Vanderbilt Premed Weed Out

OHMomof2
Sat, 24 Oct 2015 17:21:35 +0000

as for taking 2 at a time, unless you are not a science major, isn’t that unavoidable (not only unavoidable, but it is recommended that you do it at some point in time.

I don’t think it’s unavoidable, at least not for lab sciences. Looks like one semester might have to pair with a lab science and a non-lab biochem.

Almost every medical school in the country requires at least the following:

Lab Sciences:
a year of general chemistry (with lab)
a year of organic chemistry (with lab)
a year of general physics (with lab)
a year of biology (with lab)

English:
a year of college English

Mathematics:
a year of “college mathematics”, by which most schools mean precalculus math (algebra and trigonometry) but not specifically calculus. Some do require a semester of calculus; only Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Washington University in St. Louis currently require a full year of calculus. Brown requires a statistics course, and several schools require 2 semesters of college math chosen among calculus, statistics or computer science.

A steadily increasing number of medical schools require biochemistry (with or without lab) such that we now recommend that premed students take biochemistry.

A few schools also require:
Social or behavioral science courses, or more biology. An increasing number of U.S. medical schools now say they recommend biochemistry (usually non-lab) in addition to the standard two other biology courses.