<p>A bio major at Princeton has ~11 courses + Frosh Chem…(not counting prereqs or distribution requirements)</p>
<p>Hopkins requires 12 courses + Frosh Chem + Calc (either of which can be AP’ed out)</p>
<p>Emory requires 11 courses + Chem (4, if not using AP credit), but not calc (surprisingly)…</p>
<p>A related question is: How many of these 11 or 12 courses are courses beyond those science courses required by medical school premeds?</p>
<p>For Princeton, the Bio major requirements are:</p>
<p>*MOL214 or MOL215</p>
<pre><code>* General Chemistry (CHM201 & 202) or CHM215 or 2 units of CHM credit
<p>U/D Core:
* Genetics (MOL342)
* Biochemistry (MOL345)
* Cell & Developmental Biology (MOL348)
* Core Lab (MOL350)</p>
<p>U/D REQUIRED Major Electives: 8-12 classes</p>
<p>In all, that’s a minimum of 22 classes (no geneds). The U/D courses alone put us at a minimum of 14 (only 2 of which are med school prereqs).</p>
<p>Really, only the bio major prereqs actually cover med school prereqs.</p>
<p>deleted…</p>
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<p>This is not the case at all schools. If the undergrad transcript reflects the actual course that the AP class replaces (course and course number) it will count for many medical schools</p>
<p>Many people use this to bypass intro classes and get into upper division classes sooner.</p>
<p>It’s important to do the necessary due diligence by checking not only how your undergrad school reports/gives credit for A/P classes but also the policies for accepting A/P credits at the med schools you are interested in before it’s too late to rectify things if necessary.</p>
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<p>True, although few things are true of all schools. There a quite a few schools, however, that want the course taken at a university (or some higher level course as a substitute) and not as an AP course. It is always best to check w/ individual schools to see what their quirks may be.</p>
<p>apumic,
“By comparison to all other majors (except vocational majors, such as nursing) bio majors have the weakest chance of admission – both in terms of admissions rates (~45% vs 50-55% will gain admission to at least one school for most other majors except vocational, which have a ~28% admissions rate) and average GPA needed for matriculation.”</p>
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<li>Would this apply to Bio or Zoology major with couple minors (one unrelated, like Music) and GPA = 4.0? Most pre-meds at D’s school have at least one or more minors because they are interested in something else in addition to science.</li>
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<p>The other question that comes to mind is how do bio majors do on the MCAT-VR relative to majors in other fields? (Not sure if true, but I read that VR score is becoming a tie-breaker for applicants.)</p>
<p>Keep in mind, the MCAT is a test that puts humanities majors at an advantage. It has limited testing of science knowledge while incorporating extensive reading comprehension and analysis over all 3 sections. This clearly favors someone who majored in English. Not surprisingly, English majors do slightly better than bio majors on the test and not surprisingly their acceptance rate is slightly higher (all of that can probably be attributed to the higher MCAT score). So, it’s not really that med schools will give a huge boost to any applicant based on their college major alone. I think way too big a deal is made out of this. Major in bio if that’s what you want. Supplement your bio major with some English courses if you don’t want to get too rusty with reading comprehension.</p>
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<p>I heard the same from DS. Unless you are naturally talented in reading comprehension, taking too many science courses at the expense of non-science courses may put you in a disadvantage position come MCAT time. The reason is that for a true, non-gut non-science courses, the amount and difficult level of the reading is much greater than those required by those required by a typical science course. On the other hand, if you take too many of these hardcore humanity classes, AND join a demanding research group, you may study less for the science classes compared to other neurotic premeds who put in seemingly infinite amount of time in order to secure that precious A. DS ended up spending more time on one non-science class than all of his science classes combined in a particular semester. (Was it like reading one book every one to two weeks?) I guess the balance is the key.</p>
<p>I heard that one student who is very lopsided toward sciences did not keep up with his humanity/reading side of education in college. After a year or two in college, he said his English skill actually got worse, and dared not to take any humanity classes any more at his home institute (as doing so will likely result in a not premed-worthy grade no matter how hard he tried.) For this kind of student, I think it is better for him to go to a tech school (rather than a LAC-ish school ) where he could more easily shine based on his strength on the science subjects alone. It appears that for any LAC-ish class, the test-taking skill (esp., that for the multiple-choice tests) are not valued at all because all or most grades depend on how well you argue in your papers.</p>
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<p>I know two colleges (Yale and UC Berkeley) do not list the equivalent course names and course numbers for AP courses explicitly on their transcript. I also know a couple of students from these colleges who applied to Texas medical schools and got in. Because of this, I am not sure how rigorous Texas medical schools would interpret the rule “the course name and course number must be listed explicitly on their transcript.”</p>