So in a reality where the majority of pre-med students take AP biology in high school and many if not most competitive candidates do not have this credit applied for college credit and then re-take the course in College, the medical school application readers are blind to this and selectively penalize those who took the course at a Community College as grade grubbers? What if you go from a high school with no AP bio offering to Yale? You have to fight a grading curve where 90% of the pre-meds took AP bio, and you couldn’t take DE biology because someone on CC said you’d be labeled a grade grubber!
As to languages, how do colleges let alone medical schools know who is a native speaker? Having spoken German to your parents and grandparents all of your life isn’t a huge edge for “Intro to German?” Or is the “yeah, I’m fluent in Spanish, but I don’t know how to write that well” explanation that we’ve all heard sheepishly said many times somehow more convincing than “I think Biology at MIT is a bit more rigorous than Biology at Plainstown CC”. 'Cause that Bio repeater is a grade grubber (or so someone will think somewhere).
“Some adcom somewhere will see grade grubbing” is just a way of saying “I see grade grubbing”. And really who is anyone here to judge? It’s just the CC way of predictably slamming any kind of academic striving, especially in math and science. I wonder who everyone is visualizing when they slam that kind of ambition?
Actually, the forum way of slamming striving is the common encouragement to repeat AP credit and DE courses, rather than strive to learn new content in more advanced courses that the striving student has advanced placement for.
Well, Actually, my approach would be to treat people who ask questions here as I would my own family. Which would be to advise them in a way that would lead to the best preparation and greatest number of options leading to the best likelihood that they can attain their professional or academic goals. Not second guess their motives or personhood.
There are benefits to advancement (which I’ve mentioned multiply in the context of supporting students who want to self-study AP’s) and also benefits to retracement (which might make more sense for Chemistry than Biology). The reality is that for pre-meds, grade consciousness and sensitivity is a reality. Being better prepared with a DE course will give a student the greatest number of options - repeat or no, and I would see absolutely no evidence that a biology course at Laketown CC taken 5 years prior would be any kind of red flag whatsoever.
Med school admissions is a 1 in 70 proposition at some schools. That’s chess not checkers, so making moves that set a student up for the greatest likelihood of success with the greatest breadth of options is smart.
As I previously posted, such pronouncements are best avoided.
One can disagree with another’s opinion in a polite way.
Regardless, College Confidential is not a debate society. Focus on the OP’s question. The broader question of how AP/DE credits should be handled is one that can be handled in its own thread, after searching the old threads where it has already been discussed.
Further posts not addressing the OP are subject to deletion without comment.
Have you spoken to your guidance counselor to ask about the rigor of the early college program vs your HS’s AP curriculum? There is a question on the counselor report for the common app that rates students on rigor which is important for some highly ranked schools.
Seems from what you wrote you can keep to the AP curriculum and add a couple of DE courses in CS. Seems like that may be the best of both worlds?
My school is an IB school, however they still have a really good AP curriculum. I’ve heard students in EC are a wide range of overachieving to almost failing, so no definivte answer on the rigor. My counselor will tell me to “do what’s best for me.” [quote=“momofboiler1, post:46, topic:3674549, full:true”]
Seems from what you wrote you can keep to the AP curriculum and add a couple of DE courses in CS. Seems like that may be the best of both worlds?
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