<p>If I major in business/economics/management etc. just in case I don't get in to med-school, will i have enough time to finish pre-med reqs. in 4 years? And if so is it a good idea to do as a back-up plan? Or will it look bad on my application?</p>
<p>Medical schools as a rule prefer applicants with academic majors. Business and management are not considered an academic majors, but vocation majors. You will have a harder time convincing medical school that you’re a serious candidate as a business major than if major in something else.</p>
<p>As a compromise, it’s usually suggested that students who want med school in their future major in economics or something similar.</p>
<p>With the increased pre med requirements for applicants in 2016 and later, it is becoming more difficult to complete a unrelated major and fulfill all pre-med requirements and still apply at the end of junior year. If you’re willing to entertain the idea of applying after graduation and taking a glide year as part of your application process, then it should be do-able.</p>
<p>Agree with WOWMom, as usual. Medical school admissions, rightly or wrongly, consider business majors primarily interested in money, which is not ideally the image you wish to convey. However, interesting new multidisciplinary majors like health care finance/management may have more of a shot, plus great job prospects if not admitted to med school.</p>
<p>I see, thank-you.</p>
<p>I do not think it makes any difference at all. Get your very high college GPA, decent MCAT score, participate in medical EC’s and complete your pre-reqs. You will be just as good as others. Business School would be an easier major (I have an MBA), so you should not have any problem with pre-reqs. Most of my D’s pre-med friends graduated with combo of major(s)/mion(s) anyway, they wanted to pursue their interests outside of medicine while in UG. You will not have time for it later. So, if you are interested in business, so be it, why not? Will give you an advantage for the Verbal section of MCAT, for sure, the most challenging for my D.</p>
<p>I agree with MiamiDAP on this one. I have not come across any concrete evidence indicating that medical schools have an aversion to business majors.</p>
<p>WayOutWest, do you have any evidence in what you are claiming or are you just speculating?</p>
<p>I went to undergraduate business school (top 3 program), and our class did had a handful of business/pre-med peers. I have close friends who graduated from the BBA program who got admitted into top med programs like Stanford, Upitt, and Umich.</p>
<p>The only thing I will agree with so far in this thread is that business is a very nontraditional pathway to going into a medical career. Assuming that all business majors care only about money is pure ignorance - and I doubt medical school admissions committee members feel that way.</p>
<p>If you want to major in business, go for it. Just know that it’ll be much more work compared to your purely pre-med biology major peers. You’ll be carrying a heavier burden, and being a business major certainly won’t hurt your chances of getting into med school, nor help it.</p>
<p>One thing is that notion of Business majors high paying jobs is correct only for a handful of people, yes, very very few. Would you claim that all musicians are rich because of the likes of ones at the top of the charts. No! Most musicians are at the low spectrum. And so are business majors who will be at the low level of pay for majority of their lives. This is the truth. And having MBA will not make much difference either. Not at all. Yes, there are IB, but how many are going there? There are also IT, and pay of this group is at about the same level (maybe a bit lower on average) as engineers. So, here you go with the myth of Business majors chasing money…that are not there for the vast majority.</p>
<p>Not speculation entirely. Based upon a number of things, including AAMC FACTS table 18</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf</a></p>
<p>conventional wisdom, USNews data, anecdotal evidence, and personal observations over a number of years about the kinds of students accepted at our state med school. (In the past 4 years I’ve seen only 1 business major accepted and she was rather an exceptional case–a non-trad 32 year old URM female with a MBA and 6 years experience running a health-related non-profit.)</p>
<p>While other posters are right that we can’t PROVE it, the conventional wisdom is indeed that vocational majors (other than engineering) are at a disadvantage. There’s a hot discussion on this topic on the law school forums right now, too.</p>
<p>Make MD/MBA programs your first choice…</p>
<p>^Exactly. If biz major and medicine is a toxic combination, why do so many schools offer MD/MBA programs?</p>
<p>The notion that a lot of biz majors end up with killer jobs is far far away from reality. I work for a firm that is a favorite destination for a lot of the MBAs from the top biz schools. Even we had to offer deferrals to quite a few Harvard and Wharton MBAs in 2009, because of the great recession. Even in the best of times, unless you are from the top 10 biz school, big bucks are not the norm.</p>
<p>can someone educate this idiot (referring to myself) on the difference between studying business and studying economics?</p>
<p>I do agree with WOW’s #2 and not actually post #3. I don’t think the issue is that it’s money focused (economics is fine). The issue is undergraduate studies being vocational versus academic. And, as other posters have pointed out, this is conventional wisdom but I fully admit it cannot be proven.</p>
