<p>Hi,
My daughter has been accepted to Johns Hopkins, Cornell University, Unversity of Chicago, etc. We have had a hard time deciding which major my daughter is supposed to major in. </p>
<p>She would love to become a doctor specializing in cancer patients (esp. for young children). We are scared about a biomedical engineering major because I heard that one must have a tremendously high GPA to get into medical school and Im scared that my daughter cannot get this at Cornell (because it is so competitive, etc). Princeton review says that there are only 16,000 spots for medical school admissions are available each year. So many people work on pre-med program each year and it is so hard to enter medical school. </p>
<p>She had always been interested in finance ever since she took Statistics AP in high school. My daughter does not know what to decide about her future major, which is related to her choosing a college too. As you can see, we are greatly torn between these two majors. Maybe we need to think about other majors such as economics, bioengineering, etc. So, if I could receive some insights on our problems, itd be fantastic.</p>
<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,</p>
<p>I am a pre-med at Rice, and here is my take:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>She doesn't have to decide on a major now. Go to college, take some classes, and decide in a few months.</p></li>
<li><p>If she is smart enough to get into these schools, she will probably get into some med school somewhere.</p></li>
<li><p>She should major in what she loves, not what she is "good at." Once she gets to med school, she might not ever have the chance again to study something just to study it.</p></li>
<li><p>A student studying what they love is likely to do well in it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So, have her start by taking basic pre-med classes (general chemistry, organic chem, bio, physics, etc.) and then, if she likes them, consider something in the sciences. But take lots of other random stuff too - then she will have had a taste of many departments and can decide which one she wants to continue in.</p>
<p>I second what Jenskate said, especially #3 and #4 (not so much #2...there is a lot of x-factors that play into med school admissions).</p>
<p>I'm a first year medical student at Nebraska and I was a sociology major. I have friends in my medical school class who were Poli-sci, phychology, music, business, econ, history, a variety of engineering disciplines and then of course your sciences. I have a friend who is a sophomore who is currently guitar performance/pre-med. He's probably the happiest pre-med ever.</p>
<p>I'd start by getting started on the chemistry track (b/c it's such a long sequence 6 semesters to get through gen chem, organic, and biochem) first semester. Then take some other pre-reqs, like calc, and whatever classes that can fill as many general ed requirements, so English and a social science or a intro business class. Second semester, gen chem 2, replace calc with bio and then a couple of other intro classes in other disciplines...Hopefully by the end of then of freshman year, she'll have found something.</p>