Hey yall,
I am in the middle of selecting my courses for my first year and I am not sure if I am overloading myself 
I am planning on taking Introduction to Molecules and Cells, Principle of Chemistry, Introduction to Psychology, and a Foundation Seminar (required by all freshman) in my first semester (Will this be a lot of science classes for my freshman year?)
just an FYI…I didn’t take AP CHEM in HS, but I took AP BIO 
…I will be majoring in Neuroscience and will be following the pre-med track …I need 18 courses to graduate with a Neuroscience degree.
Although I don’t want to overload myself during my first semester, I
want to complete all the 12 pre-requisite courses early, so I can sit for
the MCAT in the spring of my junior year.
Here are the courses required by most medical schools
-Two semesters of intro biology with lab, organic chemistry with lab, general chemistry (or inorganic chemistry) with lab, physics with lab, writing intensive courses in the English language, and Math (Two semesters of each course)
-One semester of Biochemistry
-Psychology - on the MCAT (along with the sciences above) - not necessarily required by every med school
-Sociology - on the MCAT (along with the sciences above) - not necessarily required by every med school
How should I distribute this courses so I will be able to finish them by the end of my junior year?
(I’m sorry for the long text)
I would work with your school’s pre-health advisers to map out a three year curriculum. They should be acutely aware of med school requirements and have various examples of how to structure your three year plan.
@Mwfan1921 I will work with her when I get to campus. I just wanted to prepare myself that’s why. Thanks!
It looks good for your first semester - I assume your college is on a 4-4 calendar or 4-1-4 or 4-4-1. Can you specify?
Does your college have a foreign language requirement? If you need one more class it might be worth it to take it in the fall whike it’s still relatively fresh and take psychology in the spring.
What college is it?
One thing to think about is that pre-med classes tend to be heavy with students gunning hard for As. You will probably have your hands full to get high grades in bio and chem. You might think about taking some other distribution course that is on the easier side instead of psych.
**Premed is a marathon, not a sprint; so you should pace yourself accordingly. **
No one knows how well you can handle multiple BCMP (Biology, Chemistry, Math, Physics) courses, including yourself and your advisor. Please be prepared for a rude awakening. There is simply nothing a student experienced in high school that will fully prepare her/him for the next level. The pace of the course is much faster and the concepts more abstract. An adjustment time is absolutely required. But med school is all about sciences. So you should take two BCMP courses first semester to test the water. Do focus on problem sets. If you take just one BCMP course, you will never know your capability. If you take three and you find out a few weeks later you can’t handle it, you have dug yourselves a hole which might be hard to recover. So two is what I would suggest. It really doesn’t matter which two BCMP courses. It is best that one has lab so you know what lab is about. If you find out after one semester that you are at least one standard deviation ahead of the mean for every course you are in, take two or three BCMP courses in the spring and you can start telling people you are premed. But orgo is the next real hurdle. It is at another level. If you can pass orgo, you are official jointing the premed cohort. Don’t forget you have to have ECs and most importantly have fun. If you cannot have fun while doing this, move on. Your choice of three science courses looks fine but add at most one relatively easy course to make it four.
I think it all depends on the rigor of your college, but I think three sciences class is not too much for your first semester. But I have a question of your selection of Introduction to Molecules and Cells as your first Bio course because it should be a more advanced course than Introduction of Biology. Perhaps you got a 5 on your AP Bio in the HS, but in most cases, college Bio courses are different from HS AP Bio courses, you may have to take college level Bios to start.
@MYOS1634 I will be attending Bucknell University. Yes, they require one foreign language course, but I also have to take a required foundation seminar during my first semester.
@intparent Instead of removing Psyc, do you think I should delay taking Chemistry till the spring and take Calculus instead? Then I would have to take Bio, Psyc, Calculus, and a Foundation Seminar. What do you think?
What background do you have in calculus?
Bio, Psych, Calc, and the Foundation seminar sounds like a good combination, especially if you’ve
Then Spring would be Chem, Bio, Stats, and Soc.
However it means you’d have to take the foreign language course later on, probably senior year or during a semester or summer abroad BUT you must take the placement test and select 3 languages you’re interested in during orientation (before Fall freshman year).
Your plan sounds reasonable.
D2 was a neuro major at uni that required 18+ courses for a BS neuroscience. She took, gen chem, bio, math and (for some reason I’ll never understand) an upper level philosophy class her first semester.
You have to take both gen chem & bio as freshman because both are pre-reqs to move onto UL major requirements If you don’t, you won’t be able to graduate on time.
You should check the course catalog at your college and with your major advisor–some colleges will require a math class (calc 1) as co-req for gen chem.
As a FYI, psych isn’t a considered a science, but rather it’s classified as a social science. So bio + gen chem + psych = 2 sciences + 1 social science. 2 or 3 science classes (with or without an additional math class)/semester is a pretty typical workload for a science major.
Both gen chem & bio have time consuming labs, I’d recommend postponing your freshman writing class until second semester for 2 reasons: 1) everybody is trying to take freshman comp first semester & the class sections are jammed; 2) freshman comp requires tons of writing & rewriting and can be very time consuming. But by second semester you will (hopefully) have a better handle on the science labs and will have become more efficient doing the write-ups.
Well, according to [url=https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201601/the-is-psychology-science-debate]this[/url] … LA Times declared definitively that psychology was not a science, followed by several pieces in Psychology Today and Scientific American declaring definitively that psychology is, in fact, a science. 
It is not BCMP for sure.
A very good point raised above is that you should carefully evaluate if you want to skip the intro courses. If you are sure you are way above your peers (you got a BIG scholarship and you are actually admitted to MIT, etc.), you obviously can skip. Otherwise, too many people before you later felt sorry for rushing their premed journeys, they end up cutting their journeys short. :-/ To be sure, almost all my kid’s friends skip almost all intro courses, they are doing just fine. The only one who did not skip said about the bio course (at the state flagship): “it is boring, it is easier than AP Bio I took in my (HS) freshman year.”
One of the best pieces of information we got at my daughter’s college orientation was, “Most premeds plan on taking calculus, chemistry, and biology their first semester. Don’t. Just don’t, Choose two.”
That being said, I think your plan to take bio, gen chem, and intro psych make sense. I would not consider psychology or sociology as the same level of difficulty as bio, chem, physics, calc, or biochem. And I have a graduate degree in sociology and have taught intro sociology, so I have a good sense of the difference in rigor.
D is going into her senior year and COULD have taken MCATs in May. She’s chosen to put it off for a semester or two and take a gap year, which is an increasingly common approach to med school applications.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I am not deleting this thread because the topic may prove valuable to other users. However, the OP created a multiple account to post this, which is a ToS violation, so will be unable to answer any questions posted.