<p>I am a senior applying to colleges right now and I want to go into neuroscience. I was wondering if I were to major in biomedical engineering, would I meet the qualifications for premed and be able to pursue neuroscience in medical school? I understand that many people major in things like biology, psychology, and neuroscience as undergraduates in order to study neuroscience in graduate school, but I wasn't sure if the same applied to biomedical engineering. Please comment and thank you.</p>
<p>What exactly do you mean by “pursue neuroscience in medical school”?</p>
<p>Are you talking about at the MD/PhD level or in a neuro/psych specialty?</p>
<p>If you’re talking about the former, you will need to take some undergrad classes while simultaneously taking your med school classes (not fun) before you can begin your PhD research. If you’re talking about the latter, you don’t need any prior neuroscience training/coursework/experience to go into this field. (Although some prior knowledge/coursework might be helpful.) </p>
<p>All first year med students take a neuroscience unit–no previous knowledge required.</p>
<p>Have a D who’s done research in 3 neuro subfields (cognition, computational and molecular) on undergrad and now at a grad level. There is very little crossover with neuro and BME and you would have huge gaps in your knowledge and your ability to do research in this field at a post-undergrad level. (Possible exceptions might be in imaging/data processing or in computational neuro–which is almost entirely computer modeling of processes.)</p>
<p>I was referring to the former.</p>
<p>I think majoring in BME is fine for MD/PhD, with PhD in Neuroscience. I know several grad students who majored in BME and are now in grad school for genetics, neuroscience, and other non-engineering biology fields. In fact, you might even be at an advantage because you will probably have a stronger mathematics/computational background than most bio people, and bio research is just going to get more and more quantitative. I would try to get involved in research in a neuroscience lab, though. Getting all of the neuro-related coursework in is not as crucial - most grad schools care more about your research experience than what particular classes you took, anyway. (Of course, for MD/PhD programs, you’ll still need to do all the regular pre-med pre-reqs).</p>