Hi I am currently a sophomore bio major in CC applying to UC schools thinking of changing to Spanish major. If I was a spanish major in Undergrad, would I have twice as much work trying to get the pre-requisites for med school done? I looked at the pre-reqs for UCLA Geffen School of Medicine and it states 1 yr English,1 yr Physics, Two years Chem, 1 yr Bio, and 1 yr Math. I have basically finished most the classes except the year of Physics. Would this mean in Undergrad I would just need to focus on Spanish major and Physics? What would the bio major students be doing?
What are u going to do w a Spanish degree if u don’t get into med school?
If you want to be a serious med school prospect, you will take ALL of your requirements at the university level. (Some med schools require it.)
No, because you both have to take the same amount of classes. If a university requires 120 credits to graduate, both the biology major and the Spanish major would require 120 total credits. Both students will take the same pre-med classes. However, science majors tend to have more credit requirements. For example, your Spanish major may only require 40 credits and no cognate courses, so you will use some of his/her electives and science requirements to take classes. The biology major may require 48 or 50 credits including (or not) cognate courses in chemistry and math. They are still using elective slots to take the classes, though. You will both round out your classes with additional non-required electives.
So no, you’re not doing more work; you’re both taking the same classes, and the pre-med requirements probably don’t take away more of the bio major’s required classes for the major than you have to take for yours.
So yes, theoretically, you would only have to focus on the major and the physics classes in order to finish your pre-med requirements. The bio students who have already finishing their pre-med classes would be taking upper-level classes in their major, biology, and maybe finishing other general education requirements.
Also, the job prospects for BA biology majors are not much better (or worse) than a BA in Spanish, so don’t let that make the decision for you.
Thanks so much @juillet ! SO basically what you were saying is that the Spanish major would leave more space for other classes so I would take my pre-med requirements/other electives whereas the Bio majors would have less space for filling in classes but their schedule would include the pre-med requirements already? And that technically, we would both be at the same level in terms of how much medical school material we would have learned??
Yeah, that’s basically what I meant - Spanish majors typically require fewer credits but the extra electives will probably be eaten by pre-med requirements; biology majors have more requirements, but a lot of those will satisfy the pre-med requirements, so you’ll probably break even.
Whether or not you’ll be on the same level will depend on what that biology major has taken in class. I would say maybe not - especially if there are upper-level classes in microbiology and genetics that you can’t take that they do. Biology majors will also be better prepared, perhaps, for the style of learning that’s best suited to absorbing large amounts of information in life sciences classes. Perhaps - humanities majors do have higher overall mean scores on the MCAT.