bluebayou

Exactly, and if you do your critical-thinking research, you'll find out that med schools will read your Organic grade "carefully", as well as all upper division science courses, particularly bcpm. Do you really think they care one iota about an intro Frosh Chem course? Seriously?

Do you own research, and you'll find that he is wrong. No school has a 90% acceptance rate. None.

Have you taken AP Stats? If not, I highly recommend a stats class. And then go back to the premed office at P'ton and ask how many matriculating Frosh are premed. Ask how they count the numerator. Do they screen out anyone who is not "approved" for a Committee Letter? Do they count alums, i.e., students who may have a weaker transcript so they are counseled to take a gap-year or two?

I'm guessing its ~25% of the class, or approx. 300-350 entering Frosh. Then look at the stats on the link your provide....only ~100 apply. Hmmmmm

ptontiger16

@Kat, what exactly was wrong? I'd like to know so I don't make the same mistakes.

@bluebayou, a lot of people drop premed even before they are screened because they find they like another field better, they find out medicine isn't worth it, they're just not good at it (perhaps Orgo weeded them out), etc. Most people change their majors once they get to sophomore year anyway. I would be interested to know how many juniors are still premeds and how many intend to apply for med school vs how many actually do and are supported by the committee letter. I know they screen, but mainly that's just to eliminate the people who still haven't got the hint (2.5 GPA, etc)? There is no way that 25% of the incoming Princeton class is premed. Princeton is bigger on political science and Econ. Not to mention how many premeds are driven away by grade deflation. There is no way that 25% of the class would be premed. I wouldn't be surprised if a quarter was Econ or Woody Woo, but not premed. If you honestly believe so, put your money where your mouth is. Show me the statistics - its no use arguing by hearsay here.

Here's a personal take on.the OP's question. Do you go to college for the sake of learning or to get a high GPA? This is important because if you do it for the latter, you might as well retake Chem. People are saying to retake Chem because it's easy and you'll ace it. If you already know the material, what's the point of retracing your steps? You'll miss out on taking two higher level classes that are far more interesting down the road because you spent two semesters retaking a class that you obviously already have a strong foundation in.

Kdog044

What about the students who are applying to many of the Cali schools (i.e.Keck, Loma Linda, UC Davis, UCLA) that will not accept AP Credit? Their only options are to take upper level courses or take Gen Chem. Medical schools understand that some schools will not accept AP credit and thus have to take the class in college. I'm not positive about how it appears on the transcript but I believe once you take the class the AP credit is forfeited as you can't get dual credit.

See Note 2 for Princeton:

http://www.princeton.edu/pub/ap/table/#compnote2

and the following excerpt:

http://www.princeton.edu/pub/ap/

III. Counting Advanced Placement Units for Advanced Standing

When adding up your AP units, please remember the following points:

3. All advanced placement awarded at matriculation is recorded on your transcript. You forfeit the use of your AP for advanced standing if you take courses deemed equivalent to or below ones for which advanced placement was granted. In the case of foreign language, if you were awarded two units of advanced placement credit at matriculation, you forfeit both units if you enroll in any 100-level course in the language for which AP was granted.

curmudgeon

OP. Advice to you, an entering student at Northeastern, is getting lost in a discussion of elite schools and ....... well, let's just say it's getting lost.

Read the the "New Pre-Med" sticky at the top of the page.

Here's part : Read the rest of it, too. You'll understand.

plumazul

The problem with archived threads is that they are full of opinion, some of which is just plain wrong. They should be constantly updated.

i_wanna_be_Brown

While I do not question the success of Princeton pre-meds, I do think one needs to keep in mind where that success comes from. When you have the top students in the country, it doesn't take a genius to get them into medical school. Brown has rates similar to Princeton and as far as my experience went, some of the advice I received was genuinely bad advice. For example, I was told as a sophomore student interested in MD/PhD that "getting involved in research now isn't that important and if it's meant to be you'll find your way into it."

I'm not saying what Princeton says about choosing courses is wrong (hell, I did exactly what they're advocating with chemistry), I'm just saying to be wary because the success of Princeton students could easily have nothing to do with who's advising them there.

And, FWIW, while obviously not all of them are pre-meds, Brown often has ~25% of the class intending to study bio/life sciences (here's a recent number: http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/03/2015), so I wouldn't be surprised if Princeton had similar numbers.

Scienceguy1

One does not agrue with experience.

bluebayou

I clearly said it was a "guess". But that guess is based on a lot of reading of college newspapers and sitting through admissions presentations. In general, 20-25% of Frosh in a typical Arts & Science college class are premed/prehealth. (There is no reason for P'ton to be that much different since it doesn't offer undergrad biz, which skews the denominator.) At schools like Hopkins, Emory and Rochester, known to be premed 'places-to-be', the % of incoming premeds is even higher.

Scienceguy1

bluebayou I like your style.

WayOutWestMom

BB is absolutely correct. D2 graduated from one the premed 'places-to-be' listed above and 40% of her freshman class declared themselves premed.

I'd venture BB's guess is pretty close to the money.

cecilturtle

love you blue bayou!

bluebayou

aw shucks, guys...

mcat2

Just a single data point: DS took a single upper-division biology class (more on the evolution side?) that is usually not favored by the "very practical" premed crowd just because he heard the professor is THE expert in that narrow special field, and he was asked by interviewers at two med schools why he chose to take that kind of "outlier" upper-division science class. Because he was a cellular/molecular biology major who took tons of premed-centric biology classes, a single out-of-the-norm class would likely not hurt him. But it seems that adcoms do take a note of what science classes the students take. (Actually, he enjoyed that class more than any other science classes in that semester and put in more efforts in that class than in other "premed type" classes in that semester.)

DS took the "other side" of biology class (required for graduation from his major) relatively late in his college career by not planning well, after he had completed all other typical classes taken by premeds. He said that kind of biology class is actually more interesting than molecular biology just because there are still no definite answers to many questions in that field, unlike most of the UG-level molecular biology where you just pick up accumulated knowledge. I do not understand his view point.

bluebayou

And the best part was that he had an awesome reason (and therefore response to the question).

curmudgeon

And as my D and I are fond of saying in the app process...it had the added benefit of being the truth!