After looking at the some statistics which showed diffrent majors and how well they did on the mcat and their gpas. I noticed that the humanities major did just as good as biology, biomedical sciences. What really shocked me was the acceptance rates which were suprisingly higher for humanities, higher than many bio majors. What about humanities gave premed students so that much success compared to the others? Humanities has like history and art history classes, how does that help?
Just like the mathematics & statistics cohort that applies to med school, humanities major who apply to med school are a highly self-selected group. IOW, most humanities/math majors do NOT apply to med school; whereas a large number of bioscience majors do (including many who are extremely non-competitive). The small cohort of humanities/math majors who do apply are highly motivated and have taken extra effort and care to make sure their application covers all the bases.
So it’s not that’s there’s something especially attractive about humanities (or math) majors; it’s more like very few apply and those who choose to do so have taken special efforts to make sure they have a competitive application.
https://www.aamc.org/44826/search.html?q=Mcat+major&x=8&y=7
Thanks alot for your opinion!
Here’s the webpage where i found the info. If you want to take a look at it its the first link on the web page.
We know what data you’re talking about - it’s been steady for years. Like WOWMom says, the answer is self selection much earlier in the process. When I was at Brown, the classics department jokingly mentioned that I helped keep their decade long 100% med school acceptance rate going. Want to talk about few? That decade long stat was fewer than 20 kids. I can assure you that the Brown classics department was not doing anything to help those students.
What exactly is self selection?
I will asume that you are a medical student or already completed your studies?
Looking at the stats i mentioned about humanities and your personal opinion what major would you say is the best ? Or what major is best for medical school acceptance and overall preperation? Or are the pre med classes enough for you to be fully prepared for med school (if i do good and study)?
I am an MD/PhD student (MSTP specifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_Scientist_Training_Program)
Self selection refers to the fact that two groups are not equal prior to the factoring in of some other difference between the groups (i.e. their majors). For example, if we were to randomly assign a set of incoming college students to humanities or biology majors and have them go through the process of applying to medical school and the humanities students did better, we would have much stronger evidence that the humanities major was actually beneficial to them since the two groups, being randomly assigned, are likely to have similar makeups prior to the influence of their majors.
This is of course, not what happens in real life. In real life, students choose for themselves their major and courses and also choose for themselves whether or not to take the MCAT and whether or not to apply. The students who choose to major in the humanities while also planning on pursuing medical school are not generally the same caliber of students who choose to major in biology while also pursuing medical school. The humanities majors applying to medical school are self selecting themselves prior to the application stage to enrich the population of humanities majors who apply to medical school.
The point is that it’s not that studying humanities made them better pre-med students. Humanities majors generally do not wish to pursue medical school, so this group of humanities majors taking the MCAT and applying to medical school is not representative of humanities majors as a whole. Biology majors are more likely to pursue medical school and as such you see lower caliber bio students taking the MCAT and applying than you will ever see from the humanities pool. For every humanities major applying to medical school, there are nearly 14 biology majors. If you lump bio with the other sciences and even social sciences, the number of students majoring in those disciplines is only about 3x the number of students majoring in the humanities (http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=34). That illustrates how small the sliver of humanities majors is that’s applying to medical school, and again, they’re not a random group, they’re choosing (or self selecting) to be there.
There is no “best” major for pre-med. There is only a “best” major for an individual. Your major should ideally be something you enjoy studying and something you’ll do well in because med school admissions requires a high GPA.
I have one daughter who is now a physician and one still in med school, and I think just about every possible major has been represented in their med school cohorts. (Agriculture–yes. Engineering–yes. English lit–yes. Women’s studies–yes. Business–yes. Sociology–yes. Spanish–yes. Mathematics–yes. Biology–yes. Neuroscience–yes. Biochem–yes. Psychology–yes. Music theory & performance–yes. Philosophy–yes. Geography–yes. Starting to see a pattern?)
Any major can lead to a med school acceptance if the individual is willing to complete the pre-reqs and jump thru all the other hoops required.
BTW, neither of my daughters majored in biology…
See above. Major does not matter so long as you have mastered the science and math fundamentals needed to well in the high level, high pressure, very intense science coursework that is med school. You also need strong critical thinking skills, critical reasoning skills, excellent self-discipline, resourcefulness and study skills. (All of the latter are something you can develop while studying just about any discipline.)
Pre med science classes should, in theory, give you the basic fundamentals you’ll need for med school. However, the fundamentals are not enough all by themselves. You’ll still need to be a motivated self-learner who is able to go above and beyond the material presented. Even the MCAT requires more than “just taking the pre-reqs”; you still need to do substantial preparation on your own. This is true whether you’re a music major or biology major.
As for biology majors who have taken advanced neuroscience, embryology, immunology and a slew of other -ology classes as undergrads–they have a tiny head start on med school materials when compared to all other majors, but med school blows thru all the material in a semester-long undergrad -ology class in about 3 days.
BTW, it’s do well and study, not do good.
Communications skills are very important in medicine!
Thanks:)