Ihsan asked 3 years ago
I’m considering taking ENVIRON 310: Toxicology this winter semester. This 3-credit class, with introductory biology (172) as prerequisite, satisfies a major requirement and I find the subject matter to be interesting. From what I know, this class has not been offered in a while, so I understand if information is scarce, but based on the course description – introduction to toxicology, the study of environmental chemicals and diseases – will this class count towards my STEM GPA? The class is not explicitly listed as BCPM, but would course content classify it as such for med school application purposes? On a related note, are ANTHRBIO courses considered BCPM classes?
Pre-Med Hub Staff answered 3 years ago
Hi Ihsan,
When you apply, you have the ability to assign your classes as bcpm so that they may count as part of your STEM GPA.
If you can’t tell if a course is in the BCPM category, the general rule is that if the course content is 60% or more biology, chemistry, physics, or math, it is BCPM. You can get a fair assessment of this by looking over previous syllabus for the class or emailing the professor or Newman advisor about the class content. It is very possible that AAMC may challenge your classification so be ready to fill out an application to defend your case if the time comes.
Based on a cursory glance of the syllabus of ENVIRON 310: Toxicology, I would say it would count in BCPM GPA but I still recommend emailing your an Pre-Health Advisor or the class professor to confirm. Most ANTHROBIO courses do count as part of the BCPM GPA due to the high biology content. However, unless a course is labeled BIO,CHEM,PHYSICS, or MATH, you will need to assess each course about the BCPM content it may have.
I hope this helps! LSA advising also has a page about this which I have linked here.
Ruchira (Website Manager)