Yes, you would be exempt from these specific classes, but you would need to take other classes (typically, more advanced) to compensate. AP classes don’t count for med school.
AP bio and AP Chem only cover 1 semester of college bio and college chem so you’d get Gen Bio and Gen Chem/1st semester waived, but you’d have to take General Bio and General Chem/2nd semester instead. It’s usually not recommended to take both when you arrive as a freshman, but taking just one in the Fall, then one in the Spring, in order to ensure the best grade, is advisable.
Being top 20% in every class is possible, but remember your competition is going to be all the kids who took AP Bio or AP Chem and did well enough they could see themselves becoming doctors, not your HS class overall.
Because Biology is very competitive to get into AND has very bad professional prospects or outcomes – remember, 60% premeds don’t get into med school, so all the Bio majors flood the market AND there are very few well-paid jobs for bio majors specifically (most bio-related jobs require a graduate degree). In a recent survey of major/professional outcomes, biology was either at the same level as or below art history.
And in terms of sheer originality, art history would certainly make you interesting to the med school committee compared to the umpteenth bio major, if your application were strong enough to get to the interview stage for med school. Majoring in Physics probably has the best prospects. A substitute for biology is neuroscience but I don’t know what the prospects would be (I imagine neuroscience+CS would be quite lucrative).
There is no such thing as weighted or unweighted GPA in college.
Each semester is like taking 5 AP classes at two or three times the speed of a regular AP class.
A 3.8 is uncommon at most colleges. Definitely possible, but uncommon. That’s often considered a “med school worthy” GPA, meaning 90+% students don’t manage it.
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Your certifications will mean you’ll be able to start working in hospitals, that’s very good. However, clinical experience wouldn’t “look good”, it’s just “a basic expectation”. It’s as basic to the med school committee as being able to read. If you don’t have it, the AI cuts your application before it gets to human eyes.
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Taking AP Bio and AP Chem is very good. Aim for mastery, not just basic understanding. Aim for a 5 on the test. Absorb the contents of the textbook even if it goes further than the AP course content.
Keeping up with Spanish is also going to be very important (in college, you may be able to take Spanish for Medical Professions, and in case will have to continue with Spanish).
She probably told you not to major in “premed”. Med schools want you to have a traditional, solid major in which you do very well AND take the premed pre-reqs (and do well there, too). Majoring in premed means you can’t handle both, which makes you less likely to be admitted to med school.
Weedout doesn’t just mean it’s difficult. It means they’re designed to weed out a certain percentage of students - for instance, the class median may be B-, with 50% below, 50% above, but most at the B-, B, B+ level, not at A- or A. Too many courses with B’s and you’re out of the running before you can even apply to med school. What constitutes a B- may well vary so that not too many students get that and, remember, half the class may get a C+, C, D, or F. no extra credit, no make ups. In addition, some colleges also design tests that will purposely fail a certain percentage of the students. That’s weedout by design; there’s also weedout due to course content, ie., it’s very difficult and a lot of students can’t hack it but there’s no specific % who will get an A, a B, a C, a D, or an F in each class regardless of how prepared the students are. Those students aren’t weeded out so much as they weed themselves out. Both situations lead to the same result: a lot of would-be premeds switch. For that reason, some large universities won’t even provide a premed adviser to 1st year students.
Majoring in Biology, Chemistry, etc, means you’ll be in these classes. The difference is that a premed has to compete with biology majors in biology, with chemistry majors in chemistry… AND do better than most of them, whereas the Bio or Chem majors only have to “survive” the weedout class.
Organic Chemistry is a requirement for sophomores or juniors who want to go to med schools - as in, you cannot apply without it.