<p>i'm seeing people talk about cornell's pre-med. i've read through cornell's booklet..and i didnt see anything about a pre-med program</p>
<p>is cornell pre-med a general thing where students are advised to take certain classes in order to get into med school? or am i way off?</p>
<ol>
<li>You have to take bio, chem, a semester of calculus, a year of writing, organic chem, and physics.</li>
<li>Cornell's pre-med advisors are insistent that you do NOT use AP credits on bio and chem; expect to retake intro bio and intro chem your first year. However, take note that intro bio and intro chem at Cornell are both curved to B-, so beware of attempts to weed you out.</li>
<li>Cornell is rigorous, so you may have a lower GPA than you're used to, but you will be well-prepared for the MCAT (again, just beware of the attempts to weed you out).</li>
<li>A significant portion of Cornell pre-meds drop pre-med after their first and/or second year(s). That can be either good or bad for you.</li>
</ol>
<p>My advisor recommended I use my AP bio credit, actually. A majority of med schools will take the credit if it is supplemented with upper level bio courses. There is no "pre-med" program, but there are requirements for med school, as mentioned above. Many people on the pre-med track will major in bio, but you can major in anything, as long as you take the courses required for med school and do well on the MCAT, obviously.</p>
<p>Hey Spanks...is credit from the AP Calc AB exam sufficient for the pre-med req?</p>
<p>pessimist, sorry but what do you mean "weed you out" ..... this probably has to do with the fact that i do not know how curving works @ cornell but yea... watcha mean?</p>
<p>Cornell's pre-med advisors are insistent that you do NOT use AP credits on bio and chem; expect to retake intro bio and intro chem your first year. However, take note that intro bio and intro chem at Cornell are both curved to B-, so beware of attempts to weed you out.</p>
<p>im not really familiar with college classes and their grading. can you explain to me what "weeding students out" of classes mean? what does it mean when classes are curved to a b-? thanks alot</p>
<p>It means that the median grade in the class is a B-. This means that approx. 1/2 of the students receive a B- or lower and 1/2 receive a higher grade. The purpose of intro classes is to weed out those who aren't cut out for premed. Cornell typically starts out with 1000 aspiring premeds in every graduating class but after receiving D's in intro bio or gen chem or orgo many of them realize that they have no shot at med school and switch to another major. In the end, only around 200 students are actually still premed by their junior year which is when the application process starts.</p>
<p>i hate physics :-[</p>
<p>hm.. so the students themselves choose not continue their pre-med courses? even if you get a C- or even a D (dunno if thats a fail or pass in cornell), you can still continue pre-med if you wanted to?</p>
<p>Sure, you can continue pre-med if you get C-s and Ds. The problem is, you won't get in anywhere.</p>
<p>You would be surprised how scary med school admissions rates become once you drop below a 3.5 GPA. Granted, over 70% of Cornellians with a GPA above 3.2 still get into some medical school (although I'm sure if you took a survey, not many of these successful applicants got C-s or Ds, particularly in pre-med requirement courses).</p>
<p>cornell scares me</p>
<p>Gobigred- AB credit fulfills your calculus requirement for premed. It is also suggested, but not manditory, that you take statistics.</p>
<p>"Cornell's pre-med advisors are insistent that you do NOT use AP credits on bio and chem"...My advisor insisted that I use the credit, as I said, and I'm glad she did. She also gave me a list of med schools that take the credit, and an overwhelming majority do. Why should I retake a survey course that I'm obviously proficient in?</p>
<p>so do you guys who're on the pre-med track recommend skiping the intro classes and using the AP bio/chem credits?</p>
<p>i got a 4 chem and 5 bio. does that cut it for skippin intro's?</p>
<p>^ referring to chem</p>
<p>you should check the cornell bio site bluedevil..i think its bio.cornell.edu and there's this word document that explains their way of letting students use Ap scores..the credits you earn are different by test scores</p>
<p>It depends on whether you think you can handle skipping the intro classes or not, it's a matter of personal preference. Most med schools take the credit, but not all med schools, so you might want to look into it before you make your decision to place out. If you do place out, you should feel comfortable with an upper level bio course your freshman year (evolutionary bio isn't bad). I don't think a 4 will get you out of intro chem, but I might be wrong, so you should check.</p>
<p>Intro bio has a notorious curve and since it is mostly memorization, it is a subject where you can re-learn the material by taking advanced level courses. It also seems a lot of the crazies congregrate in intro bio.</p>
<p>I do NOT recommend skipping intro chem. You learn interesting and useful material in chem 206/207 that you do not learn in your AP or IB class.</p>
<p>You need 5s in both bio and chem to skip out of intro. I had the choice of whether to take intro bio and/or intro chem, and I opted to take intro in both anyway. I do not recommend using AP credit on Chem, as there are several topics that were not in the AP Chem curriculum (more or less depending on your high school). For bio, it's your choice, but I know that JHU and HMS do not give you credit, even for a 5.</p>
<p>I'm not sure where this talk of placing out of gen chem is coming from. Everyone I know has taken either 207/208 or 215/216. I used chem AP credit (5 on the AP test) and still had to take Chem 215/216. In fact, just about everyone in Chem 215 had a 5 on the AP test (might be a prereq).</p>