I was wondering how tough it is to do both engineering and pre-med at college.
What majors do pre-med students tend to take ??
I just wanna make sure that I have a possibility in the engineering field if I don’t get into the medical school.
<p>It's suicidal.</p>
<p>It also happens to be what I'm about to do ;p</p>
<p>Med Requirements are just 1yr bio, 2yr chem+lab, 1yr physics+lab, sometimes a bit of math and english...
A major in Biomedical engineering almost fulfills all of the requirements as part of the curriculum. Most other engineering fields cover big chunks of it, esp. any math, physics, or chemistry requirements.</p>
<p>There should be a decent amount of overlap.</p>
<p>For instance, you woul want to take enough calculus to get you into the calculus based physics for engineers as opposed to life-sciences.</p>
<p>A pre-med can be any major they wish...there need be no relevance to medical school or science.</p>
<p>It's not quite suicidal, but defintely depressing. Med schools like very high everything, and engineering is ruthless in this aspect (a.k.a gpa). It's really important you know that pre-med with engineering is going to be difficult before you commit to it</p>
<p>The "engineers hurt themselves for med school admissions because engineers always have lower GPA's and med schools just look at the numbers" ... (wheeze ... gasp) ... issue is endlessly debated around here. Talk to 100 people and you'll seemingly get 100 different answers.</p>
<p>My cousin was the head guy and grand poobah for medical admissions for a top midwestern medical school for perhaps 15 years (just stopped with this a couple of years ago). Some of his better friends held the same positions at some other medical schools. He's told me numerous times that while SOME medical schools might just look at the raw numbers and leave it at that, MOST schools don't, and the TOP schools most definitely look beyond the raw numbers to the quality of the undergraduate institution, the amount of grade inflation, and the undergraduate major and difficulty thereof -- with special attention paid to engineers because MEDICAL SCHOOLS LIKE ENGINEERS.</p>
<p>This advice -- from my cousin -- is from someone who should know. My son is planning on majoring in BME. He's not currently thinking about the medical school route -- unless its some type of MD/Ph.D program -- but he was happy to hear that medical schools are not all so myopic to look only at GPA without the full context of the applicant's background and abilities.</p>
<p>being a doctor and being an engineer are two very different things. while there are some who combine both disciplines into their career (for instance, medical device inventors), most end up doing one or the other (usually the medicine part) and never tap their other expertise for the rest of their life. if you're doing engineering just to "look better" to med school adcoms, ask yourself if all those late nights studying and doing problem sets for those engineering classes will be worth it in the end.</p>
<p>BME engineering is a very good option if you like engineering but still want to have the possibility of attending a med school. However, if you are pretty much set on being a doctor then you should just do the traditional pre-med majors, like biology, etc.</p>
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BME engineering is a very good option if you like engineering but still want to have the possibility of attending a med school. However, if you are pretty much set on being a doctor then you should just do the traditional pre-med majors, like biology, etc.
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<p>On the other hand . . .
because medicine is getting more (not less) dependent on technology, those with a natural facility for the technological side of medicine are not only necessary for the profession, they have an inherent advantage in that they can quickly grasp the meaning of the technology, digest it, and then get on to good old fashioned medical advice-giving. My cousin -- formerly in medical school admissions -- says his top-tier medical school increasingly liked technologically proficient students in the student body. The world requires many kind of doctors. Engineering isn't a background suitable for everybody. And it's way to difficult to do it as some sort of "edge" in admissions (especially since some believe it actually "hurts" in admissions, at least with some -- straight by the numbers -- schools).</p>
<p>It's not unlike the legal profession where a huge percentage of law students come from the humanities (history, pol-sci, english, psychology, economics, etc.), but many come from more specialized backgrounds like business (accounting, finance, etc.) and tech/sci (physics, chemistry, engineering, etc.). Those with the more specialized backgrounds tend to find niches in the legal industry -- mergers & acquisitions, patent law -- which value their specialized backgrounds within a legal context.</p>
<p>Well the statistic says that half of the pre-med students don't get into med schools. With the case of my cousin she majored in biology and did pre-med but didn't get into med school this year. Shes currently working as a technician for a hospital doing a same thing over and over. And she really doesn't like what she is doing right now.
Let's say if I do chem engineering or BME, and pre-med on the side.
If I don't get into pre-med I still have the option of being a engineer with a decent paycheck.
plus i heard med schools likes engineer majors ?? Is it true ??</p>
<p>As far as I understand it, SOME med schools penalize engineering majors (that is, the lower GPA's that engineering majors will almost always have hurt them for admissions purposes), while OTHER med schools not only adjust GPA's upwards for some programs (like engineering) but actively seek engineers because they believe these students have excellent chances of great success in med school and in the industry. Basically, you need to major in something that suits your interests and ability. If you are an engineering type of person, you either know it now or you can soon know it. It's not something you can really fake. It's way too difficult and way too demanding.</p>
<p>This can be a tough route for a couple reasons. First, undergrad engineering programs tend to be pretty tough so your GPA may be lower (which the med schools school may or may not give you a break on). Second, depending on which engineering major you pick the merged schedules could be a bear. When I was an engineering undergrade we had something like 8-10 free electives across the 4 years ... a pre-med student would chew up most of the electives with tough biology, chemsitry, and other pre-med courses. It can be done but it is a tough road.</p>
<p>Yes, most med schools WILL adjust for the deflated GPA...</p>
<p>but not nowhere near enough. Maybe they'll add 0.2 or 0.3 to your GPA when it really should be adjusted by .6 or more. Since most physicians have never experienced the engineering curriculum, I doubt that they can truly appreciate how much the GPA is deflated. An average liberal arts GPA is like a 3.5... the average engineering GPA is a 2.7.</p>