<p>Not necessarily. You can simply lighten your load, or take classes in other areas. I know many people who place out of intro chem/bio/math/english, and they do fine. Frankly, the intro classes are sometimes the hardest since they’re big lectures dominated by tests and quizzes. Also, most likely you’ll still be required to take the lab, so you’ll be able to brush up on the material.<br>
Right now, it may seem stupid to put in all the extra work even though you’re headed off to UVA this fall, but come fall, you may wish you had more credits. My advice is try to place out of as many classes you can. This will allow you to free your schedule and focus on your harder science classes, or take more interesting upper-level hist/eng/etc classes. However, even if you’re planning on a major outside of science, it’d still be nice to place out of some of your science/math/intro writing classes, so that you too can take more interesting classes. Anyone can benefit from extra credits, and you can always decide to turn them down come fall. Also, more credits = earlier registration…BIG bonus.</p>