<p>Hey,</p>
<p>Could you guys please just kinda throw out anything that you know about going to med school after a BM, whether it is about getting in, doing the work, having regrets about music, practice time, ect...</p>
<p>Thanks! I'm trying to gather and process as much info as I can so that I can make the right decision.</p>
<p>BM grads purportedly have the best chances of getting into med school. Apparently they do well once they are in because they are usually so disciplined from years of practicing.</p>
<p>As has been written on here before (I would recommend searching the message base on this forum to find messages mentioning it) people have gone on from music to med school, and I tend to agree music students might have an edge over those who go pre-med and do all the ‘traditional stuff’ (likewise, med schools look favorably on engineering students for the discipline that field requires), simply because they are different and the path they chose is different and challenging.</p>
<p>Couple of things I can think of from what I know of music and getting into med school:</p>
<p>-If you go to a conservatory, you would have to take the curricula usually required for med school as an undergrad, I would assume after graduation since conservatories wouldn’t offer the curricula involved (I am talking stand alone). This includes as far as I remember year of bio, year of inorganic chem, organic chem and I seem to recall from my years in pre med (one of the failures I am afraid) physics and possibly biochem…some schools offer programs for students with an UG degree deciding they wanted to go to med school later, so it isn’t unheard of.</p>
<p>-If you went to a dual program, like NEC/Harvard, JHU/Peabody, or places like Indiana and Rice, it might be possible to get the pre med stuff done while studying music. I say might be, because given the demands of music performance training, it would take a lot better person then I to be able to do both and succeed, that is for sure:). Plus I suspect you would find the music school not all that encouraging about doing this concurrently. That said, some programs, like Bard, require a dual major, and it might be easier at a place like that because the dual major is built in and it is a 5 year program. </p>
<p>Obviously, this is all my view of things, if you are seriously interested in possibly pursuing med school after music school, why not go to the source? E-mail admissions people at possible schools you might go to, and ask, and likewise, send an e-mail to medical school admissions offices about this subject. From what I have seen, most admissions departments are only too glad to answer questions, as long as they are direct questiions and not things like “will getting an undergraduate music degree give me an edge in getting into your medical school” (better to ask, 'have you ever had students admitted who majored in music performance as an undergrad and do you have any suggestions about how someone could do that?". Likewise, if you sent an e-mail to let’s say Shepherd or JHU and said “I am interested in pursuing a music performance degree but also want to potentially work towards getting into med school, is it possible to do that while doing a BM program at your school, and have any students done that? If so, do you have any information about how they did it?”. </p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Hey Skieu, I just randomly found this and you will find it interesting
[Music</a> and Medicine | Weill Cornell Medical College | Cornell University](<a href=“http://weill.cornell.edu/music/]Music”>Music & Medicine | Weill Cornell Medicine)
Apparently the world is full of musician med students. You can also check out Cornell’s academic requirements for their med school (picked this one randomly). I bet you could hammer out the requirements with an academic minor, say in biochem, while majoring in music, and you probably would only need one summer term or 2 to finish in 4 years.
It is still pretty difficult to get into med school these days and you would want to look into research and volunteer opportunites as well. My D is at Univ of Michigan and they have an undergraduate research program there and plenty of academic minors to choose from, as well as a dual degree program. And a higher than average acceptance rate to med schools. Good luck! Your goals are totally do-able.</p>