For the longest time I’d been sure that I wanted to become a nurse in college. Then, when my college counselor brought up music therapy as a career option, I was sure that was the route I was supposed to follow. However, although Music Therapists can have very successful careers, I want to be able to do more. Could I earn a Music Therapy and also become a doctor? I am a Junior in High School, with a 4.0 GPA and rigorous course schedule, however I don’t know what my options would be for pursuing this path. I am hoping someone has had a similar experience or has some advice concerning this question.
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You can major in anything you want. Just fulfill the pre-med requirements, maintain a high GPA, and score well on the MCAT.
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Welcome! You might want to start off going to the Read Me thread closer to the top of the music forum, and reading the Double Degree Dilemma essay which is really about different ways to study music.
You can get a BM (2/3-3/4 classes in music), a BA (1/4-1/3 classes in music), a double degree BA/BM (or MM), double major (within the BA and sometime within the BM), major minor. You can major in music of course, including music therapy, and some musicians even major in something else and continue with lessons and extracurricular performance.
Music majors in general have a high admission rate to medical school. You have to cover the prerequisites. You can do that during undergrad in various ways, and you can also attend a post-baccalaureate program after you graduate, which covers those (but you have to pay for that.) There are a lot of them. Here is one example: Goucher College PBPM: Application and Admission | Goucher College
You can also consider nursing (there are accelerated programs after graduation if you do music for undergrad) and physician’s assistant programs.
Look also at community college health professional programs in nursing, PT, OT and other paths, which could be done after graduation too.
Berklee has a graduate program in music therapy and you can look into those too.
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You can indeed major in anything you want. It appears that the largest group of students major in biology, but that is probably mostly either because it is what they think of, or because there is a large overlap between the required premed courses and the courses required for a biology degree. Here is a web page from the AMA about the subject. As a former math major, I was interested to see that 168 of the students they tracked were math majors and then went to medical school.
One thing that you could do is to pick a couple of universities that you otherwise might be interested in, and see what the required courses are for a degree in music therapy. Also see what the required courses are for premed. Then see whether you could fit both into a four year course load. Remember that you can take classes over the summer. Both of my daughters got at least some academic credit for courses or for research that they did over the summer while they were undergraduate students. This made it much easier to fit in every course that they needed or wanted in four years. One daughter was even paid for the summer research (getting money and academic credit at the same time) which made it quite affordable.
Veterinary school is not quite the same thing as medical school, but it is similar and the requirements overlap quite a bit. One daughter graduated with her bachelor’s degree one course short of what she needed to apply to DVM programs. She took the course at community college while working as a vet tech, and then applied to DVM programs with a very high success rate.
Personally to me “music therapy plus premed requirements” sounds like it really should be possible.
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You could also major in music performance and if you still want to do music therapy, do a grad program.
Several years ago, I remember that music majors as a group had the highest admit rate to medical school, among all majors, at 62%. Sorry I can no longer cite that and I don’t think it is true anymore, but you get the idea.
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