I am pre-health and thinking about pre-dental. However, I do not know which major I want to major in. The several potential majors I am thinking of are: biology, human health, anthropology and human bio, NBB, and sociology.
how should I rank these majors?
I am not for sure if I will pursue science, but I am going towards the science/medical field for my career. I don’t know which major would give me the best insight and help me build my strengths to be a well-rounded candidate for applying to medical school or dental school.
I am not a big fan of writing, so leaning towards more science side, but I also like to take some humanity classes regarding the major. I don’t know which major would give me the best combination that would help me develop the most and gain insights.
I also know that GPA is very important for the application, so I would want to keep it up and also have free time to volunteer/shadow/research.
@calyeegraphy : See other thread and please approach college with more maturity. You need to learn how to write whether it be inside or outside of science. And DO NOT choose your major based upon what you think best aligns with your pre-dental aspirations. Explore and choose whatever you think you’ll enjoy whether it is among the topics you named or not (you have 3 semesters to do some of your pre-dental pre-reqs while exploring courses in different depts before declaring. You don’t need to have your mind made up now). You don’t have to declare until sophomore year second semester. Try to enjoy college for the intellectual and learning experience while also doing what you need to do for pre-dental. If you enjoy courses in your major (you’ll have lots of choice), you’ll probably do well. Worry about controlling the quality of your instruction and get ready to work when you need to. That is the only way to ensure you do well on the DAT and once in Dental School. Don’t go in with the “I just need to protect my GPA” attitude. Definitely don’t overwhelm yourself to the point that you absolutely cannot do well academically, but don’t avoid challenges because you are overly worried about it either.
You may miss out on the best professors (mentoring and teaching) and experiences at Emory if you use that approach and this may shock you, but often forming relationships with key professors can yield a better rec. letter than if you just go in and earn an A in an easy professor’s course and they barely know you (often easier professors KNOW they are easy so are very selective with who they write letters for whereas more challenging instructors are more likely to care about a larger swath of students and their longterm development. They don’t make their courses challenging to punish students and it actually takes lots of effort to support students in a more challenging environment so they tend to look out for students in ways that may surprise you). View Emory as a full experience and not a mere stepping stone. I know it is really hard to do as a pre-professional rising freshmen, but try to view it that way. If you choose a major or make academic choices with GPA constantly on your mind, then Emory won’t be worth much, trust me. You’ll get teaching that is so bland that you’ll wish you (or your family, or whoever) saved your money for a much cheaper school and you may very well lose any DAT advantage Emory could have provided.
Also, given this:https://www.dat-prep.com/dat-scores-for-dental-schools.html#:~:text=The%20average%20DAT%20(AA)%20score,the%20average%20GPA%20was%203.55.
It appears you can take quite a bit of academic risks and pursue a major with more rigorous courses without worrying much. If you do what you are supposed to do, getting at least B+ in most STEM courses and A grades in GER and other courses should not be too hard no matter what and who you take for courses as long as the overall schedule remains balanced enough to allow you to put in the necessary time. You could pretty much choose the BEST (usually more rigorous, but in some cases, they just have a good type of analytical rigor but yield higher grades anyway) instructors for each STEM course you take and likely in other subjects too. You can just optimize your GPA and DAT. If you do it right, a 3.6+ and a much higher than average DAT will make you competitive for an awful lot of dental schools. So again, don’t choose your major or most of your courses based upon the GPA. You’re at Emory, you can do well enough. It is challenging in a good way when done properly but in a fair way to those serious about learning and doing the work.
@bernie12
Hi! thank you very much for your comments. I looked at your comment on the other thread too, and I think that’s what I am looking for. I know that pre-med and pre-health are very risky, so I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. I have a general sense of all those majors and also interested in them, so I don’t know which one should I do. I don’t want to solely do it for GPA and pre-dental just in case I did not get into graduate schools, so I am actually looking for a major that could prepare me for getting a job in the research/science field and also prepare me to do pre-health. That’s why I struggling around those majors and don’t know which one should I pursue.
By reading a lot of your replies and others’ comments, I have a sense that Emory’s system could allow you to dodge the bullet by choosing easy professors but perhaps do not prepare students well enough for MCAT. I am worried about that, so then I have to do even more studying for the standardized test. I choose professors who can lecture well, allowing students to learn the most from the course. Easy professors sometimes don’t lecture as well and so students might have to learn a lot on their own.
I think a lot about my major in the past month, I think I will go for either human health or biology and minor in human health, which might give me more plan Bs and still be learning about something I like. By taking pre-med classes, I would have a good mix of science and humanity classes, which strengthens my weaknesses and prepares me for the test.
@calyeegraphy : Sorry, I haven’t been on here in forever. If you want to make biology employable if you choose it, be sure to find some type of lab research for 2ish years or internship/other experiential opps in biology, and again, try to take poject based labs/course based research teaching labs as part of your curriculum to make yourself employable. And I’ll remind you that “lecture quality” perse is less important than what an instructor is trying to get students to do with the knowledge in the course. Mediocre lecturing can be fine if the instructor finds other ways to make students active learners and facilitates that process well. You mainly just want to check the syllabi and reputations to ensure that instructors are ideally offering more than just exams/quizzes as assessments and offer some problem solving oriented assignments or projects. You don’t want to go to Emory to simply prove that you can take predictable tests again like you did in HS, you want to develop key competencies that could end up as valuable to employers. Often the classes that look like or end up being “a lot of work” outside of just reading the textbook and reviewing slides in preparation for exams and quizzes are the BEST courses in STEM to prep for employment or research (and as long as you don’t have a completely crowded schedule, higher workload courses are easier to do well in because you have graded assignments that buffer against a weak exam performance or two). Just something to think about. Always try to think of your course selection as “what I get to do in this class is…” vs. “what I have to do in this class is…”. Pretend like or be serious about picking up skills that may qualify you for a job or internships/opps that give you experiences that make you a competitive applicant for jobs (or whatever else) post-grad. If you are constantly just cramming for quizzes and tests and that is it, you probably aren’t doing yourself any favors.