Hello, I am currently in 11th grade, and I can’t seem to chose what I would like to do. I am a generally well rounded person(or at least I like to think so lol) and I have a passion for music(composition to be specific) and psychology. I would like to be a psychiatrist and hopefully pursue music on the side. ( My ultimate dream is to do music full time and medicine as a backup, which I am not even sure is possible. Don’t get me wrong, I still love medicine, but I would like to try out different things in life). So, would it be possible for me to do a double degree in psychology and music and still do my pre-med classes (I am willing to stay longer than 4 years in college) or should I give up on one of them and focus on the other?
Ps; If this is in a wrong place, I can take it to where it should have been
Thank you in advance
Melanie
It is difficult to do a degree in music and psychology because it’s not just a double major but double degrees and you might have requirements for the BS (music) and BA (psychology), plus you’d have any requirements for med school to complete. I think you are talking at least one extra year, which might be okay with you.
Making a career out of music tends to be an elite-or-bust type of thing. So is getting into medical school. You may want to consider what your backup plans are in case you do not succeed at either of these extremely competitive targets.
In terms of studying music, psychology, and pre-med course work, that can be a very large number of courses that may not fit into a four year schedule without significant overloading, depending on the college. Also note that music performance courses and courses with labs (like many pre-med courses) can be high amounts of time and work commitment.
You don’t need psychology major to become a psychiatrist or the music major for that matter. You do need to fulfill your premed requirements, take MCAT, do other things expected of premeds like volunteer, shadow, research etc. in order to be a competitive applicant. There are performing orchestra groups that fill auditoriums and the entire orchestra is composed of doctors. It is not unusual for physicians to be interested in music.
https://tmcorchestra.org/
Even graduates from Juliat cannot gurantee a musical success, how can you make it a backup of medical career? Music career is normally boom or bust, only the top few are sucssessful, most of them are failures. You have a wishful thinking, perhaps you should first try to get into a “good” college and then decide what you want to do once you are there.
Yes, you can do a double major in Psychology and Music( like in piano performance). These will be two degrees. You have to take all pre-med prerequisites for applying to MD schools.
While perhaps this can be done, it certainly isn’t advisable. Completing all the required courses for Music and Psychology-and completing all the required courses for medical school admission, especially in light of the fact that there will be little or no overlap in these three areas-will be extremely difficult. And since medical schools are looking for very high GPAs, this appears to be a recipe for high stress from day one of college.
Do you know anyone who is currently a pre-med in college, or perhaps a current medical student? If so, ask them about their major, how rigorous the undergrad coursework was, and what they did/are doing, to keep up their grades.
And in addition to the coursework, there’s the MCAT, plus the other things(ECs, etc) that are necessary for a successful medical school application.
So start by speaking with a current pre-med/med student; they can give you a better sense of the time demands of that course of study.
Double major is one of the most common causes for pre-med failure (along with finishing undergrad early, majoring in hard science/engineering, taking more-than-two hard science classes with labs at the same time, spend too much time/effort on research/ECs/part-time jobs and hurting their GPA, …)
You can apply as a music major and apply to medical school as that, as long as you take pre med required courses. No major or minor required in them. Look up what those courses are. Some students I’ve known don’t even take those premed courses at college during the academic year and take care of them elsewhere over the summer or after college grad atvs whole other college. Medical schools don’t tend to care what your major is. Just that you have great grades both overall, and in your STEM courses ,; they look at two separate GPAs, and great MCAT scores. Being a music major would be a nice change and looked upon favorably, though ancillary things like that don’t count much in the admissions assessment for med school.
Look up music therapy as a job to see if it appeals to you. What you describe as likes in your first post seems to fit that job. If you can find someone around doing it, shadow them and ask how they got to their position. If you like it, look for schools with that in mind. If not, time wasn’t really wasted. It should help you align more specifically what you think you might like.