Hello, I’m a tennis player who committed to Hopkins right before the early decision window closed. Needless to say I kind of rushed in picking a major so I could get my app in on time. Right now I signed up for chemical and biomolecular Engineering. I still really haven’t figured out if I want to go to med school (or law school tbh I have no idea at the moment). Do you think it’d be a bad idea to do engineering and premed, and I should switch to public health or neuroscience? Also, does it matter if I switch majors sophomore year and I don’t take electives like Foundations of Brain, Behavior and Cognition (200.141) or Intro to Cognitive Neuropsychology freshman year because I was taking engineering electives?
ChemBE is renowned as one of the hardest majors at Hopkins. Many say that the difficulty is on par with that of BME, but they just don’t get the same prestige. However, it is certainly one of the more popular engineering majors for the pre-med route, since it bears overlap with pre-med requirements. It would certainly be feasible to switch into neuroscience Sophomore year and still play catch up. Know that switching from science to engineering and playing catch-up would be much more difficult. You could try doing engineering at the beginning and see how you like it and then switching; remember that your first semester grades are covered. Also, however, know that the hard meat of ChemBE doesn’t come usually until sophomore year (Transport I & II).
Also, however, I don’t see why you don’t just take an intro neuroscience class freshman year along with engineering courses. I believe some intro-level neuroscience courses count as social science (S), which you can use to fulfill distribution requirements.