And for medical school potential applicants…be advised that required courses for admissions can NOT be taken abroad at other colleges abroad.
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Regarding study abroad credits, you and @blossom bring up important points for consideration…hopefully in advance of choosing a study abroad program. This can be especially challenging for engineering and pre-med students who want to graduate in 8 semesters. My D (pre-med) will be abroad winter/spring 2024 and there are only two programs she can consider with confidence that credits will transfer and keep her on track… both are established partnerships with her college and the overseas university. However, had she not changed her major from biochem to neuroscience, her semester abroad would not be possible since her college will not accept credits for any science with lab taken elsewhere. Additionally, she cannot take any pre-med requirements in the abroad program. I mention her experience as food for thought for any pre-med kids reading this.
Note: Just saw @thumper addressed the med school pre-requisites.
Regarding the DE credits, I understand a lot of students run into similar situations with getting credit approval. Anecdotally I hear mostly positive outcomes after submitting documentation to departments for course approval. And it seems fairly common that kids don’t know what credits are allowed until just before fall classes start. Universally people are annoyed by this process. 
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For questions regard coursework taken overseas, please refer to the Schools Attended section (p. 12), Foreign Coursework section (p. 45) and American Colleges Overseas (p.45) in 2024 AMCAS® Applicant Guide
A general rule of thumb says only coursework that is accepted by a student’s home institution and appears on their transcript as having received credit toward graduation may be used to fulfill medical school admissions.
Please note that:
The AMCAS program does not accept any transcripts from international evaluation services
2024 AMCAS® Applicant Guide, p 14
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I’m just universally annoyed. 
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That made me laugh! I think I’ll let my poor voice to text grammar stand to give others a laugh. Heck, it is hard enough voicing the punctuation… now you want proper grammar too? Geez. LOL
Yes, one can do that, but in that case BOTH courses must be reported to AMCAS and the grades from BOTH classes will be included in GPA computations.
Additionally the second class must be reported on AMCAS as a repeated class and that information will be included when a student’s grades/transcript is sent to medical school for evaluation. The second class must be reported as a repeated class even if the first attempt was taken as P/F or an audit.
Repeating a class will devalue a second A grade (took 2 passes at the material to get the A) and can have a greater negative significance if the second grade is less than an A (couldn’t even get an A on the second try)
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I have read your replies in the past, which is why I was careful to say “in one form or another” – meaning unofficially audit a class, do online self study, or some similar thing. If you’re going to be strategic, you’ve got to really think it through! 
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Hmmm…are audited college classes required to be reported when applying to medical schools? This is a little off topic here…unless this student chooses to apply to medical school using the traditional route.
We found a girl at Rhodes with DE credits on her HS transcript. The issue is not DE credits. They take DE credits. They take them from accredited places. CC is accredited.
D2’s college accepted DE credits, just not for any required coursework in her major unless she had received prior authorization from the dept chair. Her college also would not accept AP/IB credit for coursework in her major.
All those other credits appeared on her transcripts as GE or extra credits, but didn’t count toward fulfilling graduation requirements for her major and didn’t count as part of her school computed GPA.
I think this is very common with private universities.
if you want to the college to consider your d’s DE credits, you will need to do detailed analysis of material covered in her CC class vs. the same course at Rhodes. You need to get the course syllabus from her CC class and the course syllabus from the same class at Rhodes and do a topic by topic comparison.
I believe the National Student Clearinghouse has course syllabi from nearly every major college in the country.
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Yes, audited classes must be reported and transcript from the college sent when applying to med schools.
Actually, since a BA/MD or BA/DO student has to create AMCAS or ACOMAS account and fill out the AMCAS/ACOMAS application form to formally apply for admission to the professional portion of their program, even those students have to report audits and send transcripts. Not just traditional applicants.
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That is questionable. Technically every teacher often changes syllabus, sometimes every semester.
We tried to get a syllabus from previous year from one of the departments for older DD to get pre-approval for one summer class at local college. We did not get anywhere.
Decided to take risk and take most generic class possible (something likeke CognitivePsych). It did work, it got transferred, but she was very nervous and had to wait 4 months…
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We also were warned no shadowing or hospital work/volunteering overseas prior to med school. Med schools want you to have only American experience…
So for premeds the only options overseas are general education or possibly research.
Or they could graduate from undergrad and do something like the Peace Corps…which is highly regarded by medical schools. It’s sort of the ultimate abroad experience.
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Not questionable. It’s standard practice and what a college’s registrar does when evaluating transfer credit. As I said, there is national database for course catalogs from most 4 year colleges. (BTW, med schools often use the same database to look up course descriptions to see which class sections were offered in-person and which were online only.)
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Not true.
What med schools don’t want is students volunteering overseas in a capacity that is beyond their scope of practice in the US. Individuals with US medical credentials/licenses for nursing, paramedic, EMT,etc are allowed to utilize their training in foreign countries (so long as the local government/medical authorities approve). My daughter who was a AEMT was able to work in the township hospitals of South Africa as a EMT in the ER dept. However, she was careful not to exceed the scope of her US training despite repeatedly being offer opportunities to do so. (Like assist at a surgery, insert chest tubes…) Several adcomms remarked favorably on her South African experiences. ( I will note that she was only in SA for 6 weeks and she had literally hundreds of hours of US clinical experience before she left for Africa.)
Operating outside one’s scope of training–like a student giving injections, starting IV lines, drawing blood samples, assisting a midwife, etc-- is exploitative and unethical. US medical schools are justifiably upset when they see applicants doing that.
US med school do expect that the bulk of a pre-med’s clinical experience will be in the US since they will ultimately be practicing medicine in the US and their clinical experience needs to reflect that.
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I am not sure why you think art kids aren’t social kids, but my point was it is not all sports there - there is arts, activism, environmentalism, etc. (And I am some are super social, some like to sit in their dorm listening to music, some like to read, and I bet a whole lot like to do them all.)
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Wrong again.
Pre-meds can do public health volunteering (like helping to build public toilets or distributing specially treated bed netting to prevent malaria). They can work for NGOs that provide education or job training to disadvantaged/disparaged groups in an area. They can teach or engage in social outreach programs (like doing AIDS or diabetes awareness) They can volunteer/work for medical NGOs in a support capacity.
There are plenty of ethical, non-exploitative activities that pre-meds can engage in overseas besides research or taking classes.
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You already have provisional medical school acceptance, why does it matter? Your daughter can do whatever she wants, including shadowing/volunteering abroad.
I do not think this is what she is implying. Art would be common interest for art kids (or sport for sport kids) and her daughter is interested in neither.
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But is everyone’s kid so completely single-minded with exactly ONE interest?
Are there any kids who like art and sports? Or either art or sports, PLUS a gazillion other unrelated interests, boundlessly intersecting with gazillion other kids, who have multitudes of interest?
Heck, my daughter couldn’t care less about team sports, BUT to her, sports was a way to practice school spirit. So she went to all the games, socializing in the bleachers, participating in the related campus activities…
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