<p>“We are comparing MIT to a regularly ‘balanced’ school of which Harvard can serve as a stand-in. The issue then is not whether most engineering students would rather be engineers rather than doctors, for the same is true of every major other than biology: the typical humanities major doesn’t want to be a doctor either”</p>
<p>You are assuming that the drain of students in terms of major comes from majors besides biological sciences ones rather than biology and other pre-med favorites being proportionally decreased at MIT. Most likely, MIT has a decreased proportion of biological sciences majors as well, which would account for a decrease (assuming that bio scie majors are the most common major for pre-meds and they are).</p>
<p>Whether Humanities is more common than Engineering I do not know. 2000 applicants were humanities majors in 08. Unfortunately, engineering doesn’t have its own section and I’m not even sure if it would fall under Other or Physical sciences. Also, it isn’t a matter of being most likely, but the one who puts out the most pre-med applicants. If you are half as likely to go pre-med, but there twice as many of you in general, then the rate of pre-med production is the same on both sides.</p>
<p>[AAMC:</a> FACTS Table 18: MCAT and GPAs for Applicants and Matriculants by Undergraduate Major](<a href=“http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpabymaj08.htm]AAMC:”>http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpabymaj08.htm)</p>
<p>Once again we don’t know that its MIT’s engineering majors that are dropping their pre-med acceptance rates. Since we don’t know, we could go around in circles debating this.</p>