<p>I'm sure there is information in this section concerning dual-majoring as a pre-med student, but I'd like to get responses for my particular situation. I am a freshman at Vanderbilt. I'm still a little unsure about exactly what I want to do, but I know that the medical field is the only one that provides the direct impact to humanity that so interests me. With that said, I don't see myself as necessarily being a practicing doctor. Rather, I am far more interested in research/academia.</p>
<p>This interest in research/academia has led me to heavily considering the pursuit of an MD/PhD degree. Of course, the 12 year post-grad is giving me appropriate pause, as I believe it should for anyone.</p>
<p>Now, to the more pressing issue. I am currently registered as a chemical engineer, but will soon be switching to biomedical engineering. I just signed up for chemical engineering because I had to put down a major and felt pressured. So, my question is, how practical is it to dual-major as a pre-med, with one of the majors being an engineering major, no less? Namely, I would like to dual-major biomedical engineering and neuroscience, as I am most interested in researching diseases of the brain-- primarily alzheimer's disease and related illnesses. </p>
<p>If I could pull this off (possibly taking a few summer courses), while also getting hospital volunteering experience, research experience, shadowing, etc., would this dual-major look impressive to admission committees? I especially wonder this since Vandy is considered a place of fairly strong grade deflation.</p>
<p>Also, I've taken 14 hours these first two semesters because that is just what the engineering curriculum has recommended. Does this make me look bad in the eyes of the admissions committees? </p>
<p>I would not worry too much about Med. Schools adcoms at this point. Just figure out what will work for you personally in UG. While asking, keep in mind that people are at different schools and all of those who graduated with combo of major(s)/minor(s) had different combo / abilities / at different UGs…etc. which made a big difference so their experiences might not be applicable to you.
As an example from my D’s experience:
-D. graduated with Zoology major / Music Composition minor and was 2 classes short from having minor in neuroscience (dropped because of added requirements of one of her Med. School. Played piano since 6 years of age and had extansive music theory training before entering college
-her firend has graduated with Zoology major / Art minor. That I would not advise to anybody, girl must be exceptionally talented as Art is extremely time consuming
-her other firend graduated with tripple major Zoology / Spanish / Latin studies. The girl (non-hispanic) was fluent in Spanish before entering college</p>
<p>All 3 are at 3 different Medical schools currently. All graduated from public state UG.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Engineering major is the hardest in any UG out of all majors. So, 14 hours is probably plenty considering that you are in engineering.</p>
<p>The most important thing is to protect your GPA. I don’t see doing a double major as being a wise decision…especially at Vandy. My nephew is ChemE there and it’s hard to keep a high GPA.</p>
<p>As for your interest in neuroscience. You can still take some classes in this area if that’s an interest, but don’t think you NEED to simply because you have an interest in that area for your future. Doctors don’t need to start studying a specialty while in undergrad. </p>
<p>Pick a major that you will do your best in and that you like. Take a few other classes for interest. </p>
<p>As for taking summer courses in order to “pull this off”: Aside from the expense from that, that would also prevent you from using that time for REUs or other research experiences.</p>
<p>Well, make sure to take pre-reqs and some additional upper Bio are helpful for MCAT. Neuro minor would probably have most of what you need if not all. If you drop your minor, then you will still have to take pre-reqs unless they are covered by you engineering major.</p>
<p>also, from D’s expreience, she did not take any summer calsses, not she had any significant EC’s in a summer, aside from very few. She took care of her major EC’s during school year as they were much easier to obtain at her UG than in our hometown with huge waiting lists for volunteering positions, believe it or not. With great nymber of baby boomes retiring and trying to stay busy, not much is left for HS and UG student summer volunteering and summer paid research programs are very very hard to get into. So, I advise to explore the opportunities at your UG. In addition, D. was involved in her ECs for multiple years which allowed great relationships with superiors and eventually great LORs for Med. School.</p>
<p>I think it’s really cool you’re interested in Alzheimer’s and neuroscience. It also sounds like you’re interested in biomedical engineering. Being interested in a subject is a logical reason to want to take classes in those departments and potentially major in one or both of them.</p>
<p>As Mom2 already pointed out, just because you’re interested in one or both of them doesn’t mean you have to major in it. You can major in whatever you want and take the premed prereqs alongside and be competitive for med school. Some reasons this is true: 1) no one* expects entering med students to have devoted considerable academic time to the specific area of medicine they want to go into–just knowing “medicine” is enough, 2) you won’t have any more opportunities to study something unrelated to medicine “just because,” so undergrad is a great way to learn a lot about a lot of things–and one of the ways to accomplish that is with your major, 3) med schools are looking for smart kids who are critical thinkers–they will take care of teaching you the science the way they want you to learn it. You can be a smart kid who is a critical thinker in basically any academic major (definitely more challenging to demonstrate this if you choose a vocational major, like business or nursing).</p>
