As others have noted, medical schools will discount the A in a repeat of AP credit as grade grubbing.
Why not take honors bio in high school…and not AP. Then you will just take the regular bio course with lab in college. You will have taken biology, but won’t already have college credit for it as you might with an AP course.
Seems to me this solves your “problem”.
Is this directed at another poster? I have already taken AP bio and just graduated high school
General advice.
In your case…just don’t submit the AP score to the college(s) for college credit. Then just take the bio course with lab in college.
Then you won’t have to be concerned with this…at all.
I read that others said if she took the credits. But what if not ? That’s my point.
Hopefully OP can speak with the pre med advisor at school.
Reminder that CC is not a debate society. Make your point once and move on. Further back and forth posts will be deleted without comment.
That advice is not good advice depending on the student and the school. Duke and Penn do not encourage repeating AP calc and some others. They have algorithms that help students figure it out(including diagnostic/placement tests at Penn).
Students need to look at their own college’s recommendations as well the med school advice, school by school if needed. Some colleges if they give credit for AP Bio will list it on the transcript as “Bio 099” , whereas the intro Bio sequence that premeds and Bio majors take are called 110L and 111L. In some schools that is where everyone starts, in other schools students with the 5 are allowed to do honors(lets say bio 114 and 115), but the transcript still lists AP as “099” and the honors students do not get “credit” for 110 and 111–honors is just a harder more in depth version of the same. Chem canbe done similarly —the AP credit really just works as a general elective credit (and there is often a max that can be used toward graduation), but it is not considered a repeat.
I made up the course numbers; just an illustration. My point is it varies greatly and one would be best served by asking a premed advisor at the college. Good premed advising covers all of theses details.
@elise123 First, I always enjoy reading your updates. It’s been fun following your journey and you should be proud of how well you managed your admissions process.
The advice my pre-med kid was given by the advisors at her school was in alignment with Wayoutwestmom’s. D submitted all her APs for credit except the prerequisite sciences. This was suggested as her school’s intro bio/chem classes extend past the AP curriculum so in general they suggest premed kids take the class to ensure a solid foundation. Also because, in her school’s opinion, it is helpful to have a bit “easier” class in your first semester. It can make the transition to college less stressful if, for example, the first half of fall semester is covering material you already know.
As a parent, I appreciated that they were considering first year students’ whole experience and setting them up for success. I defer to the prehealth advisor and our CC experts on what med schools want to see, but I want you to also consider how your first semester schedule will affect your first year experience.
I agree - especially because OP says they can take the required lab. But they don’t want to because it’s at 8a. That’s not a good reason not to - if it’s necessary.
Seems like the school can give them great advice as you noted.
I’ll take it if I have to of course! It’s just one day a week. But I’m not a morning person so it just made me extra excited when I saw my friend could get out of it
Medical residents need to work long hours at any hour of the day, and many physicians have schedules where appointments start in the early morning.
Unfortunately, none of the other careers I’m interested in work short hours or get to sleep in lol. I can wake up early when needed and it’s completely fine. but if it’s possible to sleep in, why not. If it’s not possible, oh well. But for my career I’m aware I’ll have to grow up and wake up early
Okay well odd turn of events, the premed advisor just responded and said that they always recommend that students retake the bio I lecture only and use AP credit for the lab. Maybe they have it worked out where they can only credit the lab. I’m guessing they only show AP credit for the lab so it doesn’t double count.
Agree, but you don’t have to guess, you can ask the advisor that specific question.
That option seems school-specific. That’s why they have advisors.
I don’t know how it works at Bama but many schools assign both an academic advisor and a prehealth advisor/team. Make sure you develop a relationship with both as depending on one’s major, the academic advisor may not know much about the med prerequisites. It sounds like you’re already doing this (some posters on CC have run into issues)… and your wish to use AP for the lab portion will work out. Yay!
More likely, the AP credit will show up on your transcript as a different biology class that is NOT BSC114.
Many colleges do that when the bio dept believes that their intro bio class covers material/topics that are beyond or different from those in the AP Bio curriculum.
My younger D submitted her AP Bio score (5) to her undergrad, but only it only got her “general biology - 3 credits” which wasn’t even equivalent to any course her college offered and didn’t count toward fulfilling grad requirements. Her university’s official policy stated that it would not accept certain AP credits (bio, chem) for any science or engineering major because their intro classes covered more material/topics than the AP course did. The math dept had no such policy and gave her credit Calc 1 and 2 for the 5 she scored in AP Calc BC.
Med schools don’t like people using AP credit because a pass could be a C- or an A+; they have no clue (understandable)
That’s correct
But…they also don’t want to see that you took the AP class in high school, passed it and got credit, then decided to retake it at the college level for a letter grade because that’s grade grubbing and just trying to get an easy A since you already know the material?
Also correct.
So you just have to be in the know that this is a thing and make sure you don’t report your AP score to your college? That seems weird and unfair.
Only if you plan to retake the exact same class over again in college. **
No, most students just level up and and take the next biology class required for their major if their college gives them credit for the first intro biology class.
However, college policies vary. The college my older D attended gave her credit for Intro Bio 1 for her AP credit so she took a different, higher level (evolutionary bio) class. My younger daughter’s college had a policy where it wouldn’t award credit for intro level bio or chem courses based on AP credits–but only for science and engineering majors. They did award it for humanities and social science majors, but only for a class listed as Biology/Chemistry for non-science majors. Pre med non science majors could get credit for the non-science class and take the intro bio for science major class without having any of the stigma of a re-take involved because those are different classes every though both are called intro biology. (They also did not have to mark the intro bio for science majors as a retake because it had a different course number.)
** Some colleges will award AP credit for a certain course number but have department policies which require the student to take their version of the same course anyway. If that happens there is always a place on med school secondary applications to explain this. ( “Is there anything else you wish to tell us?” type question. )emphasized text
If the OP takes BSC 118 and 120 (honors general biology) instead of 114/115 and 116/117 that AP biology score of 5 gives subject credit for, would that avoid the stigma of a “repeat” for pre-med purposes?
Note that 118 and 120 include labs instead of having separate lab courses. Course descriptions in the following link:
https://catalog.ua.edu/undergraduate/arts-sciences/biological-sciences/courses/
Probably.
Different course numbers would indicate these are not the exact, same, identical courses, that there is something that distinguishes them from each other–whether it’s in the depth or breadth of material/topics covered or some other factor like requiring an additional indepth research paper/project.
AMCAS wouldn’t flag it as a repeated course–though there is no guarantee of how a human adcomm reader will perceive it.
Related…if you plan to go to medical school, and become a doctor someday…you might want to dip your toes into the 8 am class. You will NOT have any choices about times for medical school classes. Once you start rotations in medical school, you will be likely working shifts that start at 7 am, or 11 pm, or anywhere in between. Dealing with early morning times is a life skill for doctors.