If you’ve already started thinking about medical school, this guide offers best practices for Homeschooling for College Credit with medical school in mind.
If your homeschool teen is thinking about medical school, you’ve probably got a lot of questions and a lot of anxiety about how to get them through high school. This guide offers the best practices for students with medical school in mind. If you’re reading this, I’ve got great news that should take away some of that anxiety. Your teen is 4-8 years away from their medical school application, so you have a lot of time to learn the ropes.
In Homeschooling for College Credit, the focus is on undergraduate credit, almost always 100 and 200 level credit. These credits are earned during high school to help the student get a head start on time and reduce the costs (significantly) on their undergraduate degree. For almost every major, this is a straightforward planning process. For students who want to attend med school, the process is slightly different. In this case, some of you will want to avoid earning college credit, at least in some subjects.
Let’s start at the goal and work backward: Medical School Admissions! The AAMC, which covers MD-granting medical schools, publishes a ton of data about medical school admissions. To date, AAMC has been silent about reporting data about homeschooled applicants; however, in the 2027 AMCAS Applicant Guide, it does instruct formerly homeschooled applicants to identify themselves as:
- Their state and county of homeschooling.
- “Home-Schooled” as their school designation.
- Their city and high school graduation year.
This tells us that they are collecting homeschool application data, and we may see future published statistics. Until then, guidance for homeschool applicants is the same as for any student.
Big Picture: Your student’s bachelor’s degree is what counts
When your student applies to medical school, they will not have to submit high school GPA, high school courses, or a high school transcript. BUT….. when you are Homeschooling for College Credit, your high school record generally includes college credit, so your student’s credits and grades earned in college courses will become part of their bachelor’s degree, so for that reason, we need to think carefully and intentionally about Homeschooling for College Credit.
Medical schools generally do not evaluate a student’s high school GPA through AMCAS, but they do receive and evaluate the grades earned in dual enrollment college courses taken during high school. Earning college credit during high school is not itself a medical school admissions advantage. The AAMC’s guide acknowledges college-level courses taken during high school, while individual medical schools determine whether those courses satisfy their prerequisites.
Unlike regular Homeschooling for College Credit advice, potential medical school applicants will want to avoid taking courses in high school that are part of the prerequisite list. Of the 165 M.D. programs and 48 D.O. programs in the United States, some require many additional courses, but the core set of pre-med courses is on the “to do” list for every pre-med student.
The following HS4CC recommendation poster assumes your student wants to earn college credit in high school to help reduce the time and cost of their bachelor’s degree. Your student can still earn 30+ or more college credits in high school to help reduce the time and cost, but those credits should not be in the sciences.
The green section is advice during high school.
The blue section helps you plan your student’s pre-med sciences, which should be taken after high school.