<p>Another perhaps more subtle point is that while you may be interested in Alzheimer’s and neuroscience now, as a freshman undergrad, there’s no way to say that you’ll still be interested in neuroscience when you’re finished with any of your degrees. At the same time, no one’s going to penalize you for changing your mind at any point along the way. As far as I can tell, it seems like you should know that medicine is right for you when you’re done with undergrad; you should know what general specialty (eg pediatrics or internal medicine or surgery or…) is right for you when you’re done with med school; you should know what subspecialty (critical care or cardiology or surgical oncology or…) when you’re done with residency; and then you do a fellowship and you’re done. </p>
<p>Point being: you don’t have to decide now. In fact, if you decide now, you’ll probably change your mind a bunch of times anyway! So far I’ve gone from wanting to be a surgeon to a pediatric cardiologist to something in internal medicine, and I’m not even an extreme example. </p>
<p>*No one: since you’re interested in MD/PhD, you are probably expected to have some idea of what kind of field you want to go into because you will probably want to go somewhere that is known for that field and you’ll want to be able to demonstrate you know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>My question for you: why MD/PhD? If you don’t see yourself as a practicing doctor, why bother with the MD in the first place?</p>
<p>I see a requirement for 127 credit hours in BME. </p>
<p>Mathematics 15
Basic Sciences 24
Introductory engineering & computing 6
Electrical engineering 7
BME core 31
BME electives 11
Science, engineering, math (SEM) electives 9
Liberal Arts Core 18
Open electives 6 </p>
<p>Total hours 127 </p>
<p>You need to review the science requirements to ensure you meet the premed requirements. If not, you may need to take additional classes. Once you have covered them in your 4 year plan, then you really get to see if you have additional openings on your schedule to do any external classes. You still have 100 credit hours left over (33 hrs per year) + any premed requirements not met by biomed curriculum. </p>
<p>^it is not only this but the fact that engieering hours will be way way much more challenging than any other credit hours. No wonder that in my D’s bs/md program, any major or doulbe or whtaever combo was allowed in UG. However, all majors required to stay in UG for 4 years, while any engineering majors had to spend 5 years in UG, they were not allowed to matriculate to the Med. School in the program after 4 years.</p>
<p>First, concerning MD/PhD… I would not say that I am completely opposed to being a practicing doctor, but it just doesn’t appeal to me as much as research and possibly becoming a professor of medicine. I have no idea how hard the latter is but I’m not sure I want to know the truth about that. Either way, from what I’ve read this seems to be a good way to accomplish these goals. In fact, part of the reason I was thinking about doing a neuroscience dual-major was because I thought I could not pursure only a neuroscience PhD if I didn’t study it in undergrad. Is that not correct? This is just in case I decide to drop the MD off MD/PhD, although that is certainly not the plan.</p>
<p>Texaspg, I absolutely understand that the time restriction is tight. I also came in with my only AP credit being AP Calc AB. I know that AP courses don’t count for medical school admissions but since I’m in engineering I’ll complete the math requirement.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the only class (I believe) that is not standard within the BME curriculum is organic chem, which I have to work in at some point. I really need to get my self switched over to the BME department so I can get an advisor to help me plan this. It seems that I might have to take second semester physics, organic chemistry I, intro biology, and diff eq. at the same time next semester. I suppose I should be fine with this as a pre-med, but I have to say it concerns me because I’ve heard intro biology is incredibly difficult here (everywhere?) and of course organic is the bane of many. For this reason, I was hoping to knock one of these out this summer, but I have fairly “bad” schools around my home. Please don’t take that the wrong way, I just don’t know how to say it properly. As such, I’m both concerned that Vandy won’t count it and that medical schools might question me taking a hard class at an “easier” college.</p>
<p>Lastly, I have to admit I’m a little concerned about BME. I just keep stumbling upon places where people say the job market is sparse and I’ve personally seen the data that shows, of the engineering majors here, it has the lowest salary. While it is my intention to go into medicine, will I be out of luck if it doesn’t work out? Also, I read on the BME section of our website that it, as a major, has the highest acceptance % to med school. I find this hard to believe?</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>P.S. I forgot to mention that I also thought pulling a biomedical eng/neuroscience major would make me look better to med school adcoms… I guess I am trying too hard.</p>
<p>“It seems that I might have to take second semester physics, organic chemistry I, intro biology, and diff eq. at the same time next semester. I suppose I should be fine with this as a pre-med,”
-this combo may or may not be fine, depending on school. You do NEED a great advising specifically in regard to taking these classes together at YOUR school.
