Biological Sciences vs Mechanical Engineering @ Davis

College Majors
1

Hello, first post here, so please bear with me.

I’ve been having an internal discussion about what I want to do. Currently I am enrolled in the biological sciences for my Major at UC Davis because I always thought it would be helpful for my medical path. However, recently I’ve been second-guessing what I really want to do with my life. What if it turns out I don’t want to go to medical? What can I do with biological sciences, I really didn’t find much of the career opportunities that I see involving the bio major really interesting.

With that, I’ve been taking a look at mechanical engineering as a major as one of my interests is in vehicles. I see lots of opportunities in the industry that I find totally acceptable and interesting to me.

Now basically, what I’m asking if for the school I am in, which provides both majors, is mechanical engineering a better trade off than to go to a major I find with little interest? I keep hearing that medical schools don’t really care about what major you end up as so I figured if I still ended up in medicine, the major change won’t have a big impact. Would getting a mechanical engineering major at Davis be a big difference in importance than if I got biological sciences here?

I really appreciate any advice I could get about my predicament.

Thanks!

2

For pre-med purposes, it does not really matter what your undergraduate major is, as long as you complete the pre-med courses. However, mechanical engineering does have a high volume of requirements, so fitting in the non-overlapping pre-med courses (e.g. biology, organic chemistry, biochemistry) may be difficult, compared to doing it with some other major with less voluminous requirements.

Obviously, if you are not interested enough in biology to want to major in it, you should certain consider switching to some other major.

3

What is your perception of the careers open to biology majors?