engineering major and pre-med??

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
21

<p>Sakky</p>

<p>"So the question is do you want a doctor who is hard-working, but has weak people skills, or do you want one that does have people skills, but doesn't want to work hard?"</p>

<p>The latter, by far. </p>

<p>Once through training, doctors can decide how hard they want to work, take part time jobs, etc. So the unlikely lazy people who make it that far, but bring people skills to the endeavor, will be prized for the work they do. Those with weak people skills are likely to be terrible doctors. They may manage to remain employed, and even appear sucessful, but their patients will suffer.</p>

22

<p>gizmo9187</p>

<p>I agree that raw medical school acceptance rates are too easily manipulated to be meaningful. A few places give detailed descriptions of applications by GPA and MCAT scores. I think Amherst does this. These give a clearer picture of how the applicants appear to med schools, and how they do in admissions. Of course, until late in their junior year no one knows what their GPA and MCAT's will be, so even this is of limited value. For the handful of places that give detailed data, it looks like what you would expect. If you go to a good or great college, have high grades, and high MCAT scores you have a good chance of getting in. I have not seen admissions data for colleges that would not be in the US News top 100, so I have no idea how good students at such places fare. If grades or MCATS are lower, the chances of admission drop off quickly.</p>

<p>Although some colleges do discourage many of their students from applying, either with weedout courses early in their careers, or on the basis of GPA and MCAT later on, this has more effect on the published numbers than it does on the likelihood that an individual will get into med school. The people the colleges discourage are those whose chances are low to begin with. The colleges encourage those with good prospects. Again, individuals will not know where they stand until it is far too late to switch colleges.</p>

23

<p>Do note that I am involved with these discussions primarily for the love of debate.</p>

<p>To say that one should not judge another's chances unfavorably because we do not know them would mean that the only responses should be positive or none at all. </p>

<p>The original post does not seek only favorable responses, albeit who doesn't love positive reenforcement from strangers. If the documented outcome of all med school applicants is 50-50 acceptance, the argument as to whether one will fall in or out requires very little substantiation.</p>

<p>Love the dialogue.</p>

24

<p>Giz,</p>

<p>I understand. It is just that these students put their hearts on their sleeves about their desire to go into medicine. Being a premed is discouraging enough, they can read the statistics, so I am reluctant to pass out any more negative words.</p>

<p>Along those lines, Sakky, everything I said before changes for those engineers who apply to MD PhD programs. Now the potential liability becomes an asset. If you want to get a doctorate in biomedical engineering, computational biology, bioinformatics, etc, then you need the background provided by engineering undergraduate studies. Your standard liberal arts premed is not prepared to enter such a program, while engineers are. So now all those hours invested can pay off.</p>

<p>Medical schools will look at you as a future scientist, rather than a future doctor, and evaluate you more or less the same way a graduate program would without the MD. They will worry much less about your bedside manner, and much more about your abilities as a scientist. Now many people who get PhD's along with MD's end up practicing medicine, but not doing research. So again, if you like engineering, think hard about whether you really want to be a doctor. If so, consider an MD PhD program.</p>

25

<p>
[quote]
Sakky</p>

<p>"So the question is do you want a doctor who is hard-working, but has weak people skills, or do you want one that does have people skills, but doesn't want to work hard?"</p>

<p>The latter, by far. </p>

<p>Once through training, doctors can decide how hard they want to work, take part time jobs, etc. So the unlikely lazy people who make it that far, but bring people skills to the endeavor, will be prized for the work they do. Those with weak people skills are likely to be terrible doctors. They may manage to remain employed, and even appear sucessful, but their patients will suffer.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Afan, I think you misunderstood what I said, although that may be partly my fault for not being entirely clear. When I said do you want a doctor who is good with people but lazy or is bad with people but hard working, the 'You' I was referring not to patients, but rather with the adcoms. It is the adcoms that have to decide what sort of doctor they eventually want. </p>

<p>Hence, in that context, what you said is irrelevant. You can't talk about a guy who chooses to work part-time and husband his/her time, because the guy has yet to survive the grueling training process. It is precisely that training process that requires hard work. You can talk about how it's important to have all these people skills, but we both know that that's not going to help you when you're an exhausted resident who's hardly slept for weeks and you still gotta pull another shift. It's your internal work ethic that is going to pull you through that, not whether you know how to talk.</p>