As for comparison, D. took care of taking only 2 and by no means more than 3 “difficult” classes in the same semester. However, what is “difficult” very much depends on you and your school. Her intro Bio was extremely difficult and so were both Orgo and Physics. Maybe it is not so at your school. Combining Intro Bio with Orgo and Physics would not be a good idea at D’s school. Math was never a concern.
You see how much your advising become so crucial, not advising here on CC, but advising at your school.
And again, forget Med. School at this point. No combo of major(s) / minor(s) will impress them anyway, they have PhDs in a pool of applicants. The only way to get in is to have very high GPA and decent MCAT score and good guality of ECs in addition to “smaller” factors like LOR’s, good communication skills,…</p>
<p>If you’re applying MD/PhD, your research experience is right up there with the weight of your MCAT and GPA so spending your summers taking classes is not good and yes, you will be judged for taking classes at “bad” universities in your home town.</p>
<p>Since you are just a freshman, it’s perfectly fine, but know that your answer to kristin’s why MD/PhD was definitely inadequate. It sounds like a PhD is much more to your liking and you will accomplish your goal of being a professor faster than as an MD/PhD (straight PhD is pretty much a guaranteed 2-4+ year head start). I’m assuming given your posts that “professor of medicine” really means “neuroscience prof at a medical school” because it sure doesn’t sound like you want to teach residents or students on the wards. </p>
<p>If you’re so interested in studying neuroscience, why do BME? Why not just be a neuroscience major and take some BME classes? Regardless, if you do neuro research you could pursue a neuro PhD although you should at least take some neuro classes in undergrad mainly because how else will you know if you actually like neuroscience?</p>
<p>Tenure track professors make up about 15% of all the people who earn PhDs (that pool includes both MD/PhDs and PhDs). About half of the people with PhDs leave academia and work in industry.</p>
<p>As an engineering major, you will do more than meet the Math requirements for Premed. So if you can get credit for the AP class, great. </p>
<p>If you are not sure about medicine, Chemical engineering is a much better major for job market. Biomed works mainly because most premed requirements are already prepackaged in the major. </p>
<p>Knocking off core classes required for premed outside of your main college is a bad idea. You need an year of biology with labs and if you want to take a shortcut on them, it will hurt you with MCAT. Liberal arts classes OTOH, are a different issue.</p>
<p>OP–kristin has given you some great reasons why not to double major. Esp in engineering with its lockstep curricula and demanding classes.</p>
<p>BTW, most of D1’s science profs in med school are not MD/PhDs, but PhDs in biosciences. I’m pretty sure this is typical. If you really don’t like the clinical part of medicine, a PhD may be a better career path for you. It can still get you to the same place.</p>
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<p>Sounds like D2’s course schedule her sophomore year, but add in an upper level humanity class, unpaid research asst hours, plus TAing a math class. It was her worst semester ever in terms of exhaustion, but she managed Ok gradewise. Still in retrospect, she said she should have never taken 22 credits, plus research, plus teaching, plus sorority rush all at the same time. But unless she gave up her summer research program to take summer classes, there wasn’t another option.</p>
<p>The take-away–you do what you need to do to get it done.</p>
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<p>Vandy (and most other colleges) will require you to get written permission in advance from your major department to take required coursework at other schools. Check with your departmental advisor; either the dept will approve or it won’t. Problem solved.</p>
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<p>Not correct. You may need to take some upper level remedial (undergrad) coursework as part of your PhD training. Or do some intense self-study to prepare yourself to take grad level courses, but you don’t need have any major formal background in neuroscience for a MD/PhD program in neuroscience. D1’s med school roommate is MD/PhD and is entering a new-to-her field. She’s taken some remedial undergrad coursework to catch her up so she’s prepared for grad level classes. No one in her program cared she need to do so. (They also didn’t cut any slack w/r/t to her academic timetable. She often was taking all her med school courses plus 1-2 senior level science or math classes all at the same time.)</p>
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<p>As Mark Twain once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damed lies and statistics.” The subgroup of BME majors that applies to medical school will be quite small and self-selected. BME could very well have the highest acceptance percentage because only a tiny handful of high stats, highly motivated & prepared students apply each year–the very kind of students who are most likely to get accepted anyway. Other BMEs won’t bother because they weren’t interested in medicine to start with.</p>
<p>P.S. I forgot to mention that I also thought pulling a biomedical eng/neuroscience major would make me look better to med school adcoms… I guess I am trying too hard.</p>
<p>lol…you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last to think this way. Too many pre-meds are choosing certain majors because they think they’ll sound sexy to the Adcoms. Wrong.</p>
<p>Heck, we’re not even sure if Adcoms even do much more than glance at the actual name of the major. </p>
<p>Besides, biomedE is very limiting at the undergrad level if you decide not to go any further. At least with a BS ChemE, you can get a good paying job.</p>
<p>*Quote:
Also, I read on the BME section of our website that it, as a major, has the highest acceptance % to med school. I find this hard to believe?
