Hi All,
My daughter is interested in going to Medical school. She has very high GPA and high SAT/ACT score. She is also a national merit scholar semifinalist. She wants to go to med school and looking for a short cut if you will. She wants to major in rather painless major such as Marine Biology (get her bachelors with high GPA). Then try for med school with good extracurricular activities. Any thing wrong with that strategy.
Does Biology major has any advantages in getting into med school ?
Our worry is what is the backup option in case you can’t get into medical school.
We are recommending Bioinformatics but she feels it’s super competitive to get a high GPA.
Biology only has an advantage for pre-meds through overlapping requirements, making it convenient. But the large number of biology graduates (many failed pre-meds) means that job and career opportunities are highly competitive.
Biology courses may also be more competitive than she thinks, due to the presence of many pre-meds chasing A grades in them.
Many frosh pre-meds later abandon pre-med due to GPA or MCAT too low. Of those who apply to US medical schools, only about 40% get any admission. Most who do get only one admission, so if it needs $400k debt, take it or leave it.
If she likes and is good at math and statistics, that can be a major with more backup options. Statistics is heavily used in medical research anyway.
What will she do with a Marine Biology degree if she cannot get into Medical school? Bioinformatics is a far more marketable degree if Medical school does not happen.
Biology majors are a dime a dozen, so she would need to look at Graduate school for better job opportunities. She definitely needs a plan B.
I am a big believer in the Montessori philosophy of ‘follow the child’. Your daughter is mostly right (she’s wrong that it’s a short cut): majoring in something she is genuinely interested in, making sure to take the med school pre-reqs (& getting the other things they like), is a great plan. She doesn’t have to choose yet, and the major does not have to be obviously vocational right at the start. Let her get to college, start doing college work, and trust her. If she’s half the student she seems to be, she will keep being as successful in college as she is in HS!
any other majors you can recommend. There are so many majors unfortunately we are from engg background and graduated long time. There are lot of options. For example, Public Health majors, Physical sciences etc
Agree with letting her decide, but make sure that she has the information to make a well informed decision. Many aspiring pre-meds start that path or major in biology without being fully informed of the competition level or possible / likely results.
Some colleges have career surveys by major that can give an idea of what graduates in each major end up doing. For example, Virginia Tech, UCB, MIT, CMU, and some others have major specific information on graduate outcomes. This type of information can help her make a better informed decision.
I’m not sure why marine bio would be a great alternative; that’s a field that attracts students with a specific passion for the subject, and it’s not much of a ticket to employment with an undergrad degree, if she wants to work for a few years before med school or if med school doesn’t work out.
I agree that Applied Math or Statistics can be a great, practical major with broad applicability both in the world of medicine and medical research, and in other spheres as well. Social science majors are fine too, whether they’re specifically health-related (public health) or not (sociology/anthropology/poli sci/etc) If writing is a strength, a writing-heavy humanities major can work well too. Even foreign language, particularly if one becomes fluent in a language for which bilingual clinicians are in demand. Definitely no reason for a bio major unless it’s a particular fascination; there’s plenty of time to add the med school prereqs to any single major that’s not an intensive professional degree in itself.
Thank you all. One more question. How hard or easy it is to switch from Marine Biology to Biology or Neuroscience in 2 or 3 year at UCSD for example ? Is it that important ?
@psanigep: At UCSD, checking out how to change majors especially for Capped majors like Biological Sciences or Neurobiology concentration is important.
Here is a link to help. Much easier to change majors if you are already accepted as a Biological Sciences vs. going from Marine Biology to Biological Sciences. Also the earlier she can change the better.
@psanigep please let your daughter choose her own college major. Really, she can major in basket weaving as long as she takes the required courses for medical school admission, and does well.
As noted by @CottonTales there is no easy way to get into medical school and no shortcuts. Well…unless she applied to BS/MD programs which all have admission rates in the very low single digits.
You know…she may get to college and find she doesn’t actually want to go to medical school at all. Students change a lot between high school and college. They just do.
