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We say a little bit about this in our “Preparing Guide,” generalizing that health professional schools want evidence that you can succeed in rigorous science courses, and taking them within a full course load during the academic year best simulates the demands of the science course work in health professions school. We encourage you to come in and discuss your specific situation in more depth, so that we can look holistically at your prehealth preparation and provide more individualized advice. If you do choose to take classes over the summer, be sure to get pre-approval through your college if you want them to count for course credit, and be sure to check with HPA to make sure that they’re the appropriate courses to fulfill prerequisites.
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The main benefit of summer courses is that they can help you alleviate some pressure during the academic year if you have other priorities that make it difficult to balance your priorities. For example, if you’re a varsity athlete with a long season that makes lab courses challenging, or you want to make room to study abroad during the school year, since prereqs can’t normally be taken overseas.
As for the drawbacks: courses are expensive, you don’t get that mental break to recharge if you’re still grinding through classes in the summer, you lose the time that you could be putting toward the experiential preparation aspects of preparing for medicine, there may be less academic support (tutoring, office hours, study groups), and summer courses may not give you the foundation you need to be ready for future courses in the discipline and/or for the MCAT.
Overall, your academic preparation needs to convince medical schools that you’re ready for the rigor of the science-heavy, full-time medical school curriculum. If the rest of your academic record is strong by the time you apply, one summer sequence will be less of an issue; if your academic record is less competitive, moving courses outside of the regular semesters can raise additional doubts about your preparation.
If you take summer courses, we’d recommend adding some hospital volunteering or other patient-facing experience and shadowing to your summer plans so that you do add at least a little bit of that experiential preparation. The summer clinical experiences can also help you stay motivated to do well in the courses, since it’ll remind you why you’re taking the courses in the first place!
Since this is a very student-specific advising conversation, we’d recommend meeting with an adviser to talk about your specific situation.
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It's a delicate balance to negotiate the conflicting priorities here: on one hand, professional schools want to see evidence that you can succeed in a rigorous science curriculum and summer courses are generally seen as less demanding, less able to prepare you well for future courses in a sequence, etc. But we wouldn't want you to give up a meaningful opportunity like study abroad. Maybe extending your application timeline would allow for more science courses during the year? Maybe a summer study abroad program would be a reasonable compromise? It tends to depend on each student's goals and situation. Please come meet with us so that we can look more holistically at your science preparation, potential application timeline, and other aspects of your candidacy.
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This is a complicated question. We wouldn’t be able to answer it without a lot more information: What do you mean by “didn’t do well”? Did you use all of your possible resources and still ran into trouble or are there ways that you could adjust and take CHM 202 with the potential for more success? What other summer plans do you have? How might this affect the rest of the Chemistry sequences that you have to take here? How are you feeling about your prehealth plans in general?
Generally speaking, we don’t recommend splitting sequences if you can avoid it – schools teach the content differently and have different expectations, so you may miss material and may have more difficulty adjusting mid-sequence than students who took the first course and are going directly into the second. We also recommend minimizing the number of prerequisites that you take outside of the regular course load and would be concerned that summer Gen Chem may put you at a disadvantage coming back for Organic Chem at Princeton. All of that said, we’d still want to talk with you about your specific situation and help you come up with potential next steps moving forward – please don’t hesitate to talk with us, or with your faculty adviser, director of studies, or our HPA peer advisers for some other perspectives.
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This will be easier to discuss in person -- please come in and visit to talk it through! -- but here are a few things to consider:
How premed are you? If you’re still debating whether to pursue premed, it’s a lot of time, money, and effort to take Gen Chem this summer when you might never need it. Plus, it can be difficult to do well in prereqs unless you’re pretty committed to the premed track. You may be better off spending this summer on activities like hospital volunteering and shadowing that will help you determine whether premed is for you, then if it is, you could look at Orgo (or Physics) after sophomore summer.
How rigorous are the science courses you can access? Organic Chemistry at Princeton is very rigorous and many summer Gen Chem students find they don’t have an adequate foundation for Orgo after their summer Gen Chem. If you choose to take Gen Chem this summer, take the most rigorous course you can find and do some self-study of Organic Chem this summer in anticipation of the academic year. When you return, start using your McGraw resources, office hours, etc., as soon as the semester begins so that you can stay on top of the work. Taking Gen Chem at Princeton then Orgo over the summer, the same would apply in terms of trying to position yourself well for Biochemistry.
