Hey, everyone!
I’m currently a Pre-Med student at community college and plan to transfer to a university within the next year. I’ve been one to change my mind multiple times with degrees, doing my research as much as I can, and just really learing anything I can when it comes to Medical School requirements and the best advantages to take now to increase chances on getting in. I know that it’s not required to major in science, but it’s beneficial somce medicine has a lot of science behind it. Originally I wanted to Major in biology/business management and recently changed to psychology/business management. Business is because I’ve always wanted to do that from the time I was in middle school. Psychology is because of personal experience with health issues involving the brain. I’ve thought about Neurology and Psychiatry, but since it’s not going to be something I’ll use as a career, I wanted something that will still allow me to learn something that could potentially be useful in the future. As far as minors go, I still have my biology interest and decided to minor in Modern Greek/Biology. I want to further my studies and be able to use my nationality (greek) to help educate others wanting to learn, as well as continue to learn even more than what I already know. Obviously biology due to benefits of helping me in medicine. With all that being said, I really would love feedback on this decision as well as whether or not it really makes a difference if I majored in biology compared to just minoring.
I think the combination may lack focus - Psychology, Business, Greek, and Biology are pretty disparate in terms of fields of study, especially for someone primarily interested in medical school. As long as you are meeting (and perhaps exceeding) the prerequisite course requirements for medical school, your exact major(s) won’t really matter too much.
Remember that medical school admissions depends on more than just coursework - you’re going to want to procure enough relevant extracurricular and research experience to make you a competitive applicant. If you find that the two majors and two minors (which, in sum, is more like triple-majoring) is too time consuming, you may want to cut back so you can focus your efforts on other med-school relevant pursuits.
Are you planning on doing all of this and graduate in four years? If so I have serious doubts. If not you’re going to be spending a lot of money on tuition for degrees that you won’t really use once you go to med school (assuming you get in).
I once had a plan to graduate with two majors and two minors. I go to Hopkins which is known to be a good place to double major because we can double count courses. Anyways the four disciplines had huge amounts of overlap, and I ended up working out a plan by which I could graduate in four years. But eventually I dropped the minors because I realized
a. Minors aren’t particularly important or impressive
b. Chasing the degrees would prevent me from pursuing other activities
I was going to sacrifice basically four years of my life, slaving away for qualifications that didn’t mean anything and wouldn’t help me later on. Eventually I decided to just take classes that interest me and found that I could easily double major.
Having two majors and two minors will not give you a leg up in med school admissions if that’s all you have - and with such varied degrees I can almost garuntee that you’re going to be extremely busy. Instead of pursuing a minor in biology, join a lab as a research different. Instead of double majoring in Business, get a minor and intern at a VC firm, bank, marketing firm, consulting firm, etc. Instead of minoring in ancient Greek take a class or two as an elective and maybe try to help a professor with their research. Volunteer at a hospital, shadow surgeons, serve as a medical translator (if you know a second language)…
There are so many opportunities out there that will not only help you get into med school, but will broaden your horizons and teach you about how the “real world” works. Don’t chase degrees when there’s so much out there.
So, say I did the two majors and got rid of my two minors, and while doing those majors I took quite a few science courses + took research opportunities, would that be a better route to take? I only plan to get my Bachelor in business and psychology. I don’t plan on going to grad school for those at all. They are just things I’m interested in and would love to study.
I’m a double major (math and CS) and a double minor (music and dance) and I’m a rising college junior. If you really want to study all those subjects, go for it, but don’t think you’ll gain any kudos from med schools for that. You can also just take classes in those subjects, regardless of whether they amount to a minor.
The reason I’m doing the double major/double minor is that it’s relatively easy to do so at my university, I can do so in four years, and I have personal interest in all the subjects. I plan on going into cryptography, so having a solid math and CS background is important to me. I’m also on scholarship for music, so I’m required to at least minor in music. For dance, taking one dance class a semester gives me the minor, and I’ve been dancing all my life, so it’s worth it to me.
However, this schedule is not for the faint of heart. I had to carefully plan my four year plan, and don’t have much wiggle room in my schedule. I’ll only be able to take 3 completely elective (not fulfilling any requirements) courses my entire college career. I also have a lot of ECs (bunch of music ensembles and lessons, multiple honor societies, math research, volunteer org, theater, and part-time job) and it can be exhausting sometimes. A lot of weeks it’s fine but then there’s those weeks where everything seems to happen/be due at once and it’s really hard. One example is this past spring, all my music concerts lined up on the same week, so I had a concert and/or a dress rehearsal every day for 9 days, and I had three tests, a quiz, and a major project due in that time frame, along with all my other day to day hw (I dubbed that music hell week). I wasn’t able to study as much as I would have liked for those tests, and it definitely affected my grades.
You’ll really need to keep your GPA up if you want to go to med school and that’s hard as a double major, double minor, especially if you still maintain ECs (which you’ll need as a premed). I’m fortunate that my music ensembles and such count in my GPA, so it’s still great (I have somehow yet to get a grade below a B), but I got a lot of Bs this past year in my academic classes, mainly due to those terrible weeks I mentioned above.