HPA is in touch with many medical schools to check on their policies and most will treat placement exams the same way that they did AP exams: the credit would need to be recorded on your official transcript, and some schools will expect or encourage additional advanced coursework to supplement the credit. For school by school information, refer to the spreadsheet on our Prerequisites page on the HPA website.

We hesitate to make claims about all 180+ US MD and DO schools, but in our experience, students who have AP credit and who have taken advanced courses to supplement the credit as suggested on our website have not run into significant problems. We have checked the exact wording for some of the schools most popular with our applicants, which are linked on this google spreadsheet (netID login required). 

Medical schools are interested in students making the best curricular decisions for themselves based on their preparation. This includes challenging yourself to grow and learn. Repeating courses will impede this growth. You want to find the right level of challenge based on your academic foundation.

In some instances, after consulting with the student, we may suggest repeating an introductory course in a subject where the student has AP credit. This may be more true post-pandemic when it was harder to gauge your preparation relative to peers who had a more traditional classroom experience. 

If you're worried about preparing for the MCAT, remember that you will review the introductory material diligently in the months prior to the test, either on your own or through a prep course.  If you're worried about your knowledge of general chemistry as a prerequisite for organic chemistry, it is worthwhile to consult with Chemistry department representatives to review your preparation and make a measured decision.

All AP credit granted to you will be listed on your Princeton transcript and you will report it to medical schools, even if you've gone back and done the introductory courses over again.

Medical schools are generally looking for students to build on the knowledge gained in the Advanced Placement course at the college level. The easiest way to provide evidence of this kind of building of knowledge is to take a course that lists the discipline in which you have AP as a prerequisite:

• In Chemistry, Physical Chem (CHM 305/306); Global Air Pollution (CHM / CEE / GEO / ENE 311); and Geochemistry of the Human Environment (GEO 360 / ENV 356) are a few examples.
• In Physics, PHY 108 (Physics for the Life Sciences) AST 204 (Astronomy), CHM 305 (The Quantum World), or CHM 306 (Physical Chemistry). The courses that aren't taught " in the PHY department all list PHY as a prerequisite.

If you’re interested in taking a course that doesn’t list Chemistry (or Physics) within its prereqs and want to know whether or not it will “count” for medical schools’ requirements, our recommendation is to research a few schools of interest to see what they have to say about supplementing AP credit with additional course work. If a school requires additional course work, reach out to them directly to ask them – it’s always going to be up to the medical school to say whether or not you’ve met their requirements, so best to hear directly from them!

If you read the Harvard Med School requirements carefully, you’ll see that they are willing to accept alternative ways of addressing their prerequisites. They say AP will not be accepted, but then go on to say that upper level courses should be taken if students have been granted AP credit. Further on in the page, you’ll see that they state that, “Required laboratory components of biology and chemistry are no longer defined as discretely as they were in the past. Lengthy laboratory components of the required science requirement courses are not necessarily time well and efficiently spent.” Instead, they encourage “hypothesis-driven exercises, problem solving, and hands-on demonstrations of important principles” which can be acquired through other means (such as thesis research in a science, or a summer research opportunity mentored by a faculty member.

We can tell you anecdotally that of Princeton applicants accepted to Harvard Med in the past, they followed various paths in Chemistry:

• AP Gen Chem + Orgo + Biochem + advanced Chem;
• AP Gen Chem + CHM 215 + Orgo + Biochem;
• traditional Gen Chem sequence.

Some had AP Biology and took MOL 214 and additional advanced Biology courses that didn’t have a lab component.

Based on consultation with admissions personnel at HMS, we continue to recommend the combination of AP credit, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry and an additional advanced Chemistry course moving forward for the Chemistry requirements.

For Biology, we recommend AP Biology, MOL 214, and at least one additional MOL course, ideally combined with at least one summer research experience in which you can continue to refine your laboratory skills. However, if you’d like to be completely sure that you’ve met this requirement based solely on course work, we would recommend MOL 214 and core lab if you're a science major, or another course with a research component if you aren't (e.g., EEB 314). If there are other schools that you come across where you have concerns about your prereqs and APs, please don’t hesitate to email HPA, include the link to the website you’re referencing, and we’ll check into it for you.