<p>I also refuse to concede the point that engineers necessarily have poor personalities, and that's why they have such difficulty in the admissions process. How would you know whether an engineer has a poor personality without actually interviewing that engineer? Yet the fact is, plenty of engineering premeds are eliminated by the adcoms before they even get to the interview stage. The first screens are numerical - and basically, if you don't have a certain GPA and MCAT score, your application will be thrown away before you even get the chance to talk to a human being. Hence, the chain of events that you have outlined does not occur. It's not that engineering students are being rejected because their personality is poor. They are being rejected even before they have a chance to demonstrate their personality. The adcoms just see their low grades and reject them out of hand. It's not the personality, it's the grades.</p>

26

<p>As I said, the problem is not that engineers necessarily have "poor personalities", it is that admissions committees believe that engineers are more interested in science than in people. I am not claiming this is true, but it is what many people think. They also worry that those who would choose the life of an engineering student do so in part because hey are willing to be this isolated. </p>

<p>As I said, engineers do not do that well, controlling for GPA, when they get to the clinical part of medical school. There has been lots of research of predicting medical school performance based on college grades and MCAT scores. The admissions committees know this. Being doctors, they also know that the science knowledge the engineers posses is not that useful.</p>

<p>As I said, it is quite unusual for people to flunk out, or drop out, of medical school or clinical training. So apparently it is not that difficult to find peoplle who will do the work. All premeds work hard. Nearly all people who enter medical school are willing to work hard enough to make it through school and training. </p>

<p>No one disputes that engineers work hard in college, or that they get relatively low grades. Admissions committees easily could adjust GPA's to correct for this. This isn't even a matter of effort. It would be as simple as adding a field to the database and making the adjustment. The issue is not gpa, it is appropriateness of the background.</p>

<p>Sakky, I agree with you that engineering is not the best undergraduate major for someone intending a medical career. I just disagree about why. One can have more fun in college, make more friends, develop more lifelong interests, and have better admissions prospects by majoring in something else. Why pick engineering?</p>

<p>As I said, no insult intended to engineers.</p>

27

<p>
[quote]
As I said, the problem is not that engineers necessarily have "poor personalities", it is that admissions committees believe that engineers are more interested in science than in people.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>There are three types of medical schools, the first is dominantly clinical, the second is dominantly research, and the third is a combo of both. Even if engineers are perceived as more science-focused (which I disagree), they could always look at the more research oriented med schools.</p>

28

<p>Engineers at research oriented schools. They would certainly be better received there than elsewhere, but even better still if they apply to MD PhD programs.</p>

29

<p>What about BioMedical Engineering as a pre-med major? This is what I am thinking about doing....I know it would be super-difficult, but I like challenges...Does anyone think this is a better pre-med engineering major than say EE or ME?</p>

30

<p>Biomedical engineering is probably better than other engineering fields, since the applicability to medicine is more obvious. It retains the drawbacks of extremely hard work, combining the two hardest college majors- engineering and premedical studies. </p>

<p>Decide what you want to do. If you want to do biomed engineering research for a career, with a medical background, then undergrad biomed engineering followed by medical school (and probably a doctorate in BME) makes great sense. If you want to practice clinical medicine, then majoring in biomed engineering will teach you little that is helpful, beyond the standard premed requirements. If you simply love BME, then do it. Just remember that there are drawbacks.</p>

31

<p>I would say otherwise afan about using biomed eng. for clinical medicine. Say you are a Ortho Surg. with a biomed eng degree in biomaterials. You can make new materials to use for surgeries. Biomed can be applied all over clinical medicine, thinking up new devices to use, or new materials to use.</p>

32

<p>"Biomed can be applied all over clinical medicine, thinking up new devices to use, or new materials to use."</p>

<p>We may be splitting hairs here. I agree completely that this is the sort of thing that biomedical engineers do if they go into medicine. But most doctors do not think up new devices or materials. Those who do are in research. They may also do some clinical work, but being involved in the design, creation, testing, and regulatory approval of devices and materials is time consuming. People who do much of this cannot be primarily clinicians. But, as I said, this does have a logical link to medicine.</p>

<p>For someone who want to do the kind of work bigndude describes biomedical engineering is great. For someone who just wants to get into medical school, this is, as sakky says, doing it the hard way.</p>

33

<p>Ultimately, it is your choice what major you choose. Seeing as only ~50% of all med school applicants actually matriculate IMO it is important to pick a major that you like and will lead to a career that you'll enjoy if you don't get in to med school. Otherwise, be prepared for graduate school or a major/career change. Of course the decision should depend on whether the med school candidate will be able to maintain a high GPA while in an engineering major and volunteering in the hospital and/or gaining some other pertinent experience. </p>

