EECS vs. CS + Pre Med Difficulty

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>I'm considering doing pre med coursework at Cal if I choose to attend, but my declared major is EECS. And I've heard that combination is a recipe for disaster. If this is the case, would it be easier for me to switch to CS L&S and take pre-med courses or is the difference in difficulty insubstantial? I'm not sure whether I should do..</p>

<ul>
<li>EECS + Pre Med courses</li>
<li>CS L&S + Pre Med courses</li>
<li>BioE + Pre Med courses (there's a Pre Med "pathway," right?)</li>
</ul>

<p>I'm really not sure what to expect in terms of difficulty to be honest.. many say it's very difficult but it's different for each individual! Also I know that GPA is very important for med schools so if I do go down that route I'd like to have a solid chance at some decent to good schools. But at the same time I would like to have a "fallback career" in case I don't get accepted to any med schools, and I really like computers (hence why I applied as an EECS major), and I've heard a BioE grad's salary is substantially lower than that of an EECS grad... </p>

<p>Anyway, I would very appreciate any advice you could provide :)</p>

<p>Thank you very much!</p>

<p>dt</p>

2

<p>"I'm really not sure what to expect in terms of difficulty to be honest.. many say it's very difficult but it's different for each individual!"</p>

<p>You've answered your own question. Nobody knows how well you'll do except for yourself. So take both EECS and premed courses and see how well you perform. Adjust accordingly. If you can't handle both, then make a choice between the two. And if you're still indecisive, then go with bioE premed: limited exposure to engineering, but still enough to net you a higher-paying job than regular bio majors.</p>

3

<p>If your heart is in pre-med, then do Bio E and pre-med.It's hard to dabble in so many difficult (and unrelated if EECS) classes and get a high enough GPA for med school. If it were me, I'd probably do Bio E and pre-med, just my opinion.</p>

4

<p>You also might wanna think about the Bioelectronics option within EECS (option 2C). There is a little bit of overlap. You will have to take chem and bio along with the standard physics, and also some BioE stuff.</p>

5

<p>the bioe upper divisions are not difficult GPA wise as the curves are very generous; however, the lower division courses will probably hurt your GPA (including those pre-med courses like bio, physics, chem, and then some).</p>

8

<p>Chem E is very hard, Rumor says that it is harder than EECS.</p>

<p>Since chem doesn't comprise of too much of the premed requirements, think about whether or not you want to take Chem E classes and major in chem e. Chem E classes are by far harder than Chem classes.</p>

10

<p>actually, 7C isn't required anymore. But yeah, ChemE requirements do overlap nicely with pre-med requirements.</p>

<p>As for the bit about ChemE being harder than EECS, I'm not sure it's fair to say that--you have to realize that EECS has a much much higher admissions standard than ChemE.</p>

11

<p>Med schools are more grade-oriented than grad schools: they prefer to see students who have taken easier courses and gotten As, than harder courses with Bs. (e.g. Phys 8A/B with As looks better to them than Phys 7A/B with Bs.) What they should do is credit the latter with an grade extra point, the way AP courses are in high school, but they don't. </p>

<p>What they're looking for is a personality type that applies itself diligently to uninteresting tasks. This is because a lot of stuff in med school and residency is really fun, but there is also a lot of drudger: somebody has to do scutwork, and it isn't the attendings. They should hire orderlies to take urine samples to the lab at midnight, but med students are free labor. </p>

<p>Moreover, unlike grad students, who by third year are focusing on doing what they are good at, med students have to do a lot of stuff that they're not good at, specifically because they are rotated between specialties every 6-12 weeks. For example, just when you've gotten the surgery rotation routines down, they switch you to pediatrics. Okay, you're getting comfortable with that, now it's time for pyschiatry. Then its on to obstetrics and gynecology. </p>

<p>And they make you wear jackets, while the residents and attendings wear long coats, so the patients know you're not really a doctor, which means that both you and they know you're invading their privacy, performing the second or third physical exam, without doing anything in the slightest to actually help them. (Helpful tip: be kind and solicitous, talk to patients at length, so that they don't feel like a piece of meat. Sometimes this will irk your intern who wants that urine sample taken to the lab NOW, and this can have negative consequences, but do the right thing. Heck, I once diagnosed Munchausen's Syndrome in a patient "diagnosed" as a "brittle diabetic" that the intern had no clue was happening. She had candy and insulin hidden in her purse and was making her blood sugars yo-yo. I also diagnosed spousal abuse--why didn't the intern notice the little bruises on the woman's inner forarms?) </p>

<p>You have to ask yourself some questions re EECS: Do you intrinsically enjoy EECS enough that you think that a career in the field would be fulfilling? Do you feel connected to other students, and enjoy their collaboration and comaraderie? To become a doctor, you have to be a social person. If you like sitting at the keyboard in isolation, medicine isn't going to be right for you. </p>

<p>If you want to do EECS and go to med school, do you think you can earn at least a 3.4 GPA in your first two years, and mostly As in upper-division? Do you think you can do some original research? </p>

<p>You might want to take med-school prereqs over two summer sessions: e.g. biol 1A/1B, chem 3A/3B.</p>

<p>If you're really good in CS, and if you don't get into med school the first time, you could go to Stanford for grad school, and do medically-relevant cross-disciplinary research. Then tell the med schools you want to study medicine in order to understand what areas you can make new contributions to.</p>

12

<p>Thank you very much for your insight and advice.</p>

<p>I have a few follow-up questions.
Would L&S CS be substantially easier than EECS to the point where I could fit in an pre-med course like bio or chem for a given semester?</p>

