<p>Does it really affect med school chances if a person does a bio major or per med program?</p>
<p>Premed is not a program, a person is a premed if they are taking med school required courses alongside their major. In other words, if you have a biology major and you are taking the prerequisite courses for med school, you are a premed. You can also become a premed with any major.</p>
<p>With only a few exceptions, one’s choice of major does not affect one’s chance og gaining acceptance to medical school. You can major in any academic area. D1 has classmates whose majors range from Spanish and English Lit to music composition & theory to forestry to engineering and mathematics.</p>
<p>So long as you fulfill the admission requirements for medical school, you can major in anything at all.</p>
<p>NOTE: statistically speaking terms of acceptance percentages, math majors and philosophy majors do best and vocational career majors (nursing, business, nutrition, accounting, exercise science, etc) do the worst.</p>
<p>The major doesn’t matter; what matters is taking the required pre-med courses. These are two very different things.</p>
<p>i have a question related to that:
is it smart to do biomedical engineering as a pre-med major? i’ve heard it gives u an edge in medical school but i’v also heard that its extremely difficult to get a high GPA in it. any advice is appreciated thanks</p>
<p>Does it really affect med school chances if a person does a bio major or per med program?</p>
<p>Your question is a common mistake. It isn’t a choice of one or the other. The situation is this:</p>
<p>You major in ANYTHING you want…English, bio, History, Music, Eng’g, WHATEVER.</p>
<p>AND…you also take the premed prereqs of Bio, chem, ochem, physics, math, and the new prereqs (biochem, psych, and maybe some others??)</p>
<p>You should not be doing what is considered “smart” by other people. You should have a major that you personally want and try your best in any. Many people switch out of engineering, not just pre-meds. Engineering is the toughest major, but it does not mean that GPA has to suffer.</p>
<p>No major gets you bonus points. My son is majoring in Classics this fall, and someone told him that he would get an advantage in admissions. Of course, that’s nonsense.</p>
<p>^Well, he has a better chance at higher score in Verbal section of the MCAT - my D.'s weakest section.</p>
<p>NOTE: statistically speaking terms of acceptance percentages, math majors and philosophy majors do best and vocational career majors (nursing, business, nutrition, accounting, exercise science, etc) do the worst.</p>
<p>I think that some majors, by the nature of their subject matter and how that info is applied, better prepare students for the MCAT and med school. </p>
<p>If your major is one that simply requires the memorization of facts and then spitting them out on exams, then that may not be good practice for taking the MCAT. If your major is one that requires taking facts and info and then applying them in some kind of logical fashion, that may be a better prep. JMO</p>
<p>On paper, your major doesn’t really matter, as long as you have taken all the pre-med track courses (i.e. math, orgo, bio). However, and this is just my opinion here so don’t attack me for it, some majors may have a slightly easier time of it. That is, it is harder to maintain a high GPA in the hard sciences and engineering versus the humanities (though I’m not saying that being a humanities major is easy). That’s just how it falls statistically. Now, medical schools don’t care what your major is. It then follows that they care more about your GPA and MCAT. Now, if it is easier to maintain a high GPA in a humanities discipline, then those students may have a slight advantage. In other words, it is harder to maintain your high standing (relative to other students) in the hard sciences than in the humanities (partly because of rampant grade inflation). </p>
<p>Since medical schools still need to maintain their high average GPAs of admitted students to reinforce their reputation, they would, conceivably, be more inclined to admit a humanities major with a 3.8, 3.9 GPA versus a physics major with a 3.4, 3.5 GPA. </p>
<p>This was just a thought experiment, however. Take it as you will. In the end, you should pursue what you love, as that will lead you to your greatest success.</p>
<p>Ability to memorize is extremely important. It is much more important than ability to analyze. So, in this sense, your success in Orgo / Bio will be more related to your ability to absorb in Med. School than you success in Math. Yes, there are few systems where Physics / Gen. Chem is utilized a lot. Heart / lungs - physics, kidney - Gen. Chem. But if you are like me who cannot remember anything, you will be way better off in engineering or CS, you actually may not be suited for Med. School at all. I would not survive a week in Orgo, I will be out…</p>
<p>I would say ability to memorize and analyze are both very important. For instance, you will need to be able to memorize the signs and symptoms of a particular disease as a doctor, but then you will need to analyze the patient as a whole to discover these symptoms and diagnose them. Not only that, but you will need to do a good analysis because many diseases present with the same symptoms. That’s what separates a good doctor from one who is sued for malpractice. </p>
<p>Anyway, Orgo involves a little bit of both. You will need to memorize the mechanism and then you’ll need to apply the concepts to the problems. You will need to analyze the molecule you’re given to figure out how to apply what you’ve memorized. It’s a little higher level thinking. Most of the problems on my Orgo exams gave you a molecule you’ve never seen before in your life and asked you how to synthesize it from something else. If it was just rote memorization, I would have done a lot better than how I did.</p>
<p>would say ability to memorize and analyze are both very important</p>
<p>I agree. And that’s why I think those who are ONLY good at memorizing can have trouble with the MCAT.</p>
<p>Well, to memorize all those pharma names and the memory required to learn absolutely new language (so to speak) in Neuro block in Med. School go way way beyond anything mentioned above. Most of it does not relates to anything, vocabulary that has no connection to anything, analyzing it is futile, just got to remember. How? I have no idea. I lost ability to memorize anything, while working in IT, it requires pure analytical skills. Conceptual stuff seems to be also easier for my D., as I imagine for most people (as an example, Gen Chem is easy, Orgo is not. Gen. Chem is actually only hard for those who tries to memorize it). But she is lucky to have a good memory also.</p>
<p>Any will do. The school cares that you meet the prerequisites to enter medical school and nail the MCAT.</p>
<p>That’s all.</p>