<p>One benefit to BME as a premed is that the BME requirements (usually) include all the premed requirements so you won't have to take extra courses to fit in the premed classes. Those premed classes will be some of the easiest courses you take. This, of course, should keep your premed GPA high. Also, if you change your mind about premed you'll have a degree that will enable you to get a decent job with possiblity of advancement. If you choose grad school you shouldn't have to pay for it....assuming you stay in engineering.</p>

<p>I know doctors who are also PIs of research labs. This seems to be most common in fields where the time between design and clinical use is very short such as Neurosurgery. Some hospitals actually encourage their physicians to run labs or participate in medical research by offering increased MD salaries, staff salaries (so you can hire someone to run your lab), and devoted lab space. For those gifted at grant writing, the time in the lab can exceed the time in the practice/office. This is mostly at the discretion of the doctor, though.</p>

<p>The AAMC website lists several stats of the last few years of medical school applicants and matriculants. The AAMC lumps engineers in with the Physical Science majors. 50% of PS major applicants matriculate and 46% of Biological Science major applicants matriculate. Although this suggests that PS majors are preferred, the difference is not enough to exclude either field of study. Ultimately, we are comparing engineering (in this case PS) to biology (and other biological sciences), right? It comes down to getting the grades, the MCAT score and acing the interview (assuming you get one)...do that, and you have as good a chance as anyone else.</p>

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<p>I'm a high school senior. Before UCLA made their final decisions, I sent them a letter asking to transfer me from chemical engineering to biochemistry in letters and science. I'm extremely happy I made the change.</p>

35

<p>I got accepted to Purdue's engineering program and I am planning on going into chemical engineering but my question is that let's say that i do get through it with an an exceptionally high gpa and great Mcat score; What are my chances of getting into Vandy's Md/Phd , Columbia's Md/Phd or Dartmouth Md/Phd?
Also what would be considered a great gpa and a great Mcat score?
Lastly, can anyone give me a few more great md/phd programs which i should start looking into from now?</p>

36

<p>Other top MD PhD programs would include Harvard (with the PhD either from Harvard, or MIT), Penn, Stanford, Duke, Hopkins, Yale, Cornell (with the PhD from Cornell or Rockefeller). Not to knock the places you mentionned, but all of the above would offer more than the Vanderbilt or Dartmouth programs. There are plenty of others.</p>

37

<p>I'm a sophomore ME too, its difficult to be premed and engineer, especially if u are not a ChemE or BME. My plan right now is to get a master's degree in BME, work for a few years at a good job, pay off some loans, save some money and then apply to med school.</p>

38

<p>About the whole "engineering is bad for premed" deal...</p>

<p>I am a senior in HS and am very interested in med (not clinical but the research aspects of MD). I was accepted to both MIT(EA) and the PennSt/Jefferson 6-year BA/MD program. Without a doubt, I decided to accept MIT. I did not want to bind myself to a mediocre med school and also miss out on all the opportunities as a MIT student. MIT graduates are some of the most respected in their fields. I will probably end up majoring in BE or Brain&CognitiveSciences.</p>

<p>I believe that if you really want to go for it, then go for it. I think passion shows through much more than the numbers do. I also believe the MIT premed acceptance rates are counfounded. A lot of students from MIT just apply because they've filled the requirements in the end to see what happens (students who hadn't thought of doing med school previously). Obviously, most of these students aren't going to get in (just like undergraduate institutions can tell a half-assed application). </p>

<p>There are so many benefits of MIT though. The undergraduate research opportunities (UROPs) are unparalleled. Getting a published paper in Nature or something is probably not unheard of at MIT, and med school adcoms are whores for that kinda stuff. In the end I plan on applying to MD/PhD programs - where a degree from one of the premier research organizations will definately help.</p>

<p>In the end, if things don't end up working out, I believe that if I was good enough to get into Jefferson once, I will be once again when I'm stronger with four years of MIT training.</p>

39

<p>You are probably right. Jefferson is hardly a mediocre medical school, but its focus is much more clinical than research. A strong background at MIT is terrific if you want to do research. You are also probably right that, if MIT took you EA, you will likely do well enough there get into medical school. Good luck</p>

40

<p>Sorry I didn't mean mediocre overall, but mediocre as a research medical school. You can't really say an engineering major and pre-med don't coincide totally because you have to take things on a case-by-case basis.</p>