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Question about prerequisites


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Hello everyone!

 

I had a quick (hopefully) question about the schools that require prerequisites. I have one completed undergrad degree and will be started another one in 2014 (to raise my GPA). My first undergraduate degree had the majority of the prerequisites (bio, chem, organic chem etc etc), and I was wondering if I needed to take them again in my second undergrad, or if completing them in my first undergrad is sufficient. I will be emailing the certain schools about this but thought if anyone ran into this I would ask here first!

 

Thanks!

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I can reply generally to this. There are some schools that have time limits, meaning the prereqs can only be X number of years old. I'm pretty sure, for example, that McGill requires them to be no more than 8 years old.

 

Other schools (UBC) only look at the first time you completed the course:

 

"Prerequisite average. As a rule, the first course taken that satisfies the requirement will be used in this calculation. When prerequisite courses are repeated, due to failure, both the initial and successful attempts are included in the prerequisite average. These rules will still apply if the academic year with the lowest academic average has been removed."

 

http://mdprogram.med.ubc.ca/admissions/evaluation-criteria/

 

I would take a close look at the FAQs and evaluation criteria posted on each website. Most will spell this out pretty clearly.

 

Bottom line - it depends where you are applying. It may actually be disadvantageous for you in some cases, as there may be schools that will question why you are repeating courses when there is no need.

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Hello everyone!

 

I had a quick (hopefully) question about the schools that require prerequisites. I have one completed undergrad degree and will be started another one in 2014 (to raise my GPA). My first undergraduate degree had the majority of the prerequisites (bio, chem, organic chem etc etc), and I was wondering if I needed to take them again in my second undergrad, or if completing them in my first undergrad is sufficient. I will be emailing the certain schools about this but thought if anyone ran into this I would ask here first!

 

Thanks!

 

You also need to be careful about taking courses again. Some medical schools won't consider your year to be a full-time year if it includes courses you have previously taken (and passed).

 

I ran into that issue with my second degree - they wanted me to re-take biochemistry (despite the fact that I obtained a 91 in it the first time around) because they felt the subject matter had changed sufficiently in the few years between my two degrees. Fortunately, I was able to convince them to let me take the more advanced biochemistry, instead of re-taking the intro to biochem. It also occurred with my microbiology course - I ended up being able to take a food microbiology course instead of intro to microbiology (which I had taken as part of my first degree).

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