<p>On the other hand, conventional wisdom also says you need to write a good essay. I don’t know any way to prove that claim, either.</p>
<hr>
<p>Economics is the liberal arts version of “business.” Obviously your courses will be similar but in theory they’re supposed to be different. Macroeconomics versus accounting; econometrics versus marketing; international trade versus business negotiations; etc.</p>
<p>It’s sort of like physics (academic) versus engineering (vocational); or like political science (academic) versus law (vocational); or, for that matter, biology (academic) versus medicine (vocational).</p>
<p>It can’t be that bad if 6.2% of the 2012 MS class at Michigan had that as their field of study. ;)</p>
<p>[University</a> of Michigan Medical School :: Admissions :: Interview Day](<a href=“http://www.med.umich.edu/medschool/admissions/apply/profiles.html]University”>http://www.med.umich.edu/medschool/admissions/apply/profiles.html)</p>
<p>WoW… your interpretation of the statistics isn’t complete. Without knowing the number of business majors who actually APPLY to medical school (which based on my experience, is a very low number, because most business majors go into business to do, well… business), you cannot go around waving total count matriculation data and say that business students are at a disadvantage when applying to med schools because of their major.</p>
<p>Son was an econ major. Maybe some of the preference of econ vs. business can be explained by where the degree is obtained. And what courses are embedded within the degree. Son’s undergrad does nor offer a degree in business. His econ core required 4 semesters of calculus, the same calculus the engineers and physics majors are required to take. So calc through def eq. The calc courses were prerequisites for his econ courses.</p>
<p>Son was also admitted to Penn’s M&T program and one of the degrees is an econ degree from Wharton, not a business degree. When son applied to a different university for a second UG degree (his 1st school does not allow double majors) his econ major fulfilled many of his math and science core requirements for the biochem, micro and genetics degrees he obtained. His econ stats satisified their science stats, and he had plenty of math. The physics transferred in as physics for engineers not the physics for life science majors.</p>
<p>The second undergrad did offer an undergrad in business and his courses did not match up. His econ stuff was much more theoretical, more mathy, more formulas, not so much marketing, communications…</p>
<p>His buddies who also majored in econ also went on to the top 3 law schools, med schools, FBI and CIA, i-bankers in private equity and consulting. His goal is also an MD/MBA. He is soon to be an M3 and has been contacted about consulting down the line vs. establishing a practice or working from a hospital. Interesting in that I did not know such jobs existed.</p>
<p>Hope that explains some of the difference between econ and biz. It may happen to be coincidence that some of the top schools don’t offer business and instead offer econ.</p>
<p>Kat
another example: son’s high school buddy went to local 4 year for engineering degree but could not complete the math sequence through def eq so he switched his major to agri business and his roommate at same local 4 year also switched from engineering to accounting because he too could not finish the math or physics preqs</p>
<p>Frankly, as an MBA and being in “business” for over 30 years, if you rule out real vocational fields of finance, accounting, IT, there is NO vocational trianing in business. And frankly, even Programmers (IT) or softwarre developers in business DO NOT NEED any degree at all. However, not everybody could be successful in sales, management, IT, accounting, or any type of broker. You need to posses certain internal characteristics in addition to your skills.
So, going for business including an MBA ( which actually was much easier in my academic journey then my UG portion as it did not include countless hours completing my computer programs and for that matter, CC was the hardest of them all, yes, much harder than completing the other classes to get my BS, while MBA portion was the easiest of them all) make sense only if you are personally interested in it or planning to be in business and NOT in MEDICINE. The same exact reasons why my D. pursued Music minor in UG. No plans on becoming a musician at all, not any kind of back plan. She did not have any back up plan. She wanted to be an MD, period and she put whole ton of effort into in to make sure that Medical School is a reality for her and not just a dream.
This is an honest assessment of a person who has an MBA and have been in business for over 30 years, in many different industries and currently working for huge international automotive supplier dealing with the biggest customers in the the world.</p>
<p>i guess my question really was:</p>
<p>if you’re interested in studying “business” despite wanting to be a physician is there any reason you wouldn’t simply major in econ (the more academic discipline) instead of business? Like what benefits does a business major have over an econ one if your plans are not to start your own small business in between college and med school?</p>
<p>My answer to this from an MBA prospecitve, majoring in business is NOT any close to majoring in econ. If one is interested in business, then major in business. If one is interested in econ. then major in econ. Not sure why one would be different from another in regard to Med. School admission.</p>