UGA pre-med prerequisites: the complete course list and MCAT prep timeline

Required prerequisite courses

Each medical school sets its own prerequisites, and they vary. The courses below, mapped to UGA’s catalog, are the standard set that satisfies the great majority of M.D. and D.O. programs.

Biology (8 hours)
BIOL 1107/L and BIOL 1108/L (Principles of Biology I and II with labs)

General Chemistry (8 hours)
CHEM 1211/L and CHEM 1212/L (General Chemistry I and II with labs)

Organic Chemistry (8 hours)
CHEM 2211/L and CHEM 2212/L (Organic Chemistry I and II with labs)

Physics (8 hours)
PHYS 1111/L and PHYS 1112/L (Introductory Physics I and II with labs) or PHYS 1211/L and PHYS 1212/L (calculus-based, for students with the math background)

Biochemistry (3 to 4 hours)
BCMB 3100 (Introductory Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) or BCMB 4010 and 4020 (the two-semester advanced sequence)

Statistics (3 hours)
STAT 2000 or BIOS 2010. The Medical College of Georgia requires a statistics course by name, and PSYC 3990 doesn’t count as a substitute.

English (6 hours)
ENGL 1101 and ENGL 1102. UGA’s core curriculum requires them anyway, so most students finish them early.

Total: about 44 to 47 hours of prerequisite coursework.

Strongly recommended courses

Not every school requires these, but medical schools recommend them often, the MCAT tests them, or both.

• PSYC 1101 (Introductory Psychology), tested on the MCAT’s Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations section
• SOCI 1101 (Introductory Sociology), also tested on the MCAT
• GENE 3200 (Genetics), which backs up the biology and biochemistry
• VPHY 3100 (Elements of Physiology), CBIO 3710, or PMCY 3000, physiology that shows up on the MCAT and in clinical reasoning
• MATH 2250 (Calculus I), which some programs require and calculus-based physics uses
• CBIO 3400 (Cell Biology), which goes further into how cells work

The AP credit question

Many medical schools limit AP credit for prerequisites, especially in biology and chemistry. The Medical College of Georgia, for one, doesn’t accept AP credit for biology or chemistry prerequisites. If AP credit placed you out of BIOL 1107/1108 or CHEM 1211/1212, some schools will want to see additional upper-level courses in those disciplines instead.

Check the MSAR (the AAMC’s Medical School Admission Requirements database) for every school on your list. The safe course is to take the classes at UGA even with AP credit, or to take advanced courses in the same discipline that show you’ve mastered it.

Every grade in these courses goes into your BCPM GPA. I tutor orgo and gen chem one-on-one. Tell me about your student →

GPA benchmarks

UGA’s Pre-Professional Advising Office gives these targets:

• Overall GPA target: 3.7 or higher
• Science GPA target: 3.7 or higher
• MCAT target: 513 or higher (approximately 85th percentile)

These are national averages for accepted applicants, not cutoffs. Fall well below them and the rest of your application has to carry much more weight.

M.D. programs calculate a BCMP GPA (biology, chemistry, math and physics); D.O. programs use a BCP GPA (biology, chemistry and physics only). Every attempt at a course counts. Retaking organic chemistry will improve what you know, but the original grade stays on your AMCAS or AACOMAS application.

Grade trends matter. A rough first semester followed by steady improvement reads differently from a slow decline, and committees read the direction as well as the endpoint.

A practical four-year timeline

First Year

• Fall: CHEM 1211/L, BIOL 1107/L, ENGL 1101, MATH 1113 or MATH 2250
• Spring: CHEM 1212/L, BIOL 1108/L, ENGL 1102, PSYC 1101

Second Year

• Fall: CHEM 2211/L, PHYS 1111/L, SOCI 1101, major coursework
• Spring: CHEM 2212/L, PHYS 1112/L, STAT 2000, major coursework

Third Year

• Fall: BCMB 3100, GENE 3200, VPHY 3100, major coursework
• Spring: Additional recommended courses, begin MCAT preparation, major coursework
• Take the MCAT in spring or early summer of junior year

Fourth Year

• Submit AMCAS/AACOMAS applications (primary opens in late May/early June)
• Complete secondary applications and interviews
• Continue coursework and extracurriculars

This assumes no AP credit substitutions and a standard course load. Adjust it for your placement scores, your major’s requirements and what’s offered in the summer.

Beyond coursework: what else you need

Prerequisites and the MCAT get you through the first screen. After that, medical schools read everything else:

Clinical experience: Shadowing physicians in several specialties (observation only, hands off). The Medical College of Georgia expects at least 200 hours of clinical experience.

Research: Not required everywhere, but most successful applicants have done meaningful research. Between the undergraduate research programs and the faculty labs, UGA has plenty of openings.

Volunteering: Depth matters more than breadth. Years with one or two organizations make a stronger case than a scattered list of one-time events.

Letters of evaluation: Most schools require at least three, with at least two from science faculty who taught you in a classroom. In a large UGA lecture course those relationships don’t happen by themselves. Go to office hours, speak up in discussion sections, and start early.

The courses that derail pre-med students

Organic chemistry (CHEM 2211/2212) has the highest attrition rate of any course among UGA pre-med students. It’s a different kind of chemistry from gen chem, built more on spatial reasoning and mechanisms than on memorization.

General physics and biochemistry are hard too, but orgo is where most students find out they need to study differently. The ones who do well stop rereading their notes and start working mechanisms, over and over, until the logic is automatic.