If you’re a CBE concentrator, we would expect a school would be confident that your major coursework supplements your AP – much of what you do within your program of study hinges on Chemistry concepts.

If you’re a non-CBE and thinking about taking one CBE course, it becomes less clear. When it comes to engineering courses “counting” as science, you are trying to assess whether (based on the syllabus, etc.) the course has more basic science content than engineering content (or at least *equal* amounts of each), since engineering isn't counted toward BCPM science courses.

If you feel that the course is at least half chemistry, you can designate that course as chemistry on your medical school application. If the application service or an admissions officer has concerns, they will reach out to you and ask for justification/evidence that you identified your course correctly (i.e., that it is appropriate to call the course a chemistry course). Again, it’s worthwhile to reach out directly to schools to see what they would say – it can be a very case-by-case decision.

If you are contacting a school, we recommend that you be very specific: include the year in which you intend to matriculate at medical school, the exact number of units of AP credit you have been granted by Princeton in the subjects in questions, and the departments, course numbers, exact names of classes that you have taken to fulfill pre-requisites, indicating whether or not those classes have labs. It can also help to include the course descriptions from Course Offerings, the prerequisites required for classes you took, and the texts that you used. It would be helpful to us if you forward any response you receive from the medical school. If you don’t get a response, or the response is unclear, you are welcome to be in touch with us and we can follow up with schools on your behalf.

We'd recommend chatting with a faculty member in Chemistry to see if they can help you gauge the strength of your AP preparation. Generally, we recommend moving forward rather than repeating material that you've already received credit for, especially since, as you noted, there are so many interesting courses and disciplines to explore, prerequisites take up quite a bit of space, and we want you to make the most of your liberal arts curriculum. But, we also don't want you to struggle through chem in the spring to such a degree that in hindsight you wish you had taken CHM 201.

Consider sitting in on the first class, reading through the syllabus to see how much of it is familiar, chatting with HPA Peer Advisers or other older peers about their experience with the class, and discussing you preparation with the CHM 201 professor and/or the Director of Undergraduate Studies. If you're fairly sure that you'll decide to use your AP credit, it doesn't hurt to also attend the course you'd take in place of CHM 201 -- you have the first two weeks of classes to decide what you want to do, but starting two weeks behind in that replacement class can be challenging. We're happy to talk this over in more detail with you if you'd like to come by! 

Medical schools encourage or sometimes require students with AP credit in biology, chemistry, and physics to take advanced courses to supplement their AP. We haven’t found a school that required additional calculus. In fact, few schools require calculus at all—many require college math and/or stats. AP Calc already shows that you have advanced preparation in math, so taking a stats course should suffice!

You must report enrollment at any college or university where you were enrolled for at least one course, even if the credits were transferred, no credit was earned, or you withdrew. This includes pre-college courses, summer school, study abroad, and any other scenario in which you enrolled in a course. You will be asked to submit an official transcript from each US/Canadian institution. The grades from any courses that appear on a transcript will be factored into your medical school application GPA whether or not they were transferred to Princeton or you repeated them. It’s true that you may have to retake courses here to meet requirements, and we will explain this policy in our committee letter when you apply.

If the courses and grades appear on a college transcript (not just your high school transcript), they will be calculated into your medical school GPA, and medical schools are likely to accept them to fulfill prerequisites.

With the exception of the transfer program, Princeton does not accept courses taken prior to matriculation, so you will be expected to take any courses you need to fulfill Princeton requirements (e.g., major and general education courses) while enrolled.

Medical schools’ policies will vary for both community college courses and online courses (the premedical coursework chart from the AAMC captures many individual schools’ policies). In any case, they will encourage you to pursue more advanced coursework at a four-year institution. If you've taken dual enrollment courses, let us know and we can provide guidance on how to proceed with your prehealth preparation.