The pre-vet required courses and the premed required courses are the same. My daughter who was pre-vet (she is now in a DVM program) needed to take physics in university as one of her pre-vet required courses. She liked it so much that she took a second course in the subject just for fun. She found them both to be easier than some of the other pre-vet/premed requirements (two solid A’s or A+'s in physics might for example help to offset a hard earned B or B- in organic chemistry).
As others have said, if your daughter is likely to be a premed student, then it would be helpful to have taken at least one physics class in high school.
There are a huge number of colleges and universities that are very good for premed students. Your daughter will be able to get accepted to many of them without taking physics in high school. However, taking physics in high school will help her when it comes to taking physics in university.
Also, there might be some medical specialties where some knowledge of physics might be useful. As one example, I sort of suspect that a radiation oncologist is likely to have needed to study some physics.
I would think long and hard about having your D take APChem, physics, and Research at one time – especially in a year when she should be focusing on completing college apps, doing interviews, etc. Unless your child is an absolute science whiz kid, overloading with three science courses doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. If she completes the bio, chem, physics sequence with one science AP plus the Research that will suffice for any LAC.
I think not having a physics class at all will hurt worse than not continuing to the AP levels of chem and bio. If she can manage to work it all in, that is great, but it will be fine to drop AP Bio or AP Chem if that is too much.
Addressing your comment about going straight to OChem… I would not recommend that at all. My D found the intro college chem sequence freshman year extended past her AP Chem class and gave her a more solid foundation. (She is a chem major.) She took OChem I & II sophomore year and it was tough. She ended up with an A- and B, but she lived in the library to achieve that.
Of course, that is an anecdote about my kid and yours may have a completely different experience. But I generally recommend kids plan an easier freshman fall schedule since they are transitioning to college life in addition to college academics. OChem as a freshman seems to set a kid up for failure and frankly I doubt an academic adviser would approve it.
I agree that straight to Orgo would probably be unwise. I had some friends who did that in college and it seemed miserable. Drove at least one off of the pre-med path.
One other “strategic” thing to consider for a pre-med is whether to report AP scores in chemistry and biology to the college matriculated to. The usual considerations:
Medical schools often do not like seeing repeats, including repeats of AP credit (marking repeats is required when reporting courses and grades on the medical school application).
Medical schools often do not like seeing pre-med courses (including general chemistry, general biology, and general physics) fulfilled with only AP credit.
Taking a more advanced course in the subject area after skipping the course that AP credit is allowed to substitute for may be more grade-risky, if the college’s introductory course covers different or more in-depth material than the high school AP course.
Interesting. Can you put your AP scores on the Common App and then just not “report them” for the purposes of credit/advancement to the school to which she is matriculating?
Medical schools often want to see calculus and/or statistics, but they vary. When they want to see statistics, they may want to see something more advanced than AP-level statistics. They often want to see actual college courses (rather than just AP credit), but there is an obvious follow-on to calculus BC (multivariable calculus, though that is a course filled with students majoring in math, physics, statistics, and engineering) if she wants to avoid repeating AP calculus BC credit, and more advanced statistics courses would not be repeats of AP statistics credit.
Once enrolled, students decide which APs to request for credit. Since my D is premed, even though she had 5s in AP sciences that could have been used for credit, she did not submit them. She did submit non-science APs for credit so she would have more wiggle room for electives and study broad.
Oy. They do have MV Calc, but I think that would be overkill unless she wants to do it. We are at the high school in the same town as one of HYPSM, so she is already in classes with many children of professors and think-tankers, and I imagine MV calc would be all of those kids.
I’d take that one step further for a student interested in majoring in chemistry in college (I don’t know that the OP is). Physical Chemistry is by far the hardest course in the sequence. It’s heavily reliant on physics.
Of course she will take it in college because it is a requirement for med school. But it is not a requirement for high school, so I think it’s legitimate to ask the question of whether she should take AP Bio, which she really wants to take, instead. Sorry if you find that a pointless line of inquiry; feel free to leave the thread.