It sounds like you are choosing majors that will include some of the prerequisite courses for medical school admissions and will satisfy you. But what about your daughter? Shouldn’t she be the one who is happy with the major she studies in college?
PLUS she will have other things to do to be a competitive medical school applicant…shadowing, some kind of patient contact work, work with underserved populations, great MCAT scores, etc.
She is a high school senior. When she chooses a college, if she does want to be a doctor, I would suggest she speak to the advisor who deals with prospective medical school applicants to get some options in terms of majors, and fulfilling her Med school application requirements.
Agree with everything above. Marine biology at the bachelors level has very poor job outlook. Straight biology and neuroscience aren’t much better. Public health jobs tend to be low paying and often requires a MPH.
Both my kids each had an applied math major + another science major. The math gave them plenty of career options in case they didn’t get into med school. (options include epidemiology, bio informatics, biostatistics, bio engineering, medical physics, data analysis, risk management, just to name a few. All highly employable fields.)
Your D needs to choose a major she’s happy with and can do well in. Most freshmen premeds wnever even apply to med school (and mostly not due to grades, but due to a change in interests/ goals.)
Like someone said above there are no shortcuts to med school.
BTW, med schools really, really do not care what an med school applicant majors in. The only thing they care about is whether pre-reqs have been fulfilled. With careful planning most majors will accommodate the pre reqs alongside some other major.
As others have mentioned the biggest advantage to being a biology major is that it will cover some of the key prerequisites for applying to med school. The job outlook for pure bio majors outside of med school or another health related field (most which require advanced degrees and can be nearly as difficult to get into as med school) is tough because of competition. She could consider many of the allied health majors such exercise physiology etc. Those too would require many of the prerequisite courses and might offer better if much lower paying options. Majoring in fields that have greater job security also runs the risk of being harder to maintain the GPA required by many med schools. Engineering degrees, or other hard science or math degrees fall into this category. Those majors are challenging on their own and having the prereq courses as many of your gen ed courses can be challenging.
My D took a route similar to what your D is thinking about. She wants to be a Physical Therapist. It’s a field that requires many of the same prereqs as pre med. She is a BA Dance major and will have a Biology minor. She has danced since she was 3 and danced in a pre professional dance company throughout HS. What she didn’t want to be is a professional dancer. She is now in her senior year of college and will be interviewing soon for entry into a DPT program. She did very well in her pre req courses (and the rest of her courses) and on her GRE. Her dance major wasn’t academically rigorous but it took a fair amount of time for rehearsals etc. What this route allowed her to do is allow her to focus on her academic courses and other requirements for applying to a DPT program while enjoying her dance courses and performances. She has really enjoyed her 4 years of college. It was a risk but we should know how things work out in a couple of weeks. We are optimistic for a variety of reasons. Good luck in her decision.
BTW, marine biology is no easier than biology - you will need to study all the basic biology, and then some more physics, chemistry, geography, etc. Unless she actually like marine biology there is no reason to do this.
Aside from the good idea proposed here, I would add biochemistry, which has a decent job opportunities. All of @WayOutWestMom’s ideas are excellent.
I will also add a psychology major, alongside the med school prerequisites. As stated, a neuroscience BS doesn’t have many job opportunities. On the other hand, a psychology BS has a decent job prospects.
Nutritional Science was (has been?) a very popular major for aspiring medical school students at UC Berkeley (College of Natural Resources), which offers three majors: dietetics; toxicology; physiology and metabolism, all with good employment prospects on their own rights.
@MWolf a psychology major bachelors might help someone get a job in something like Human Resources or the like…but it’s almost impossible to practice psychology without at least a masters degree. School based psychologists need a masters. If one wants to do counseling independently, you can’t get licensed without an advanced degree.
What are the decent job prospects with a psychology bachelors?
Having said all that…if the OPs daughter would like to study psychology as an undergrad, that is fine.
I still say, she should be choosing her own major.