med school and full year courses

[Guest kitty5656]

hi,

 

i have a few questions about med schools requirements in general that perhaps some of you know the answer to. alot of med schools, both canadian and US, have as part of their academic requirements, a statement such as: "one year of biology, one year of organic chemistry, one year of biochemistry, one year of english, one year of behavior sciences, etc."

 

it's the "one year" part i'm worried about, because sometimes its not as simple as that. do they want a continous, full year course? for example, i took a half year organic chemistry course in first year. i plan to take the 2nd year half-credit organic chemistry course. i guess that adds up to a whole year of organic chemistry, but i haven't taken a continous full year organic chemistry course. do you think that matters?

 

another example is with summer courses. suppose a med school required "one year of english". i don't have room to take english during the year, so i plan to take a full english course during the summer. technically, i'm taking english for a duration of 4 months, but it's a full credit course. would that still be acceptable? when med schools say "one year", would it be acceptable to take a course that's supposed to be one year, but compressed into a shorter period of time?

 

my last question is, do med schools generally look down upon prequisite courses taken during the summer? is it preferable that all courses be taken during the normal school year?

 

i would appreciate any insights people can give me. thanks a lot.

[Guest peachy]

One year means a full-year course, whether you took it in six weeks, two half-courses, or any other format. As long as you don't do something weird like take Organic I twice, of course!

 

In Canada, it doesn't make a difference if you take courses in the summer or not. I don't have a clue about the US.

[Guest CTU24]

I agree, one full year means one full year credit...it doesn't matter how you get there (2 half courses) or when you do it (summer, 4 weeks etc.)

 

As for summer courses, it generally doesn't make a differences for meeting prereqs, that is there is no advantage to doing organic chem in Sept or Aug. But you should be aware that schools have different policies as to whether summer courses count towards your GPA.

 

CTU24