<p>And... let's say I do EECS for the first two years and then decide I want to switch to CS or some other major that would be easier to fulfill premed prereqs in. Is it unfeasible to make this decision at the end of sophomore year? (in comparison to switching majors ASAP in freshman year if that's possible)</p>

<p>HomeschoolDad: The thing is, I enjoy working with people more than I do working in a cubicle, but I love CS and so forth and not all work environments are going to be as mindnumbingly dull as a cubicle-focused workspace (I hope). Hence my problem. :p</p>

13

<p>To be fair, Berkeley's BioE program has recently changed its curriculum although it's still far from ideal, and still waiting for ABET accreditation!</p>

<p>I used to be BioE to begin with, and I switched out after reviewing my options. It was a choice I did not regret :)</p>

14

<p>Thanks Leftist for being my publicist. lol</p>

<p>BioE is some kind of faux-engineering, so as such it isn't really a good "fall-back" major. Employers who know what they are doing won't get tricked by a BioE degree just because it has the word "engineering" in it.
But to be fair if you KNOW you're going to medschool BioE is good for your grade. The upperdiv is soooo slow-paced, and as long as you beat some 40-50% of the people in the class you'll get an A (as opposed to maybe 60-70% in most other engineering upperdiv).</p>

<p>But after all, do what you like without entirely jeopardizing your grade.</p>

15

<p>BioE doesn't particularly appeal to me.</p>

16

<p>Indeed. I love my engineering upper divs. The lower division courses pretty much sucked- uninteresting and boring (except for e45). What I learn now is so much more interesting.</p>

<p>Unfortunately its also one of the flaws of the engineering curriculum as Engineering Dean of Students Rob Giomi identified: quite a few engineering students transfer out because they hated the lower divs (boring). but if u stick thru it the upper divs are so cool.</p>

18

<p>MCB is a popular major for most premeds because its courses help students prepare for the MCAT, which concentrates heavily on cell/molecular biology concepts.</p>

<p>For example, MCB 130 (cell biology) is not a med school prerequisite, yet many premeds take this course prior to taking the MCAT, because it helps tremendously. This can't be said the courses that IB offers since they are more focused on organism anatomy/physiology, which the MCAT does not test heavily on.</p>

19

<p>If you don't count the differences in College of Engineering and College of L+S, then EECS is pretty much the same as L+S CS in terms of requirements. The only difference is that EECS has to take EE20 and EE40, while CS just has to take EE42, which is basically EE40 without the lab. CS doesn't require physics either, so you could instead take Physics 8 series here to satisfy your pre-med requirements. </p>

<p>But in short, L+S CS doesn't have significantly less requirements than EECS.</p>

20

<p>If you applied to UCSD, you should check out EECS there. </p>

<p>It's advantageous for a premed to attend a university with a med school. For example you can do research on computer applications in biomedicine. You'll have a good chance of earning a rec letter from a med school professor, which is a real plus.</p>

22

<p>^^Thanks for taking the time. That's pretty helpful in general.</p>

23

<p>You have to figure out what you're really good at. For example, I took an upper-division MoBi course, and after I aced the first midterm, the TA asked me, "Are you a junior or a senior?" "Uhm, I'm a sophomore." Then as a senior, I got to take graduate MoBi courses. Gunther Stent invited me to lunch, and holy schmoly, he just zeroed in on my thinking. Harry Rubin, a Nobel nominee for first proposing that viruses can have RNA, not DNA, based on his own findings, let me turn a paper in 3-weeks late (it was a 10-20 page assignment, mine was 59 pages, with 104 citations). I had a building key, and often had the lab to myself late at night and on weekends.
I had a stack pass, just like the grad students. (If you're a research type, that's gold.) My advisor Ed Penhoet invited me to his home Christmas party for his grad students. I had lunches with grad students as well. </p>

<p>I really enjoyed med school at UCSD, except for the 36-hour shifts (now illegal) when I was a zombie-in-sleep-deprivation-pain. I especially loved body-surfing, afternoons getting abalone (the most scrumptious seafood in the world) and night-diving for "bugs" (lobsters). </p>

<p>I got to live in a New Zealand rural hospital for the mentally ill for my psyche rotation. People invited me to stay in their homes. The patients lived humanely in cottages. Then I did a second round of Ob learning from NZ nurse midwives. AMAZING! I body-surfed with Southern Fur Seals. Then stayed on a volcanic isle with Fijians for a week on my trip back. Was invited to due the kava ritual, dived jewel coral reefs, pulled up a 100 pound Tridacna that my hosts devoured. </p>

<p>I had a blast at Berkeley. I had a blast at UCSD, except for the sleep-deprivation-torture periods. </p>

<p>I even roomed with a Stanford grad for an ER rotation in Fresno. In the apt above us a woman was beating up on her husband almost every night. (You can't make this stuff up.) We went swimming together (me wearing fins, he being a former PAC-10 championship finalist-bracket swimmer) x-country skiing in Sequoia National Park (and I beat his a** there, you betcha, except that I slowed down cuz I loved his company), and discovered Basque dining together. </p>

<p>One of the things you can do at Berkeley or UCSD, if you're really smart, and you focus, is, you can become a world's leading expert in something. You can be a knowledge creator.</p>

24

<p>^ whoa thanks for the link.</p>

<p>and whoa I didn't know BioE has such high GPA, even higher than IB ?!#@#$??</p>

26

<p>homeschooldad i enjoyed reading your experience, although your experience is the exception! </p>

<p>The IB courses sounds really interesting according to the website, too bad I'll never be able to take any of them..</p>