<p>My daughter is a freshman at High School. She is good at Math but wants a career in medicine. She has been selected for PROMYS. I am wondering if she does not want to go for Math based career, should she do something else in the summer?</p>
<p>I think it’s too early for your D to prepare for medicine but it’s the right time to develop her math skills. If she does well in math and likes math then she should go to PROMYS. Math, the king of all sciences will help her prepare for medicine. She probably will have a better MCAT scores because math will sharpen her reasoning.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/mcat2003.pdf[/url]”>http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/mcat2003.pdf</a></p>
<p>She can volunteer during normal school year in a doctor’s office or in a hospital to get familiar with medical careers.</p>
<p>Strong math skills will be helpful in many areas, including science and statistics that she will use if she does go into medicine.</p>
<p>There are careers in medicine which make use of lots of math - eg Medical Physics. Interdisciplinary is the trend now. She should pursue the math as long as she does well and finds it interesting.</p>
<p>I have two math-major D’s. One is in med school; one will be applying next year.</p>
<p>Math majors as a group have the highest MCAT scores of any majors, and they often do quite well in the med school application sweepstakes.</p>
<p>Beside medical physics (there is a huge demand for this field currently), bioinformatics and computational biosciences are also math-based medically related careers. Epidemiology also involves a great deal of math.</p>
<p>Radiology and radiotherapy are clinical specialities that are math intensive. Ophthalmology too, but to a lesser extent. Physics is relevant too for these specialties.</p>
<p>If you do research in any field then its good to know statistics–even though that task is often farmed out to a statistician.</p>
<p>Any year in HS is too soon to worry about medical school. Let your D enjoy her math opportunities now. Varied experiences now will helpshape her interests, she may decide she loves math or has had enough of it. Next summer she may want more or something else.</p>
<p>Anecdotes- as Chemistry majors in college eons ago fellow women friends and I discussed how it was easier for a woman we knew to graduate in 3 years and go to medical school because she had so much less lab time. Friends went on in Chemistry grad schools, I went to medical school and married a physician. Son could have finished his math major in 3 years, but not have been well prepared for math grad school. His last Chemistry course was the AP one, we knew he had no interest in becoming a physician.</p>
<p>Very possible to be interested in both math and medicine (H is). Even when she starts college encourage her in any major she is interested in. Let her figure out her path as she gains diverse experiences. She may choose to not major in math, not become a physician or to do both- far too soon to tell. I think Statistics may be becoming a prerequisite for some medical schools now- we had a course in medical school (based on things medical, there were National Board basic science questions in it as well back eons ago).</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. It really helped in making the decision. She will be going to PROMYS happily.</p>
<p>OP, maybe consider having your child flip through a college level physical chemistry text to look at the math content. P-chem is usually one of the harder courses in the premed prerequisites with applied mid-level math.</p>