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AB students are expected to have completed 17 courses by the start of junior year. Here are some considerations we’d recommend for prehealth students:
- Lab courses tend to require a relatively high time commitment. Aim to take your five course semester when you’re only taking one lab course.
- Think ahead to all three of your coming semesters as you make this decision. Mapping out a four-year plan can help you see where you'll have more space.
- Consider using a PDF to help manage the workload.
- Consider a summer course so that you can take four courses each term during the academic year.
- A Global Seminar or Princeton-sponsored summer language course can be a great option. The abroad experience will help broaden your perspective and the courses tend to be small and allow for excellent opportunities to get to know peers and faculty.
- If you take a summer course, we generally recommend a distribution requirement or an elective rather than a science—come and chat with HPA if you’re thinking about taking a summer science.
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We hope that you’re using your time at Princeton to explore new possibilities, and generally just expand your perspective – every course that you take is a course that is informing your perspective as a future health professional!
In addition, you might consider the core competencies that medical educators think are important (described in our “Preparing for a Career in the Health Professions” handout)– some of these competency areas can be developed through classroom exposure. For example, you could expand your cultural competence by examining the diversity in race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, age, religion, etc., within the society that you hope to serve as a physician.
Many of the GHP electives (including Mortality at the Margins: Race, Inequality and Health Policy in the US, GHP 409, and Health and Human Rights, WWS 453) will expand your cultural competence in a health care context. Oral communication skills can be honed in small, discussion-based courses. Teamwork and service orientation might be cultivated in a course that offers a service component through the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship. Your written communication skills will be critical when preparing your applications, so if you know that you struggle with writing, take courses that help you improve.
In addition to the sciences, many courses offer unique perspectives on health and health care from a social science or humanities perspective. We looked through the course offerings and identified a number of these courses, which are compiled in every semester in our Health-Related Courses document on our website and available in the HPA office.
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This is a case-by-case situation – we encourage you to come in or email us about your situation more specifically. If it was not a pre-requisite for health professions school, a repeat is not required. If the course in question is required for admission to medical school, we encourage you to come into Health Professions Advising and discuss your situation more holistically: one weak grade needs context for us to be able to advise you properly.
Generally speaking, a grade of C- or lower (D or F) warrants a repeat, at Princeton or another institution. Most schools will not accept C-'s, D's, or F's because these grades do not indicate mastery of the subject. A grade of C or better usually indicates basic understanding of the material, and the student should generally go on and take more science at a higher level, and perform better, to correct the problem. In some isolated instances, after consulting with the student, we do suggest repeating a course even with a grade of C or C+; this is usually because the student does not feel prepared to perform well on the corresponding section of the MCAT.
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There is a separate FAQ about summer courses, but in general, we recommend focusing more on experiential preparation (especially clinical experience) rather than academic preparation in the summers. But, everyone's situation is different and we're happy to talk with you about pros and cons of different summer scenarios.