So my future plans are to be (hopefully) accepted into a med school and graduate to become a trauma surgeon. Whether or not I plan to specialize is in the air. I know I am going to minor in spanish because I feel that it will be most useful with a medical career given America’s diversity but I am slightly confused on my bachelors major. I know that you don’t need a certain degree to get into med school but I think it would be easiest with a challenging science focused on human anatomy especially because science comes naturally to me. The college that I will be going to offers Chem, Bio and Pre-med B.S… I was told that a biology degree is pretty much useless and is nothing to fall back on and I don’t know much about the other two. So, can anyone give me some knowledge on chem and pre-med degrees? Any advice on which major is best for med school would be greatly appreciated as well.
So is the pre-med and the chemistry.
Do you have any knowledge on undergrad to med school? Cause if you could advise a major, that would be helpful.
Medical schools do not require any particular undergraduate major, as long as you complete the pre-med courses that they require. These typically include a year each of general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, physics, maybe math (calculus and/or statistics), and English composition, plus often biochemistry and some social studies courses. You need a very high GPA (both in biology/chemistry/physics/math courses and overall) and high MCAT score to have a chance of admission (which also considers pre-med extracurriculars, undergraduate research, interview, etc.).
As a pre-med, choose an undergraduate major based on (a) interest, (b) ability to do well (high GPA), and © other career direction options if you do not get into any medical school (only half of pre-meds who apply get into MD medical schools in the US, and many pre-meds do not even apply because they realize that their GPA or MCAT score is too low to have a chance).
Biology and chemistry are not useless; there are a lot of careers other than medicine you can do with either. The unemployment rate for biology majors is about the same as that of electrical and civil engineers (7.8% vs. 7.6%) and lower than accounting majors, computer science majors, and economics majors. And the chemistry unemployment rate is lower still, about on par with finance majors and math majors (5.8% for chemistry vs. 5.9% for the other two fields. All statistics from [url=<a href=“https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/9t0p5tm0qhejyy8t8hub%5Dhere%5B/url”>https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/9t0p5tm0qhejyy8t8hub]here[/url]. It’s the opportunities and the salaries that are different - starting salaries in those majors are around $30,000. (The data is based on the American Community Survey, which is a representative slice of the United States.)
The question is, though, what kind of jobs would you WANT to do if you couldn’t get into medical school, and which degrees help you enter those fields? Many jobs don’t require any specific major, so a sufficiently driven biology or chemistry major could end up being a strategy consultant or an analyst at an insurance company or something. There are certain jobs that do (like engineering, some programming/software development jobs, nursing) and some jobs that prefer certain majors (like analytics - often they ask for a math or stats or related major, but will certainly take a non-major with the technical skills necessary), and then some jobs ask for a family of majors (like social science majors for a market research position or science and technical majors for some analyst positions). But a lot of jobs simply need a BA or BS holder.
The key is acquiring the skills that might help you be competitive in the job market - like ace writing and presentation skills, or learning statistics and SQL, or how to program applications.
Don’t major in pre-med, though. That’s not really a major field of study - it’s just a sequence of coursework to prepare for medical school.
Premed is not a major and, if you are nit accepted to medical school or if you change your mind, gives you no degree of value. I would echo the point made my @ucbalumnus about coursework. A science major is not require day medical schools. Only the premed course work. Many medical schools are seeking applicants who are not science majors because being a successful physician requires many skills other than a knowledge of science. I had many classmates in medical school as well as current medical students and residents who were not science majors.
Pre med is not a major. It is just a track.
Medical schools don’t care what you major in. Sure, a lot of people planning to apply major in biology simply because there is substantial overlap between the curriculum and the prerequisites. However, you can major in anything you wish, as long as you fulfill the prerequisites.
Premed is a major at Penn State and one can graduate with a premed BS degree. There may be other schools that do this, but generally premed is not a major…
If you go to a school that offers such an actual pre-med major/degree, do not major in that. Choose a traditional discipline like biology or chemistry instead. It’s simply absurd, to me, that some schools offer a “pre-med major”.
Another thing to consider is what will you do if you end up losing interest in medical school?
I can tell you that at umich up to a third (~2000ish) of the freshman come in saying that they are pre-med. Only a couple hundred actually make it to submitting an AMCAS application.