<p>I don’t even think that that even matters that much because most non-professional majors (not engineering or accounting or nursing or whatever) give you a lot of space for free electives. To me it doesn’t seem that worth it to major in chemistry or biology if you don’t enjoy those subjects that much. </p>
<p>Yeah, sure, the required classes line up with medical school requirements, but you’ll be taking advanced electives that you won’t be interested in and aren’t really relevant to becoming a good doctor. It would make more sense to me to study a subject that I enjoyed the most and/or could get the best grades in and then taking the intro science classes as electives–that way you are always working towards something you want.</p>
<p>Of course, if you are interested in biology or chemistry, then those would be good subjects to study in college.</p>
<p>*That’s the way to maximize your chances to admission into medical school, because really, any other subject is unlike practicing medicine. To maximize your GPA, you’d ideally like to pick a major that 1) traditionally isn’t graded very hard and/or 2) is interesting to you.</p>
<p>Engineering definitely isn’t 1) and I fail to see how it could be 2) if you already know that you want to pursue another trade. I just fail to see the universal intellectual appeal of, say, manufacturing and designing integrated circuits.*</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think ChemE majors are manufacturing and designing integrated circuits.</p>
<p>"Why study engineering if you already know that you want to be a doctor? "</p>
<p>-Nobody knows until they get the first acceptance. Even kids in combined programs do not know until they have stats requirements (GPA and someitime MCAT). So if one can sustain ANY enigneering with high college GPA, it is definitely has huge advantage since job market for engineers is usually better than other professions. So, if you happen to be in unfortunate 57% of Med. School applicants who did not get accepted to any Med. School, engineering degree might lead to professional job easier than other degree(I am not saying that first professional position is easy to obtain, I am saying easiER). One can still pursue medicine while working.</p>
<p>OP, Biochemistry as a science major proabably would match most of the Pre-med requiremnets. And, BME is probably the closest major in engineering for Pre-meds. </p>
<p>Engineering is a good major if you can squeeze out 20-30 hours/wk for EC’s as a Pre-med. I think that it would be very difficult to do during Sophomore and Junior years. Thus, it is very likely that one will have to take gap years even if he/she manages to get good GPA. If you are good at Math, you can get an advanced degree in ChemE, BME, or Materials Eng (less math in general).</p>
<p>a bunch of MIT grads with engineering degrees go to Wall Street every year to do non-engineering ‘stuff’. Should they have not majored in something they enjoyed? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>^It is very normal for engineers (pre-med or not) to graduate in 5 years, not in 4. In fact, D’s school (her program) does NOT allow to take less than 5 years in UG for engineers and less than 4 year in UG for all other majors. 5 years should be enough to cover all as most pre-meds can complete everything in 4 without summer classes (with good % of them having major/unrelated minor(s) and double/triple majors, at least from experience of my D. and her pre-med friends).</p>
<p>^^MIT has a four-year grad rate of 83%. Caltech’s is 82%. If the (arguably) most difficult engineering schools in the land can get their kids out in 4…</p>
<p>btw: UCLA tells its Engineering students on Day 1 that they can get out in four years if they want to, but that means essentially zero electives, or repeated courses.</p>
<p>I have diluted the hours. Please take a look at the following link. I also had my doubt about the 30-40 hors/week for EC’s. But, I think that 20-30 hrs/wk is almost a must. If one spends 15 hrs/wk on research, he/she only gets to put in 10-15 hrs for other activities. (I would love to learn what are the average hrs/wk pre-meds spend on EC’s.) Hence, it is not likely for engineering students to do that in 4 years and get in medical school. Yes, there are always exceptions for extremely smart students. However, why risk it (medical school) if you have a back-up plan?</p>
<p>Wait. What exactly are we talking about? Medically related EC’s of 20-30 hours a week? Or just all EC’s , medical or otherwise? I’m sure if you added up all my D’s activities : sorority, volunteering, cell research, med volunteering, shadowing, intramurals, campus organizations, club level Ultimate, she’d scare those numbers pretty easily. But it wasn’t done for med school apps. It’s what she did for fun.</p>
<p>when I saw the 20-30 hours of ECs mention, I thought…no way can an engineering student give that much time to shadowing or other medically related ECs.</p>
<p>Do part-time jobs count at all? My son works as a tutor at his university. Yes, he’s paid. But, with school and his job, he doesn’t have a whole lot of time each week for medically-related ECs…maybe 5-6 hours per week at most.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know what chemical engineering students study. I study electrical engineering, so I picked an engineering example from something I knew. My point still stands.</p>
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<p>Spare me the rolleyes please. Wall street firms seek out students who study engineering, as well as CS, math, and physics in undergrad because the analytical skills picked up in those majors transfer well to those jobs.</p>
<p>Maybe those skills would help you out as a doctor (I don’t know), but if they do, then medical schools obviously don’t think so or don’t care because medical schools don’t favor the more analytical subjects in admissions. My guess: medical schools aren’t run by idiots–they know that you don’t need to be the best thinker to be able to practice medicine. Being a hard worker is more important.</p>
<p>That’s why I argue that it is not useful to study engineering if you already know that you want to be a doctor. Study something you’ll get the best grades in, which is often is the subject you enjoy the most, because that is what is most important academically for medical school admissions.</p>
<p>If you are worried about making good enough grades to get into medical school, why study engineering? If you are the type of student that will struggle to make good grades in the required intro science classes for medical school, you probably won’t be able to earn a good enough GPA in engineering to be competitive in medical school applications.</p>
<p>If you are in the position where you really have to worry about a backup plan, why design your backup plan so that it interferes with your primary goal? Effectively, you are just reprioritizing your goals by doing this. This is why I really don’t understand this.</p>