My son can earn either his AA or AS at his Collegiate Academy (early college high school). He wants to be a doctor so initially we assumed he should get his AS. However I keep seeing advice that it is better to take the prereqs at university instead of for dual credit via the community college. But I also always see advice that students should take the highest rigor courses at their high school which in his case would be the AS pathway with higher level math and science.
If he chooses the AA pathway his math and science would be:
Honors Algebra I
Honors Geometry
Honors Algebra II
College Algebra
College Statistics
Honors Biology
Honors Chemistry
Honors Physics
College Anatomy and Physiology
If he chooses the AS pathway his math and science would be:
Honors Algebra I
Honors Geometry
College Algebra
College Precalc
College Calc 1
College Calc II
Honors Biology
Honors Chemistry
Honors Physics
College Bio I w/lab
College Bio II w/lab
College Chem I w/lab
College Chem II w/lab
So the main thing is if he gets his AA then he wouldn’t have already done bio and chem and would do them at university. If he gets his AS he would have already completed bio and chem and would take higher level bio and chem at university.
Please read this FAQ about dual enrollment classes and medical school admission.
Important things to know for potential pre-meds:
not all medical schools will accept Community college/DE credits as fulfilling admission requirements.
those med schools that do accept CC/DE credits typically limit the number of DE credits they will accept. (For example, they may accept 1 or 2 semesters of gen chem, but not bio or physics. Or they may accept 1 semester of college writing skills, but not anything else. Each medical school will have its own specific policy about what DE credits they will or will not accept. There is no single universal national policy.)
those med schools that do accept CC/DE credits expect (i.e. strongly recommend which in med school speak = require) students to supplement those DE credits with additional upper level coursework in the same departments as the DE credits if they want to be considered a strong applicant for admission
CC/DE coursework is considered less rigorous than coursework taken at a 4 year college and that will be considered when making admission decisions.
med school applicants who are younger than is typical (i.e. under 21-22) are at a strong disadvantage when it comes to admissions. Adcomms will question their maturity, their lack of lived-life experience, their commitment to medicine as a career, and the role of undue parental pressure on their career choice. Proving their fitness for medicine falls squarely on the shoulders of the student
younger than typical applicants will be directly compared against all other applicants in the admission pool who have had additional time to develop the expected pre-med CV of clinical experiences, leadership skills, volunteerism and other expected Pre med competencies
Go the pathway that does both bio and chem, then repeat them at a 4 yr school, hopefully a flagship or a T50. So many premeds took AP bio, chem, and physics in high school, then redid them in college.
Thanks yes this is why I’m thinking he may actually be better doing the AA pathway so he doesn’t take the dual credit bio and chem in particular while in high school. At a college fair one university recruiter said if he did do the AS and had bio and Chem I and II complete then when he gets to university he should add a minor to be able to add in some easier classes and spread out the remaining science courses.
I’ve seen advice to take AP classes and not apply the AP credit and then take at university but I’ve heard to not retake courses that you have transferred from community college.
He is 16 and a sophomore. His AA/AS pathway needs to be finalized soon for fall because it will determine his coursework junior and senior year. He will be 18 when he graduates high school and have his patient care technician certification and medical assistant certification which should help with things like getting exposure to healthcare to make sure this is a career he wants to pursue and help get patient contact hours since he could work summers in college as a PCT or MA. His program involves interning at the local hospital junior and senior year part of the day.
My kid has dual enrollment sciences with credit and a transcript from the state flagship. Theyre still retaking the sciences at their tippytop. We didnt think med schools would be happy to accept 10th grade science classes. I think they realize that people might repeat high school classes in college.
This is true. DE classes that carry college credit must be reported on AMCAS (and AMCOMAS and TMDSAS) even if the student does’t report those credits to their college or their college does not accept them for credit.
