<p>I'm a pre-med student with plans to obtain a physics degree. Because of the new 2015 MCAT, I have to cram additional courses into my first two years of college like sociology, psychology, biochemistry, and statistics in addition to the normal pre-med requirements like biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, calculus, and English. In order to make this work, I have to take a lot of science classes my first year, since biology is a pre-req for biochem, and chemistry is a pre-req for organic chemistry. As of now, my current first year fall semester schedule looks like this:</p>
<p>Gen Chem I (w/ lab)
Mechanics (w/ lab)
Intro to Bio (no lab)
Calculus II
Writing Seminar</p>
<p>It all adds up to 16 hours, which should be manageable. My question is, am I overloading on the sciences? I took AP Chem, Bio, and Physics C my senior year of high school and did fairly well (got As and 4s on the exams), but it took a lot of work and stress. I'd prefer not to take all three sciences concurrently again, but it seems like I don't have any other option (Intro to Bio is only offered fall semester, and I need the first semester physics & chem courses in order to take the second semester continuation courses). I think I might also go a little stir-crazy from taking purely science and math classes and not having any humanities to destress with. What are your thoughts on this?</p>
<p>It doesn’t sound too easy but in your case you should already have had significant experience with those subjects from your AP classes. Assuming that you’re a strong student, your schedule seems quite doable since you won’t be seeing most of the concepts for the first time.</p>
<p>I don’t think taking all three science classes at the same time again will be as stressful as it was before, since you’ve already seen all (or at least, most) of the material before. If you were successful in these courses before, much of it will be review, which should help.</p>
<p>In my experience, if labs don’t contribute significantly more units (they aren’t their own class, they don’t take on 3-4 more units, etc), they aren’t particularly difficult. Labs are usually just extra work, but they aren’t incredibly intensive.</p>
<p>I personally think it’ll be fine, but if it’s not, you can always readjust next semester. If this is what you have to do to stay on track, then this is what you have to do. Consider it practice for medical school, when ALL of your classes will be intense science and medicine courses.</p>
<p>Courses with labs are very long and time consuming. I would advise against taking two courses with labs at one time. But then again, it depends on the person. You can always try it out and see if you are able to handle it. Then you can adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>Is this your schools suggested plan? If not how does your schedule look compared to it?
DS is starting next week he has:
Calc II
Chemistry (with lab)
Physics (with lab)
English II
Health</p>
<p>His current total is 17 credits but after he goes to all the classes he may drop English II.
Which would bring him down to 14 credits.On his suggested plan there really isn’t anyway to get out of taking not taking 2 labs both fall and spring either unless he goes in the summer. However he could put off the English II. Do you need to take the writing seminar class this semester?</p>
<p>Labs can be time consuming, often almost as much as the non-lab part of the course (this does not mean that they are intellectually difficult, although they can be). So a course with lab (science, art studio, music performance, etc.) may be almost twice the work as some course without lab (e.g. math).</p>
<p>Other high workload courses include those with term projects (including humanities and social studies courses) or CS courses with programming assignments.</p>