Welcome to the MCB web site for our undergraduate program. Are you considering a career in the health field or perhaps hope to conduct stem cell research, cancer research or simply love biology or chemistry? Our undergraduate program is an excellent preparation for medical school, graduate school, or for giving you the opportunity to explore your interests in the life sciences. Following is some information that you might find valuable in applying to Cal.

AP Credit Information

Taking AP courses and the exam in high school is an excellent way to prepare for and get into Cal. In fact, you can earn university credit that you can choose to use toward your undergraduate degree. 

Should you waive your courses using AP credit if you can?

The MCB major accepts scores of 3, 4, or 5 in the exams listed below to allow you to waive certain prerequisite coursework, although we do not recommend that you do so. Most high school AP programs do not include the in-depth labs that our courses include and they do not delve into the details of the material in the way our courses at Cal do. So, while AP courses provide a good foundation and allow you some review at the beginning of the semester, they do not prepare you for upper-division course work to the same degree that Cal courses do.

Also, if you're planning on applying to any health professional school or graduate school, those schools often require that you have, for example, two semesters of a general biology course with a lab.  This cannot be fulfilled by the AP Biology exam credit. 

AP Calculus AB = Math 1A           
AP Calculus BC = Math 1A
AP Calculus BC (score of 5 ONLY) = Math 1A, Math 1B
AP Chemistry = Chemistry 1A
AP Biology (score of 4 or 5 ONLY) = Biology 1A, Biology 1B

Undergraduate Admissions: http://www.uga.berkeley.edu/admissions/index.asp
Career Center: http://career.berkeley.edu
Biology Scholar's Program: http://biology.berkeley.edu/bsp/index.php
Student Learning Center: http://slc.berkeley.edu/general/index.htm