I know this is one of the most controversial posts and has been answered many times but does it really matter what you major in?
do medical schools really care about wjat you major in ?
At UAMS at AR 70% are bio and 14% biochem majors ?
so does biology have advantage over biochem despiting test scores and interviews ?
Medical schools do not care at all what your undergraduate major is.
D1 & D2 had med school classmates with a wide variety of majors including forestry, music, business, Spanish, English lit, mathematics, computer science, theology and gender studies.
The reason why you see a large number of bio majors admitted is because biology majors are overwhelmingly the largest group who apply to medical school.
See: [Applicants and Matriculants to U.S. Medical Schools by Primary Undergraduate Major, 2017-2018](https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/factstablea17.pdf)
Biology, biochem, chemistry and neuroscience are all popular majors for pre med because those have the largest overlap between major requirements and pre-med requirements–which make course scheduling easier to manage in college.
A word of advice–75% of freshman pre-med hopefuls will never get to the point of applying to med school. Of those that do apply, 60% will fail to gain a single acceptance. Pick an undergrad major that offers you a good Plan B career option. Just in case.
BTW, the post-graduation job markets for bio and biochem (and chemistry) are all equally lousy.
Well, I think biology has it worse due to the oversupply of biology majors who didn’t get into med school. As the numbers above indicate, there are way more bio majors than chem majors who try to get into med school. So I’d say chemistry and biochemistry are marginally better than biology. I’d stay away from a bio major for now, it’s got the worst ROI of all. Yup you’re better off majoring in English, classics, philosophy, art history…
Well it is good to be a non-bio/chem major(ie English, Philosophy etc,) and apply for med school, IF you can hack through the weed out classes for med school pre-req. One small slip, you are out of the race. OTOH, bio majors have the luxury to make it up in higher level classes and there are plenty of it in the third and forth year. Its not easy for a non-bio major to recover with 4 Cs in bio and org chem.
Are you thinking that a med school prefers bio majors because most of their students were bio majors? That is not the case. It’s just that most premeds are bio majors because that major includes most of the premed prereqs and usually has a premed track that conveniently lays out a semester by semester course list to include all that’s needed.
Med schools don’t care what you major in. We’re not even sure if they even bother to notice what an applicant majored in. Sometimes an interesting major or minor will get talked about during an interview but probably because the interviewer is simply intrigued, not because s/he is discerning whether that education interest is med school worthy.
Major in what interests you and where you can excel.