Hey everyone,
30 yr old pre med here. I’m currently at my comm college and plan to transfer to a satellite campus of Penn State for Biology with the hopes of med school in 3 yrs. My question is I’ve never been stellar at math and I really worries BC the biology major requires calc I and calc II. The 2 physics classes are algebra based and no other class has a calc pre requisite. If I apply summer of junior year and push back calc I and calc II till my senior year I’d that possible or advisible if I’m worried BC I’ve heard horror stories about calc II. This might sound d dumb but med schools monitor grades during senior year and will a poor grade cause them to rescind acceptance?. Any advice would be appreciated.
I believe they give conditional acceptances on the assumption that your performance in your final year won’t be drastically different than your prior performance. I would imagine that a B and maybe a C is still acceptable, but I can’t back that up with any data. I know on interviews I didn’t have to “explain” any grades below a B…
You’re going to have to take calc eventually, and the more scared of it you are, the worse you’ll probably do. Calc is pretty pattern based from what I remember, so once you actually understand how to tackle the problems, the battle is half-won. As long as your program doesn’t require calc as a prereq for anything, it doesn’t really matter when you take it… If it makes you feel better, I have done zero calculus problems in the first 2 years of medical school, though the concepts are still applicable for things like pharmacology.