Hey I’m a current junior and I am deciding what to take next year. I am interested in majoring in neuroscience or biology on the pre-med track. My dream school is Stanford.
This is what I have so far:
AP Lit( I’m in Lang rn and im doing fine)
AP Comp Gov, AP Micro( Both are one semester classes at my school)
AP Calc BC(In AP Precalc rn)
AP Bio
AP Psych
Theology 4(Required)
The dilemma that I’m facing is with my final class. I could take AP Spanish or DuE Spanish 4(I’m currently in H Spanish 3), but I kind of want to take AP Stats or Honors Human Body Systems, but I always see online to do four years of a foreign language.
I would look at the language requirements for all of the other schools you want to apply to also. Look at the med school requirements for admission as some/most won’t accept an AP Calc credit as counting for taking Calc in college etc. You could switch out one of your AP credits to fit in AP Spanish.
Also be careful you’re not overloading yourself. That is a lot of AP credits for senior year!
So I think usually the most flexibility comes from taking four years of all the core areas including languages. Different colleges vary on their recommendations, but while Stanford, for example, only says “three or more” years of languages, Harvard, which is pretty good for Neuroscience too, says four:
An ideal four-year preparatory program includes four years of English, with extensive practice in writing; four years of math*; four years of science: biology, chemistry, physics, and an advanced course in one of these subjects; three years of history, including American and European history; and four years of one foreign language.
And even at Stanford–sometimes really serious math or engineering kids end up needing a little more flexibility, and Stanford has a relatively high percentage of such kids. But otherwise I wonder if the “or more” might be a better idea with them if you are not such a kid.
Of course you will need to apply to a lot of other places than colleges this selective. But until you finalize your list, you don’t know what might be required. So I think it is a safe choice just to do four in all the core areas.
So personally, I would be choosing between Psych, Stats, and Human Body Systems. Whichever is most interesting to you, or even based on liking a teacher, or so on.
This is a lot of AP classes. OP could consider taking non-AP english, since they’ve already taken the most useful one (AP lang can get you out of freshman comp). They could also take regular gov’t/econ. A lot of AP classes (like lit/gov’t/econ) just get STEM majors some general credits, and many schools have limits on how many AP credits you can transfer in anyway.
I think the spanish class could be useful, especially for a future physician.
AP psych is one I think could be ditched altogether. You’ll have to take psych (and possibly stats) in college as a med school prerequisite, and unlike bio, there’s not really a benefit to retaking it.
I assume you’ve already taken physics and chemistry courses?
Look at the foreign language graduation requirements for the colleges you are interested in. Some will allow you to exempt the requirement if you have 4 language credits in high school or get a high enough score on the AP test.
Advancing your skill at Spanish can be helpful if you do pass the premed weed-out process and eventually become a physician.
You will likely need to take a calculus based statistics course in college (many medical research papers use statistics), but AP statistics is not considered a suitable substitute and is usually not needed as a prerequisite.
High school specialized biology will not go anywhere near in depth as college or medical school courses on the subject.