Pre-Med Help in Testing Out

[CanICode]

AFAIK, med school is going to want a GPA. And certain prerequisite courses cannot be an exam, they must be graded courses from an actual college or university. I would suggest contacting the school(s) you want to apply to and find out what they're looking for.

I have found some colleges specifically have started listing that they will accept CLEP coursework for prerequisite course requirements if it is listed on a college transcript. Here is an example. "AP/CLEP coursework may satisfy course requirements if listed on a college transcript."

I am digging into this topic at the moment. The thing is, everyone knows covid has inflated GPA. It is easier to cheat, it is easier to do multiple courses online. Colleges are not listing if a class was taken online or not. So the colleges are starting to care way more about your MCAT score than before. GPA and where you took courses is starting to mean a lot less. Here is a post that pulled data from 1500 admissions and found that if you score a 517 on the MCAT you have an almost 50% chance of getting into med school with less than a 3.0 GPA.

I'm not trying to give anyone false hope, you would have to be an absolute beast to get that score. People who score a perfect score on the SAT find that the MCAT is a completely different beast and scoring that well on it would require you to be in the 1% of the 1% of SAT takers. But even still, you can look at the chart and figure out what score could get you in and then see which colleges will accept clep for prereqs.

for example, UIOWA requires 14 total courses. These are the ones you can possibly clep:

Biology
Chemistry
English Literature
Calculus
Foreign language
Introductory Psychology
Introductory Sociology
I think you can find a 4th one to fit there 4th course requirement, maybe "Introduction to Educational Psychology"

So that leaves you with the remainder of:

Biology 2 courses - 1 intro & 1 advanced.
Chemistry 2 intro courses.
Physics 2 intro courses.
Biochemistry 1 advanced? course. Hard to understand what it is saying.

This is just one example of course. The point is, yes it would be better to have actually taken the course at a college for a GPA but there are some edge cases.

Edit: It is also saying they might accept AP courses? Does this mean modern states AP bio's would work? That would be kind of nutty. Of course you will have a hard time getting in, buuuut, if you crush that MCAT score, anything is possible.

Edit 2: Vanderbilt #6 in the country for medicine. For prerequisites the no longer even ask for them. Instead they give recommendations. They will take ANYONE who scores a perfect score on the MCAT. I read they had accepted 19 out of 19 who scored perfect on the GRE for their law school. You read those self reported stats here. The point is, there are definitely ways to get in and certain colleges .