My high school junior wants to go into health management but also wants to get a medicine degree. Is it extremely difficult to manage business major as your undergrad and meet the prerequisites to apply to medical school?
In general, no. There is some variation by university, but in general a business major isn’t the most taxing.
First be sure health management is in the business school. If it is the answer to your question depends on a number of factors.
It could be difficult as the business school will have its own core curriculum in addition to any general core curriculum required by the college. Lots will depend on the size of the college’s general core and how many usable credits your child has from HS
Your child should be able to figure it out. A great deal of the information needed should be available online (most college catalogues are online) Add together:
- College core curriculum classes required +
- Business school core curriculum classes required +
- Number of classes required for your projected major +
- Required pre-med courses
Less - Any AP etc…classes that will be acctfor credit by the college.
THEN your child should be able to determine if all required classes can be taken over four years.
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Make sure when you take Happy1’s excellent advice, your kid verifies that the courses actually meet the med school requirement for the topic, and not just the undergrad major.
At some colleges, stats, calc, psych, bio, physics, chem etc. for non-technical students are NOT going to be rigorous enough for medical school. Check and verify. There are some business degrees which are astonishingly NOT quant oriented, and will not get the pre-req’s out of the way… And the distribution requirements (which you’d think will give ample opportunity to cover off the med admissions requirements) only do that if the courses are taken in the college of arts of sciences and not the “lite” versions offered in the business school.
It isn’t hard to do what you’ve suggested- but you need to be proactive and check all the boxes.
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Probably something more like:
- College general education requirements +
- Division (e.g. business school) requirements that do not overlap with the above +
- Major requirements that do not overlap with the above +
- Pre-med courses that do not overlap with the above
Then subtract any courses that can be fulfilled with AP or IB credit except pre-med courses (which are expected to be taken in college; students skipping introductory courses with AP or IB credit are generally expected to take more advanced courses in the same subject area).
Note that while pre-med courses can overlap with general education requirements, they may be harder than the physics-for-poets type of science courses that are sometimes offered to non-science majors to fulfill general education requirements.
I believe we are in agreement. (Of course I did not mean for the OP to count overlapping classes twice and I said to subtract out useful AP etc. classes.)
Also most colleges have pre-health advisors who can help students plan their curriculum.
I haven’t posted on this site as I usually look through threads for my child that is applying to college right now, but I saw this thread and thought I could give some input from the other side (medical admissions).
I’m a physician and served on a college of medicine’s admissions committee for a large public university for several years. I can tell you that I really liked these kind of applicants - those that did something else besides basic science. Please take it for what that’s worth - one voice on a committee of about 12-15 people from 1 public medical school. This might not be the same perspective of other admissions committee members or schools.
I will say this though, these applicants will have to really knock out their science classes. If you are a science major, you can balance out a below average grade in a science class with other science classes. If you are a non-science major, you really won’t have that opportunity. We looked heavily at science vs overall GPA. A low science GPA will raise a red flag, particularly if the student is a non-science major.
On the plus side, this gives the student an opportunity to really talk about something related to healthcare (health care administration/management) in their personal statement or interviews which can help the applicant stand out in a positive way.
As far as pre-health advisors, take them with a grain of salt. The vast majority are 1) not physicians (and do not fully understand medical admissions or going through medical school), 2) have never served on an admissions committee for a college of medicine, and 3) have many students they are trying to advise - some assigned to all health professions. I’m sure some are okay, but in my experience I’ve seen many applicants get questionable advice. If there is a school that an applicant is sincerely interested in, it may not hurt to speak with the admissions office to make sure their coursework will fulfill requirements.
Just my 2 cents.
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Hear, hear! I’ve seen premed advisors at colleges who don’t know what they’re talking about. And if a person does a required class as a post-bac, and applies after having been graduated, then the premed advisor at their college plays no role in the process.
It was my experience that med schools were thrilled to see an applicant with a non-science background/major. They also liked to see some life experience. Not too long ago, I saw some data that said that the undergrad major with the highest rate of acceptance into med school was music! Yes, most applicants are science majors, but non-science majors who meet all the requirements have an excellent chance at acceptance.
“Excellent” chance of acceptance, or merely “less bad” chance of acceptance?
https://www.aamc.org/media/6061/download?attachment indicates that all applicants’ acceptance rate was only 36%, while humanities majors had a 44% acceptance rate. That still means that 56% of humanities major medical school applicants got shut out. (But also note that social science majors were slightly below average at 35%, as were “other” majors (where business would fall) at 33%.)
Two informative websites are https://www.rhodes.edu/sites/default/files/PreMed_Essentials.pdf. There is also a good handbook at Amherst College Guide for Premedical Students – Amherst College | Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning
The OP can also find advice no doubt on many other websites as well as books.
You are nitpicking, and taking statements out of context. Didn’t you read, in that very sentence, the words “who meet all the requirements”?
My point is that assuming that one is qualified, meaning that one has the overall GPA, the science GPA, the MCAT, the shadowing/work/volunteering experience, the recommendations, and any of the other characteristics that the school is seeking, schools tend to like to admit non-science majors, because they are looking for human beings with varied humane experiences, in the hopes that they will become humane doctors, and also for people with business backgrounds, who might become business leaders in the business of medicine.
Application to med school is not like applying to tippy-top colleges. If a person meets all the criteria, they’re going to get in somewhere, probably to multiple schools. If their credentials are mediocre, they’re not going to get in.
A reminder that debating is not allowed on CC. Time to move on.