Failure to report any DE classes to AMCAS/ACOMAs/TMDSAS is considered a violation of the affidavit of accuracy in reporting students sign when they submit their application. At best, omitting DE classes when filling out AMCAS will generate a report that requires investigation by AMCAS and delay the processing of the student’s application for one to several weeks. At worst, the omission may be considered as a deliberate attempt at fraudulent/unethical behavior and could get a student banned for life from AMCAS and other med school application processing services.
There is a National Clearinghouse database of student information that AMCAS checks when processing med school applications and it will show if a student has enrolled college classes and where.
Additionally, when the student takes (or rather retakes) those equivalent courses in college, when they go to apply to med school, they must mark the college classes as repeated on their AMCAS transcript. Good grades earned in repeated classes are devalued because the student has been studied the material before.
I really doubt that dual enrolled classes from high school would devalue subsequent grades in college. Many public schools offer AP and dual enrollment classes as their highest level classes in high school. Kids are expected to take these if theyre applying to T20 schools, not to mention that theyll learn more in them. They dual enroll in case they wind up at their flagship state U, which accepts the credits. They retake them at their T20, which didnt accept the AP or transfer credits.
Lots of top students have dual enrolled prereqs that they had to retake in college. I cannot see how med schools would hold this against them.
The student should take what theyre interested in studying now, and stop worrying about how classes taken in high school will affect future applications to med school.
I’ll phrase this in the Thumper opinion. The student should take medical school out of he equation right now…and choose a course of study that he wants to do. The vast majority of those who think they want to go to medical school…don’t…either because they change their minds, or they don’t get accepted anywhere.
Thanks. I try to remember that most students don’t go to healthcare academies and don’t do a full 2 years of dual credit and the expectation isn’t to have the coursework aligned in high school with what they do in college. Texas has these pathways students have to chose in 8th grade that put them on a path for - stem, liberal arts, business, etc and it determines their high school coursework and it appears as an endorsement on their diploma. My son chose the healthcare collegiate academy in the district but even if he had gone to the traditional high school he still would have had to pick a pathway. So it does get one thinking about these things early. It’s hard to keep perspective.
I think the one difference is for students in these early college high schools is that they do think about their coursework as if they were a freshman and sophomore in college because they are doing that coursework their junior and senior year of high school. So just like a freshman/sophomore in college would be thinking about their courses in terms of applying to grad school/professional school so is the high school student at an early college high school. Early college high schools are very popular and common in Texas and there is a big push and enrollment is increasing. I teach psychology at the local community college. Our contracts with the public high schools are increasing and more and more agreements are being made for early college high schools in more and more public school districts.
Be accepted for advanced placement into higher level courses at the targeted four year schools (UT, TAMU, etc.)?
Be sufficient preparation for higher level courses at the targeted four year schools?
The higher level courses would be things like organic chemistry, upper level biochemistry and biology courses, multivariable calculus, etc…
Medical schools vary, but it may look better if the student with community college or AP credit in pre-med courses continued on to higher level courses at a four year school and earned A/A+ grades in them, rather than repeating the community college or AP credit, which looks like grade grubbing (and looks especially bad if the student earned a grade other than A/A+ in the repeated course).
@thumper1 - I have always told people who ask me never to take dual credit if the goal is to attend medical school since a B or 2 will mess up med school apps in Texas. Furthermore, these transcripts are misinterpreted by different schools you apply to because they dont always know it is a high school credit and not community college. This has been mostly theory for me until last year when I started talking to an applicant as they went through their journey.
This person did dual credit from a strong high school (could have done APs instead) got some Bs. Went to one of biggest names in colleges for premed and did extremely well (close to 3.95) but ended up with a lower GPA on med app because of the dual credits counting on the app (3.85 or something). They got interviews at almost all schools in Texas but didnt get into top schools they wanted. Interviewed at several big name OOS schools but didnt get in while they encountered issues with one school which made them question whether it was the dual credits that caused all their problems. The interviewer said looks like you didnt do all that well in your community college but got into this top school as a transfer anyway.
Could that be due to yield protection? A Texas resident who is likely to be admitted to Texas public medical schools may be seen as an unlikely matriculant by (much more expensive) out-of-state medical schools.