My DS is considering Bama as first choice. He is in honors college. His major is Materials with Pre-Med. Anyone out here who has experience with that path , how difficult it is to meet pre-med requirements. I don’t see the latest academic flowchart after the revised MCAT requirements. Any info on this is highly appreciated. Want to make sure that he is choosing the right major. I see a lot of Chem E majors with Premed but very few Materials engineering. Is it doable ?
I don’t know any Materials premed students, but maybe there are some. As for being doable, what bio, chem and physics classes are req’d for Materials?
You’re right that most of the Eng’g premeds are ChemE. That’s likely because ChemE includes most of the premed prereqs.
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how difficult it is to meet pre-med requirements. I don’t see the latest academic flowchart after the revised MCAT requirements.
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Are you asking if there is a Materials E premed flowchart? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I’ve seen one for ChemE, Computer Science, and CivilE.
edit… I think you may be referring to this one?
http://mte.eng.ua.edu/files/2011/09/BS_MTE_Pre_Med_Flowchart_Fall_2013.pdf
Yes, it needs updating. I would send an email to the dept and ask if there will be an update. That said, unless the student is coming in with a good amount of AP/DE credits, doing the premed route for that major seems to require summer school.
I have only heard of a few people doing Materials with premed, but I wouldn’t worry about it being any easier or harder to complete the coursework than ChemE (which has tons of classes itself). UA has a very strong materials science research program through the MINT Center, and there’s the chance for collaborative research with materials, physics, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering professors in fields like magnetic material development and nanoparticles. (I’m actually pre-med and doing resarch in the MINT Center which I absolutely love, although I’m a math major.)
I vote that if he has an interest in the field, and especially if he has some AP, CLEP, or DE credit to make it a tad easier, that he go for the Materials degree. That sort of background would be invaluable for medical research.
UA has its own foundry too!
http://dialog.ua.edu/2013/04/foundry-serves-both-engineering-and-art/
I will say that a Materials Engineering degree is very valuable. That is the degree I graduated with from ISU and it has been very helpful during my career in Mfg and Product Development. Especially because I am involved in a lot of ME design/assembly work.
I can see where it would be very relevant in the Medical Field considering implants and joint replacements.
The biggest issue I see is that ME programs do not have enough Materials courses. A really good ME has a very good understanding of material selection, Heat Treatment, Lab testing to understand part life (fatigue and catastrophic).
I recommend a Met E dgree to anyone and have advised my soon to be Freshman Daughter @ UA to get a Met E minor with her ME degree.
BTW, What is MINT? Sounds very interesting!
Let me Google that for you, @CyclonesGrad: http://mint.ua.edu/ 
Dr. Takao Suzuki was born in Tokyo, Japan. He received a B.S. and M.S. from Waseda University in Tokyo, and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (1969).
He was a postdoctoral fellow at Max-Planck Institute, Germany (1969-1972), and an assistant/associate professor at Tohoku University (1972-1988). From 1988 through 2000 which includes an academic leave of absence (1995-2000),
Dr. Suzuki worked as a research staff member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, where he was involved with high density magneto-optical and magnetic recording materials developments. From 1995 through 2010, he was a principal professor at the Toyota Technological Institute in Nagoya, Japan and also served as Vice president from 2004 to 2010.
From April, 2010, Dr. Suzuki has become the Endowed Chair, and Director of the Center for Materials for Information Technology (MINT), The University of Alabama, and also Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Metallurgical and Materials Engineering in the College of Engineering.
@CyclonesGrad If you want to contact Dr. Suzuki with some questions, here is his info.
When you wrote ME…did you mean MechE, MetE or MatE?
Getting involved in this can’t hurt either: http://www.mint.ua.edu/~ieee/. Every engineer needs to seek out their respective professional industry group and join. This doesn’t necessarily mean IEEE (which is technology/innovation based), altho there’s a different IEEE Society for each different E majors: http://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/societies/index.html. Met E certainly is an interesting field! :-B
(Hope that emoji doesn’t offend.) Also, these societies often have student memberships, which range from free to greatly reduced rates. Often becoming a member allows you to apply for these societies’ scholarships, if they have them.
@mom2collegekids When I write ME, I mean Mechanical Engineering. When I write MetE, I mean Metallurgical Engineering. I think MetE has evolved into MatE because it is now Materials Engineering.
My understanding is because when I was in school, back in the early 80’, Ceramic Engineering and Metallurgical Engineering were two different degrees. Now MatE covers Metals, Polymers, and Ceramics.
@LucieTheLakie Thanks for the link! I am a little slow on technology 
Looks like the big research is into Permanent Magnets without Rare Earth metals I understand that necessity since, as they say on the site, almost all RE metals are in China. They do have a stranglehold on the computer industry.
As an aside, did you know that 70% of Chromium deposits are in South Africa and Russia. These are strategic elements in the production of standard steel and definitely Stainless Steel. That is why the US has strategic holdings of these elements for security purposes.
Thanks all for the information. springy179 I hear that Med schools don’t like the AP credits. My DS intends to take calculus in college, but will have Chemistry 1 with lab DE / AP English / Physics 1 with Lab / AP Biology. But unsure whether to take credits or redo.
@rsparent You’re right that med schools typically won’t accept AP credits in place of prereqs. (Some accept physics credits–but not most.) I am choosing to use my AP Biology credit to skip to Cell Bio and Microbiology, but that is a personal call and I would suggest just re-taking Intro Bio since he will also be taking engineering coursework. The main use of AP credit for engineering/premed students is that he won’t have to worry about English during freshman year.
Also, I would like to second the suggestion from @aeromom about joining IEEE. Their presentations are fantastic and it’s a great way to make connections and find out what’s going on at UA.
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hear that Med schools don’t like the AP credits
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there is much misunderstanding about this issue.
Med schools don’t care if you have AP credits, but you generally cannot use the BCPM ones for premed prereqs.
HOWEVER, nearly all med schools, if not every med school, will allow you to use AP credits to SKIP the basic bio, chem, physics, math requirements and take HIGHER level classes with labs. One reason med schools allow this is because there are colleges that require students to use their AP credits to move on.
In my son’s case, he used his AP Bio, AP chem, and AP calc (and AP English) credits, but since he was a ChemE major while premed, he also took Genetics, Cell Bio, BioChem, higher math, other higher chem, and those were the BCPM classes that counted towards the med school requirements.
Many, if not all, med schools will let you use your AP English credits if your school requires 6 credits of upper division Writing Intensive classes (which Bama does). There is a place on the AMCAS med school app where this is detailed.
Thank You @mom2collegekids for the clarification. So at least we will use his AP English, AP bio,and the DE physics 1 and DE chem 1.