It depends on the school and how strict they are in their interpretation of prerequisites. For starters, many schools with a math requirement simply want "two semesters of math" (not necessarily calc), so for those schools, MAT 100 + stats will suffice. For the handful of schools that still require calculus, if any of those schools are your public state school or a school of interest, you could reach out to them directly, provide a copy of the course description, and see if the course will suffice.

Medical schools will expect to see prerequisites taken with grades, so for those schools with a two-semester math requirement, taking MAT 103 plus a stats course for grades will be fine. Medical schools may be curious about your decision to take a STEM course PDF, so it’ll help to chat with us about your rationale and your progress generally. We can provide some context to medical schools in our committee letter of recommendation and help you think about your preparation and academic choices moving forward. Ultimately, schools are more interested in trends and trajectory over time than any single grade, so it will be helpful to talk with you about your long-term plans!

There is no evidence to suggest that medical schools favor applicants who have done more calculus, nor that they “view negatively” those who have not done so. We do recommend a statistics class because medical students and physicians sometimes report that background in statistics is useful, statistical reasoning is part of the MCAT, and more and more schools are requiring or recommending stats.

If you had a serious interest in math, or you're considering a concentration that requires more math, then you should continue pursuing it. Otherwise, enjoy the extra space in your schedule and explore another interest!­

It’s important during the next few days to think critically about all of your courses, especially those based on placement recommendations, and be sure that you’re comfortable with them before the add/drop deadline. If you have any doubts, don’t hesitate to check in with your Director of Studies or any of your other advisers (including HPA advisers)!

If you have AP credit for MAT 103 and confirmation from the placement test, there’s really no need to take MAT 104 unless you know that you’ll need more calculus for other courses you plan to take or for potential concentrations. At most, medical schools will require a combination of calculus and statistics, so we’d recommend that you stick with your AP Calc credit plus a semester of statistics later on. If there are math concepts that you’d like to review because they apply to other classes, like Chemistry or Physics, be sure to check out the options offered through the McGraw Center (especially Group Study Hall), and don’t be afraid to approach your faculty during office hours to see if they have other suggestions for you.

Over recent years, medical schools have moved away from requiring Calculus 2 (MAT 104 at Princeton) and have been encouraging statistics. Statistical reasoning skills are required for the MCAT, and we only know of one track within one MD program that requires additional math (the HST curriculum at Harvard, which also requires calculus-based physics and is quantitatively focused; the Pathways program is the more traditional curriculum). Carle Illinois College of Medicine is specifically an engineering-focused medical school and they have an advanced math requirement, but you can also work around it (and you may not be that interested in Carle if you're not already BSE and therefore taking advanced math)

While we recommend that students take additional advanced courses in preparation for medical school if they place out of Biology, Chemistry, and/or Physics, we have never seen a medical school that expected students to supplement AP Calculus credit beyond taking the statistics course that we encourage. You can always check with schools individually (especially your public state schools, since we encourage you to stay eligible for those schools), but you shouldn’t have a problem with AP Calc + Stats.

Since the course has a calculus (MAT 103) prerequisite, if you have AP credit or have taken MAT 103, that will satisfy the med school calculus requirement. If you opt to take MAT 175 without transcript credit for another calculus course, we would still expect that a medical school would accept the course. The course name doesn't reference calculus, so a medical school with a calculus prerequisite may not recognize the course content. If a school tells you that you haven't met their requirements based on this course, we can help you craft an appeal. Since the course description mentions that it's a survey of multivariable calculus and you use a calculus text book for the course, that should suffice.

Nope! Take whatever stats course makes sense based on your concentration and interests. We haven't had any trouble with medical schools accepting any of our stats courses.

The one drawback to taking stats on the early side is that you may take one stats course, then later fall in love with a department that requires a different stats course. There's nothing wrong with taking two stats courses, of course, but you also only have a limited number of classes to take, so we tend to recommend holding off on stats until you're fairly sure about your concentration to avoid duplication of efforts.

With interdisciplinary classes, it’s difficult to try to box them into one category or the other. Plus, depending on who’s teaching the course and how they present the material, the classification could change from term to term. It’s up to you to categorize it based on where you felt the majority of the course content resided. If you feel that over 50% of the course content involved learning statistics, you could classify it under Math. If you feel that you were applying stats content you learned elsewhere and/or focusing more on public health/epidemiology concepts, then you’d classify it under Public Health and it would not be part of your BCPM GPA (see course classification guide for details). Different applicants have made different decisions on how to classify this course. Talk it over with peers in your class and even with the professor if you’d like other opinions on the subject, but ultimately, you just want to place it where you feel it best belongs. Students have had the same question about some CBE and PSY courses, among others—it always comes down to your own judgment.

No specific class will cover all of the topics that will be tested in this section of the exam, nor are you required to take classes to prepare for it. Whether or not you take psychology classes, you'll study the specific material via self-studying and/or a prep course. In addition to the many commercial test prep companies, the AAMC has teamed with Khan Academy to create free test materials, which include psyc/soc topics.

So, the short answer to your question is: any psychology or sociology course will give you familiarity with some of the concepts that will be tested on the MCAT and if you’re interested in the course topics, they are fine courses to take.

As of Fall 2021, about 30 schools require courses in the social/behavioral sciences and/or humanities, which you will most likely fulfill with your distribution requirements. Usually, schools with this requirement will ask for one or two courses in these areas; the most that we have seen required is four courses at Johns Hopkins (plus the two semesters of English that you are already taking for other schools’ requirements) and five at Emory. We've compiled a spreadsheet where we've outlined unusual requirements linked from our prerequisites webpage.