. First, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Second, you only want to apply once. Agreeing with posts above, while always maintaining FT status, if you need to throttle back at beginning to get your bearings or later on (i.e. S only took minimum courses needed to stay FT while prepping for MCAT), or even waiting to apply until summer after you graduate, it’s all okay. If you’re comfortable with physics, take physics. Just try not to dig a hole which although can be overcome, can be quite demoralizing and even career changing. Good luck