Back up Majors for Med School?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

I’ve been thinking about what I would like to major in before I (hopefully!) go to medical school. I know chances of acceptance are really slim, so I would like my major to lead to an alternate career. I’m awful at math, by the way!

Any thoughts?

2

You can major in anything at all - theater, dance, physical education, electrical engineering, biology - and still apply to medical school. Some majors require the typical pre-med coursework so it is easier to make the scheduling work. For other majors, you would need to fit the requirements in as electives.

3

Major in what you do well in. A high GPA is important if you want med school. What do you like and do well in?

4

Agree with above advice.

Med school classmates of my daughters had a huge variety of majors–from the expected biology, chemistry and neuroscience to forestry, music theory, business, English literature, Italian, women’s studies, theology, computer science, and engineering.

What are you good at? What do you enjoy?

There are many medicine-adjacent careers for people with a science background. [Explore Health Careers](https://explorehealthcareers.org)

5

You could do nursing. That would satisfy most of the bio and chemistry classes for medical school. You might have to take a few extra classes to fill in the gaps, but it’s an employable degree.

6

A nursing major has a couple of issues for a med school application:

  1. at many schools, nursing track sciences courses are different from science major science courses–although they share the same general name. (e.g. general chemistry). The courses cover different topics and have different emphases. Any science coursework for “applied health sciences” that does not fulfill graduation requirements for a physical or biological science major also does not fulfill admissions requirements for medical school. Conversely, many nursing programs do not allow students to substitute science majors versions of required courses for nursing major versions.

  2. med schools admission officers are reluctant to “poach” students from other greatly needed healthcare professions. At minimum, any applicant with a nursing degree will be expected to have actually have worked in their profession for several years and be able to strongly articulate a “why medicine and not nursing?” argument for adcomms. (Corollary: if a nursing student applies to med school directly from undergrad and says they knew all along they wanted to go to med school, the admission member will likely ask, “Well, if you knew you didn’t want to be a nurse, why did major in nursing and take a seat away from someone who did want to be a nurse?”)

7

Since you said you’re awful at math, how do you plan to get A’s in pre-med math/science classes in order to be a competitive candidate? Average admitted students are in 3.7+ GPA range (that is A-). Remember you need 1 yr of calc/stats, 1 yr of Bio, 1 yr of Gen Chem, 1 yr of O-Chem, Bio-chem, 1 yr of Physics for med school admission. That’s a lot of math involved, how you plan to get A’s in them?

You can major in anything, what are you good at?