Do you really need to take summer science? We can work with you to look at potential graduation timelines that work around summer courses, taking all of your academic and other interests into account. Medical schools want to know that you can manage rigorous science courses in the context of the academic year and the more science that you move into the summer, the more that this can be called into question. Plus, summer is the time students tend to focus on gaining research, work, and clinical experience, which can be challenging (but not impossible!) on top of course work. Stop by to talk with us about your overall plans and we can provide some advice. -
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Since most medical schools will require a C or better in your prerequisites, keep in mind that you’ll need to retake Organic Chemistry I as well as Organic II. This can be accomplished in a single summer, but first consider how sure you are of your interest in medicine or another career that would require Organic Chemistry. The two-semester sequence will require a significant time and money investment during a time when there are meaningful internships and job opportunities out there that may help you explore your interests. It might shift your timeline if you take a break from premed and then come back to it, but many students do this and come back refreshed and more motivated, while going into an orgo repeat doubting your future plans can make it hard to stay engaged and to do as well as you want to.
If you’re reasonably sure of medicine, a summer course can provide a chance to focus on the material with fewer competing obligations—come by HPA and we can discuss your interests, plans, and implications in more detail! With any summer course, be sure you’re following the Princeton pre-approval process and remember that you must report any grades for courses taken at any college/university to medical schools whether or not you transfer the credit to Princeton.
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Yes, it's required that you report all grades and submit all transcripts from any US/Canadian college or university where you have an official transcript. This includes schools where you took summer courses, courses during high school for college credit, and courses that you take after graduation. You will certify that all the information that you provide on your application is current, complete, and accurate, and omitting information would be in violation of this certification.
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Pre-pandemic, it was rare that medical schools would accept online courses. Exceptions were made when there was no other choice, but the preference will likely remain that prerequisites, especially those with labs, are taken in person. Medical schools seek evidence that applicants are ready for a rigorous, science-heavy curriculum. Taking courses in the summer is already perceived as less rigorous than academic year courses, and adding the online component may bring your preparation under even more scrutiny. We’d expect that some schools will go back to requiring that courses be taken in person, or accept online courses on a case-by-case basis. As always, we’d recommend checking websites for schools of interest (including your public in-state schools) to see if they have any guidance on online courses (see links on HPA website).
Beyond school requirements / recommendations, an internship will also keep you relatively busy and you’ll want some time outside of your work hours to relax and recharge for next year. Make sure that you don’t burn yourself out before returning for another busy school year. If you’re in a new location, give yourself time to explore and enjoy your environment rather than spending more hours in front of zoom in a class!And if your internship is non-medical, consider using the hours you would've put toward the course into shadowing or patient-facing experience that can be harder to schedule during the schol year..
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Ideally, try to take all of your prerequisite courses during the academic year. Professional schools want to see evidence that you can succeed in a rigorous science curriculum and summer courses are generally seen as less demanding and less representative of your ability because you aren’t taking a full course load. The more that you take summer courses, the less convinced schools may be that you’re ready for medical school.
Summer classes also take away from time that you could be building your clinical experience and other important activities, so while they may advance you toward completing academic preparation, that may set you back in your experiential preparation. Sometimes it makes sense to take a prerequisite class or two during a summer, but it’s also important to choose which ones carefully, so please stop by so that we can talk about your preparation as a whole and have more complete information to provide customized advice.
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We can look at the course you plan to take and give you our opinion on whether it seems aligned with graduate programs, but it never hurts to reach out to the programs individually to check, or to consult the prehealth advising website for the school where you plan to take the course. It can be nice to have summer course credits on your Princeton transcript to count toward degree progress since that could help you reduce your course load in a future semester; loans through the Financial Aid office also require the course transfer back. That said, it’s not required. You will submit official transcripts directly from any college/university where you took courses, not just from Princeton. If you’d like to apply to have the course transfer back to Princeton, the pre-approval process is outlined here. A transfer course has to be accepted by a specific department and it may be difficult to find that approval, but It doesn’t hurt to try EEB or MOL, depending on the best fit for the course content.