Hi I am a senior in high school who is planning to attend a university next year. I am planning to go to medical school after my undergraduate, and I am deciding between chemistry major and chemical engineering major right now. I signed up for chemical engineering, but I am hearing how hard it is and it can lower my chance to get into medical schools since it is harder to get better GPA. However, I think it is very great that if I don’t get into medical school, I have a nice degree that can get me a better job than just chemistry major. So I was wondering how hard chemical engineering major is compared to chemistry major and want some advices if it is a good major for premed. I am very strong at math so I don’t think math would be a GPA killer for me. Also do medical schools consider that engineering is a challenging major and have more generous view in terms of GPA? Thank you!
Most of my classmates who wanted to go to medical school were philosophy majors. My school did not have a pre-med program. The biology major, the chemical engineering and the chemistry majors all had required classes that were not required for med school and were tough classes. Many of the general ed requirements could be met within the context of the philosophy major and so it allowed the max number of electives, which, of course, were the cherry picked classes for med school entrance.
I was not a chem E, but from those that I know went that route; it is a tough major.
Medical schools are unlikely to care about your major, as long as you complete the premed courses.
Both majors will have significant overlap with pre-med courses, but chemical engineering tends to have fewer free electives to take any remaining pre-med courses that do not overlap, or “cherry pick” elective courses for “easy A” grades as described in reply #1 (although philosophy is often considered a “hard” major at many schools). But chemical engineering may be better for post-graduation jobs if you do not get into any medical school (only about half of applicants to MD medical schools in the US get in to any, and many pre-meds do not apply after realizing that their GPA or MCAT score is too low).
I’m not a pre-med student, or a chemistry student, but I am an engineering student and have talked with someone about this. For some reason we got into a conversation similar to this. It was more of pre-med vs. chemical engineering. The woman I was speaking with, who is very knowledgeable, said that she suggests a chemical engineering degree because if for some reason you don’t get into med school, you will have a degree where you can get a job. If you go into pre-med and don’t get into med school, there isn’t really much, if anything, you can do with that. I’d keep what she said in mind while making your decision between chemistry or chemical engineering.
@tt6238, that makes several HUGE assumptions. First, it assumes all majors are equally easy. They aren’t. It also assumes there are no other useful majors to get into medicine. In reality, engineering probably is a good backup. It’s just that it might also be THE reason a student doesn’t get into medical school. It’s hard to get a high GPA. it’s really best as a backup and not very effective at its primary purpose IF medicine is the prime objective. Students really need to think this through. The great planning for a fallback plan may be sabotaging their original mission.