<p>ppl keep talking about hard majors, easy majors, hard schools, easy schools, etc</p>
<p>is bio considered a hard major? just bio, not like biochem</p>
<p>I once read a statistic that 90% of all biology majors apply to medical school; I don't know if this is true. Anyway, being a biology major puts you into a field with many other people who might be trying to get into medical school. If you're a biology major, you have to find some way to stand out to medical schools; you need to be one of the best biology majors at your school. Being a biology major forces you to take numerous biology classes/electives. This leaves you little time to for your extracurricular activities. I don't think that someone could be a good doctor without good social skills; being under a microscope for four years doesn't help (especially in interviews). </p>
<p>I think that an easy/good major for medical is one or both of the following.</p>
<ol>
<li> Something that you enjoy</li>
<li> Something that doesn't require a large number of hours</li>
</ol>
<p>I hope that this helps</p>
<p>Doesn’t a bio major cover your pre-med requirements really well though?
As opposed to a major with no overlap, where you’d require way more hours and classes to do the major’s requirements and the premed ones. (in response to the 2nd point)</p>
<p>^ Yeah I was actually asking the same question at a visit to Geneseo. The biology major there pretty much covers all the pre-med requirements and still lets you complete the major. However it is considered extremely difficult.</p>
<p>90% of the bio majors there enter as pre-med but by junior year only maybe 30% or so are still pre-med, the rest change majors or get weeded out. ort30 makes a good point in saying that you need to stick out with biology. Most kids I talk to in high school also want to be biology majors and do pre-med. Thus it is likely to be very competitive and you’re going to have to work extremely hard to make it to the top and earn good grades.</p>
<p>Still, if you have an interest in biology and really like it and do well, it’ll only help you prepare for what’s to come. The key is to do well, whether it’s in the sciences or humanities. My problem is that I really liked Biology in high school and I can’t think of anything else to major in at the moment. :P</p>
<p>
You’re correct but, depending on the major, it is certainly doable. It just depends on how interested you are in the other major and whether you think it would be worth it.</p>
<p>If you’re somewhat interested in social sciences (such as poli sci), is it better to take it as a minor or major?</p>
<p>If you really do like biology, and major in it, does it look to med schools like you’re not “well-rounded” or “unique”? Does having a very different subject as a minor (i.e. poli sci) help then?</p>
<p>What about doing a major that is similar to bio (and just as interesting), but is less impacted, such as neuroscience?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/214387-what-should-premed-major.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/214387-what-should-premed-major.html</a></p>
<p>Is it difficult to perform well on the MCAT when you major in something like music? I would love to major in music, but I would be worried that the classes I take would not be preparing me at all for the MCAT, and I would be at a significant disadvantage.</p>
<p>As far as difficulty is concerned, it depends on your intellectual outlook, school, and class selection.</p>
<p>But personally, I wouldn’t describe bio as “difficult” per se, in that the material is prettily readily understandable (there’s just lots of it). Physics, Mathematics, require much deeper and fundamental understandings, more intuitive thinking and trudging through elegant and abstract concepts, which probably is more “difficult” because of the quality of thought and problem-solving skills required. So quality wise, bio is definitely easier. I am just a high school student, but I can pick up a biochem textbook, and understand pretty easily everything in it (I have to, since I’m currently doing a biochem lab project). Not so for a statistical physics textbook/quantum mechanics textbooks, maybe even less for sth like Differential topology…</p>
<p>I think there’s a big difference between upper level bio classes and lower level bio classes.</p>
<p>I don’t think you are at a disadvantage if you are a bio major. The statistics show that humanities majors do slightly better- but that’s because they have slightly better MCATs and GPA. Medical school biases towards humanities majors could exist, but no hard evidence proves its existence and the extent. If it does exist, it is likely to be minimal.</p>
<p>And who said humanities majors don’t have a lot of work? I’m taking a lot of those right now to get done with my gen ed requirements, and I’m up to my eyeballs in reading, papers, and exams.</p>
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<p>My son majored in Linguistics and Religious Studies with a Chem minor. He fulfilled his pre med requirements which was all he needed (plus a Kaplan MCAT course and lots of review) to prepare for the MCAT. He scored in the 99.3 percentile when he took the test.</p>
<p>Major in something that interests you and that you can be excited about;your academic success will be far greater doing that than if you major in something you dislike and have to plod through the work. </p>
<p>His thought process was that once in med school ALL he would be studying was sciences so he wanted to study something that interested him and would ultimately enrich and make him more well rounded. His med school interviewers all liked his methodology and it obviously didn’t hurt his chances.</p>
<p>My only caution with a music major would be how much time is required for things like composition, practice and performance? All three can be very time consuming and if taken while taking things like Orgo and other lab courses, your time could be severely tested.</p>
<p>In regard to music, my D (Zoology major pre-med), decided on Music Composition minor. She strongly believed that Music Performance or any Music major would be too much commitment timewise, since one of the pre-med’s goals is to have the highest possible GPA. She enjoys her music classes immensely and continue taking private piano lessons (no credit) during summer. She has no plans to pursue music professionaly, it is just one of her interests.</p>
<p>In regard to Music, BM in music and BA in music are usually quite different; the former’s focus is more on performance and the latter’s more on humanities/musicology. Both requires the same series of music theory courses though.</p>
<p>There is no music minor and only BA major at my S’s school. To be a BA music major, for my S’s year, students usually take 3 terms of music theory courses and two terms of ear-training courses during the first 3 semesters. These courses are prerequisites, which are somewhat like the 8 prerequisites (2 bio, 2 general chem, 2 orgo, and 2 physics) for a biology major. As you can see, the prerequisites for a BA music major is not as extensive as those for a bio major. The workload for these music prerequisites is reasonable, not as heavy as the course like orgo, but definitely not a cakewalk.</p>
<p>After the prerequisites, the music major needs to take 12 terms of upper-devision music courses, 4 of them in music history and 2 of them in advanced music theory, others electives.</p>
<p>Also be aware that some of the upper-division music theory courses are about modern music theory (e.g., John Cage) or even experimental music. Not all classical music trained musicians like that kind of stuff.</p>