<p>I’m entering either Penn or Cornell this fall (still split), and I never took any AP sciences during high school</p>
<p>I still took all the honors courses, as well as participated in national-level science fairs with my research, so i know i have some foundation</p>
<p>but, in light of the lack of APs, am i bound to take the chem/bio intro courses for students “weak” in these subjects?</p>
<p>You will be ok. You might not be familiar with some of the topics as someone who took an AP science class, but you will learn it. For example, I learned a lot more detail about eletrochem and thermochem in AP than I did in honors.</p>
<p>–> Actually there are times when people that didnt take AP’s and do better b/c they work/try harder in the class.</p>
<p>absolutely not.</p>
<p>We are talking about general science classes here. If you put the time in then you will do well. If you got accepted to Penn then you definitely have the ability to handle gen chem and gen bio.</p>
<p>Man, I heard about “honors” courses for the first time a while ago… now you’re telling me they have dis-honors courses, too?</p>
<p>Well, at Penn at least, pretty much everyone takes the intro courses, very few place out, so there aren’t any classes for ‘weaker’ students that will fill your requirements, so you needn’t worry about that. I wouldn’t even worry about being too far behind necessarily, as the course difficulty is on such a higher level that taking the AP isn’t terribly relevant, the overall rigour of your high school is.</p>