I am majoring in biochem, and as I said I have taken AP chem in high school and passed the AP exam as well. I was wondering if I could skip general chemistry I since the credit counts. But I have heard people saying that even if you do well in high school AP classes if you skip the course will be significantly harder. I have friends who have the same feeling with CS and Spanish. I want to get an A in this class for scholarships. Does it sound like an impossible goal? Can someone offer advice?
One question is how well did you do on the AP exam. Anything less than a 5, I would take the course again considering it is your major and that class is a building block to your degree.
You could ask this question on the reddit board and probably get more of the students’ perspective on this. Talk to your adviser and see what they say. If you have the time and money, it is probably safer to retake the class and hope it gives a GPA boost but I would see what your academic adviser says.
Ask your advisor this question. He’ll know better than anyone if the AP course covered everything - and you need it to be everything as this will be the base for your future studies - general chem does.
@GTAustin GPA boost is really appealing to me, but my concern is that didn’t take many AP classes in high school I am not sure if I can finish all the credits. I have posted on Reddit, and thanks for the suggestion!
@gardenstategal Yeah, I totally agree with you. I will definitely talk to my advisor about it.
As far as not being able to finish all credit hours w/o taking the AP credit, there are other ways to get credit for classes that are not as important to your degree as chemistry. My DD is taking both govt courses on line from UT for credit. She also took an online geo science course thru UTD to satisfy just a general science requirement. You can take courses at a local CC in the summer. There are multiple ways to get credit for general education classes.
Be sure to check with the department to ensure they allow you to place out if you passed the AP Chem exam. While schools may set a general policy for granting AP credit, individual departments can enact stricter requirements upon students in the major.
The U where H is a professor will allow Chem credits for 4&5 AP scores for non-majors, but the department requires all majors start in gen chem. Even if you scored a 5, you can’t skip gen chem. The reasons are:
- it’s possible to pass the AP chem test without ever having been in a lab
- gen chem is where general lab procedures and safety are taught - even if a student did take lab chem in HS, there’s no guarantee they were taught proper procedures and safety principles
- Having everyone start at the same point builds cohesiveness in the cohort (this is a small department - this may not be as much of a factor in larger schools)
At one point both our kids were considering majoring in Chem,and H told them even if they went to a U where they could place out of chem as a major, he strongly recommended they not do so.