<p>I heard that for med school GPA matters much more than the difficulty of classes, and most med schools want to see that you actually took a course like biology in college rather than use your AP score in place of the class. </p>
<p>Do most premeds at Yale choose to use AP scores? Would there be a disadvantage if you did use them?</p>
<p>You don’t get college credit at Yale for AP classes so you still need to take required classes for medical school. The only advantage of AP classes is you can use them to possibly satisfy a pre-req for a higher level class. For example, MCDB 120 and E&EB 122 are pre-req’s for the Bio major but if you scored high enough you could skip taking those classes and start in a higher level bio class but you still need the year of biology with lab to satisfy the pre-med requirement.</p>
<p>[Yale</a> > Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology > Undergraduate Programs](<a href=“Welcome | Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology”>Welcome | Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology)</p>
<p>You can use AP credit for “acceleration credit” allowing you to potentially graduate in less than 8 terms (but why would you want to).</p>
<p><a href=“http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/award-acceleration-credit-based-advanced-placement-test-scores[/url]”>http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/award-acceleration-credit-based-advanced-placement-test-scores</a></p>
<p>^ Have they got rid of the one semester version of intro bio (Molecular biology. Is it mcdb 205?) after the professor (Thomas something who wrote the very densed Cell Biology textbook) from JHU who used to teach cell biology became the dean of the graduate school?</p>
<p>BTW, not every upper division biology lecture class has its associated lab. Bichem has one but is it a biology or a chemistry from the eyes of med school? Repro has one too. There are many “serious” standalone bio labs with no associated lecture credit that are designed for future researchers I think.</p>
<p>E&EB 122 professor is quite gung-ho about training students to write papers instead of designing a high-school-ish class which concentrates on multiple choice tests and short answers. Many science-lopsided premeds who happen to be “liberal-art-education-challenged” have no “appetite” for this kind of end-of-semester research project (heck, some science students suffered in those required English or even social science classes when they need to be in the same class room with those humanity kids.) More premeds try to get out of E&EB 122 than MCDB 120 and, if they can’t, they regret that they did not take Evolution/Ecology AP in high school. Well too many premeds don’t do much math (unless they are physical science major or to a less extent, MBB major) and don’t do much writing.</p>
<p>^ Correction: mcdb 205 is NOT molecular biology that was once offered for those kids who took APs. It is likely mcdb 200 or 201. mcdb 205 is cell bio, one of the 3 core bios for mcdb majors: genetics, cell bio, bio chem (I think.) It is rumored that those who are chicken out would take the developmental biology to avoid facing too many premeds.</p>
<p>Simply put you are going to use about a third of your Yale credits for pre-med which goes a long way towards completing a science major. If you use AP credit to place out of intro bio and chem, your pre-med biology year and labs could be cell biology and reproductive biology. Your pre-med chemistry could be physical chemistry. You may end up needing just a couple of extra classes to complete the major and free up lots of room in your schedule to take other stuff like history, art history, language, etc. This is what I did but I also considered double majoring or getting an MS in MB&B in the same four years. I agree with kdog wondering why anyone would want to leave before 8 terms.</p>
<p>Cell bio (205) and Dev Bio (210) don’t have labs but there are still a few others you could take outside of the 120 and 122. Mol Bio (200), Genetics (202) and Dev Bio (240) all have associated labs. I would highly recommend Genetics for a non science pre-med (it’s a req for Bio as stated) and even though it doesn’t have a lab I would also recommend taking Cell Bio.</p>
<p>As far as skipping E&EB122 goes, it does give you a good introduction into writing scientific papers. I think that would only help a student moving forward and it’s broken up into manageable deadlines. The paper is a big part of the grade in the class though (50%). The only caveat is, I heard Stearns will not be teaching the class after this semester so who knows what the class will be like next year.</p>
<p>mcat2, it’s Pollard you are referring to and he is still there teaching Mol Bio 200 as well as Cell Bio (205).</p>
<p>So AP exams don’t help that much at a school like Yale? It seems that the only thing it gets you is allow you to take harder classes from the beginning, which is great because you can learn more advanced material but it also seems like a disadvantage because you have to take more classes to satisfy your major and free up room in your schedule to take other courses. </p>
<p>I think for premed you need 3 credits of physics but if you take AP Mech C and AP E&M C Yale says that counts as 2 credits already so really you would just need to take one credit of physics at Yale instead of 3 right? In that sense, Yale does recognize AP credits, correct?</p>
<p>I’m still kind of confused on how this works. It seems every school has a different policy. Thanks to everyone who responded! It did help to clear up a lot!</p>
<p>Some medical schools don’t recognize AP credits at all and some only with supplements. I would take the cautious approach and assume they “don’t”.</p>
<p>
The second part of your statement is not true for a bio major. Since many of the pre-reqs can be satisfied with AP scores, there are less classes that you have to take for the major. For a “non science” major, it probably doesn’t help you but you are not taking any more classes, you just aren’t getting credit for the ones you took in high school. One thing you have to realize is many AP classes only cover a portion of the actual college class. You might cover everything you learned in an AP class in the first few weeks of the college class and from then on learn new material.</p>
<p>Again, the acceleration credits only allow you take less classes to meet your major and I would forget about them for meeting “pre med” requirements if I were you. In other words, plan on taking a year of Physics with lab.</p>
<p>I suggest you read all the links at the link below:</p>
<p>[Acceleration</a> | Yale College](<a href=“http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/acceleration]Acceleration”>http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/acceleration)</p>
<p>Again, unless you want to graduate a term early, the best way to think of AP credits is to potentially bypass some pre-req’s allowing you to take more advanced and or interesting classes. For a pre-med, it probably would help you the most of you are a bio major as you could skip many pre-req’s (assuming you took AP Bio, Chem, Physics).</p>