Behavioral Sciences...What does that mean?

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Hi all, i’m new here. I’m wondering what exactly it means when under prereqs, they list 6 credits of Behavioral Sciences. When I’ve looked online and when I spoke to an advisor at WesternU, the most specific thing I got was this list below. Now I’m not really sure if my classes fall under this list. Are these specific courses, or are these categories? If I’ve taken macroeconomics, a class discussing the 3rd Reich’s impact on Modern Germany, and another course that discussed the history and civilizations of the Near East, would those be considered Social Sciences, and thus cover my Behavioral Science credits? Or do i need to take something specifically more like psychology or sociology?


Thanks, I’ve graduated already and i’m finishing up pre-med reqs on my own and just trying to get everything scheduled out with work and how many semesters I still need to do.


Social/Behavioral Science


Anthropology


Community Health


Criminal Justice


Educational Psychology


Ethnic Studies


Human Sexuality


Marriage/Family


Personal Health


Physiological Ethics


Psychology


Social Science


Social Work/Sociology

2

I think that the behavioral sciences covers mostly psychology and sociology classes. You should contact the schools you’re interested in and let them know the classes you’ve taken including the course description and see what they say. The classes you’ve taken sound more like social sciences/history to me.

3

Behavioral Sciences = Courses taught by the Psychology and/or Sociology department(s).


You initially assign a the subject categories for each of your classes when you enter in your primary application. AACOMAS will verify your class categorizations by the course department prefix (like PSY or SOC) and by the course catalog description from your college. As I understand, AACOMAS has the final say on class categorizations, not the individual medical schools.


The original poster’s classes would be assigned the non-science (NS) categorization–the general catch all category for classes that don’t fit into the biology category, chemistry category, etc.