*</p>
<p>?? I’m not sure if the individual eng’g disciplines have their own stats for med school admittance. For one thing, there are too many variants in naming the disciplines. Some are BioE, BioMedE, Bio&ChemE, etc.</p>
<p>That’s what I was thinking too. The MDs at my SOM are all professors of medicine in that they teach residents and students about clinical medicine. </p>
<p>And for what it’s worth, most of my basic sciences med school profs are PhDs, not MD/PhDs. You don’t need an MD to work for a School of Medicine or to teach medical or grad students. You would need a PhD though.</p>
<p>Still, it seems like the combo of BME and neuroscience is kind of random–although I only have a basic understanding of both, so maybe that’s why. Perhaps they’re more related than I realize (wouldn’t be the first time…). </p>
<p>I guess at this point, it doesn’t seem like you’ve done enough research to have a convincing reason for pursuing both BME and neuroscience rather than just one or the other. I would encourage you to keep researching! You’re just a freshman–no one expects you to be an expert in any of these fields and no one even expects you to know what you want to study forever at this point. Heck my brother’s a second semester sophomore and just changed his major for the 3rd time (mech E, business/finance, computer science). You also might look into the jobs MD/PhDs do compared to the jobs MDs do compared to the jobs PhDs do–they’re surprisingly different (in my opinion) and not as straightforward as “research and see patients, see patients, research.”</p>
<p>It depends on exactly what area of neuro the OP is interested in, kristin. </p>
<p>D2 works in a cross-over field (neural imaging) that deals directly with both neuroscience and BME. In fact, she’s the liason between the the BME research group and the neuro/psychiatry research group because she has a background in both areas. </p>
<p>There’s also a newish specialty at the grad level called neural engineering. (See: [Neural</a> engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_engineering]Neural”>Neural engineering - Wikipedia)) Lots of exciting stuff going on in that field. One of D2’s friends (fellow premed and neuro/math major with 35+ MCAT) opted to go the neural engineering route instead of med school. </p>
<p>Neuromechanics/modern prothesis design involves both BME and neuroscience since the direction that’s going seems to be developing a mechanical prostheses that are controlled by the user’s nerve/brain signals much like their own limbs are. Neural rehabilitation (regrowing/repairing damaged nerves using biological scaffolding and biochemical cell growth stimulators), neural modulation (using devices to deliver drugs and/or to otherwise moderate errant nerve signalling in Tourette’s, depression, OCD, Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders), and some facets of computation neuroscience all involve a combination of neuroscience and BME. And, of course, so does neural imaging.</p>
<p>I also was just reading about a whole new research area that’s opening up that uses laser stimulation via the optic nerves to treat intractible depression and other neuro-pychiatric disorders. Works similiarly to ECS therapy but without the convulsions which can do permanent brain damage.</p>
<p>So I can see the utility of that combo, but I do agree with you it’s way, way too soon for the OP to know exactly what he wants to do. Or whether he will need both disciplines and just how much of each he’ll need.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the further responses. The most confusing thing to me is the insistence that I don’t have to know what I want to do yet. If I stop taking engineering courses in favor of neuro, it will be very tough to get caught back up and certainly take summer work. I don’t understand how I can afford to not know what I want to do.</p>
<p>Concerning the PhD in Neuroscience-- this might be more appropriate for me, I admit. The thing that worries me about getting a PhD is the highly competitive world of academia and the possibly dry job market. Not to mention, how long might I reasonably expect this to take?</p>
<p>after undergrad a PhD in neuroscience would reasonably take ~5 years after which you would do at least one post doc for probably another 3-5 years depending on how productive you’ve been. After your post-doc you could try to jump to tenure track assistant professor. At this point it is extremely variable how long/how likely you could get promoted to associate professor and then professor.</p>
<p>In contrast, an MD/PhD will be 7-9 years post college, then depending on your field, it would be 3-10 more years before you’re applying for assistant professor positions and unlike a post-doc, at least 2-4+ of those 10 years will not be spent doing research. For example there is a good chance I will eventually pursue an internal medicine subspecialty. I would probably apply to a fast track residency where my internal medicine training is shortened from 3 years to 2 and then in the final year of my fellowship (4 years after graduating from MD/PhD) I would have protected research time with which to try and get enough data to apply for a K08 grant and launch myself into an assistant professor job.</p>