Most Flexible for Major Change out of UCM/UCR/UCSC/UCD?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
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Not quite an exact match. Still missing a 3rd quarter of Ochem, biochem and 3 quarters of physics.

Also missing genetics and human anatomy (strongly recommended or required at many med schools)

Decent overlap, but not perfect.

Your d needs to do some job shadowing before committing to a career path. She says she wants to be a doctor, but how does she know that? Has she shadowed a doctor? Done an information interview of one? Has she volunteered in healthcare settings where she could see what everyone’s various job responsibilities look like?

Medicine is often idealized by high schoolers as prestigious and well paying job, but they really don’t have any exposure to the actual career beyond what they see on TV or their own [very limited] experiences as a patient.

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The best place to get info about PA programs is at PAEA here:

Note that minimum requirements are often far overachieved by admitted students (similar to nursing programs). For example, LaVerne PA students’ (27 accepted out of 756) incoming average sGPA was 3.75, even though they say a 3.0 is what’s required. They do not say what the average clinical hours were which is what OP was talking about. https://health.laverne.edu/physician-assistant/demographics/

I have posted this before on CC, but on average successful PA admits do have thousands of hours of clinical experience (separate from shadowing). So if PA school might be of interest should med school not work out, students need to look at those requirements, but also average GPA/sGPA/clin hours/age of accepted or matriculated students. The clinical experience arithmetic mean trimmed for hi/low outliers (M (T)) clinical hours of first-year enrolled PA students in 2020 (most recent data) was 2,854, here’s the data on the rest of the health care experience hours:

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Average age of a PA matriculant is 25, as compared to med school’s age 24, so again, on average, a PA applicant had an additional year to add to their experiences.

Here’s the full report: https://paeaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/program-report35-20201014.pdf

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Is it that you want your daughter to go to med school, or that she wants to? The issue is that when she selects her classes during orientation- it’s called Pass-she’ll be noting the diploma requirements for the major.

The following is what our daughter’s experience was at Davis. She eventually moved onto UCSF for her med school training. If your child doesn’t get into Davis, then the following is moot because every UC is DIFFERENT:

She’ll receive a booklet that shows the courses she needs for the major for graduation, and, what credits from AP scores she’s received.
I will comment on the Davis program because that’s where our middle daughter attended and majored in NPB. (Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavioral Science)

They don’t have “premed” as a major. You have to seek out the pre-health advising team.

This team is separate from the department and covers a slew of majors. In her year, the College of Biological Sciences graduated 1000 students in the Spring. That’s 2000 students a year from just one UC, in just one discipline. I believe that a majority of those students were initially seeking med school, but grades and attrition slowly diminished those numbers. My daughter’s best friend, switched to electrical engineering, because it was easier.

If your child is currently not strong in math, physics, and science, then this program will be extremely tough. Every student in this discipline tends to be really strong. The thing about Davis’s pre health advising is that they have a slew of references to volunteer clinical and lab experiences that a student can choose from. Davis has their hospital facilities and clinics in the Sacramento area, twenty minutes away from the campus on I-80 east. Those experiences, however, can get inundated with students which require interviews.

If your child hasn’t already started, or had volunteer hours in med-related areas, then she may not have the experience to acquire lab positions. Our daughter was selected for her well-paid lab position because, during the summers, she volunteered at a large pet hospital where my friend was the supervising physician.

Plus, our daughter took an elective biotech course at her high school, where she was required to have an internship at a local medical facility. Her medical facility was UCSD. As a fluent Spanish speaker, she was selected as a volunteer there to interpret. Because of these experiences, she pretty much nailed any interviews she went on for volunteering in the Davis area.

Your child has to want it, and must work hard at it. Our daughter led her experiences and came to us when needed. She would ask us for help to network our friends. This was while she was in high school doing her ECs and sports, and we thought it was a bit too much for her. My point is that she directed us. We’d hear about her volunteer and job positions after the fact. Make sure that these are things that she wants to do.

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medical school is no exception, the requirement is there although unwritten. As Rhodes says in their premed guide

Although most schools state that it is highly recommended
that applicants have clinical experience, it is really a critical requirement (emphasis in original)
https://www.rhodes.edu/sites/default/files/PreMed_Essentials.pdf

I do wonder if the cart has been put before the horse though. Unless she already has volunteer experience or other exposure to to medicine the kid is better off thinking of herself as interested in exploring a career in medicine rather than someone who has already made the decision that’s her future if she does well enough in the premed requirements. So sure, start off with Math and Chem and so on as a frosh but get exposure to medicine to see if it’s really right before embarking on a path that takes 11+ years of school/training plus sizeable debt.

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Definitely the kid. I’ve been telling her she’s too well balanced to take the med school route.

But she shadowed an OBYGN for a month and a nurse practitioner and sees women’s health as her calling.

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Make sure that it’s for more than just a month.

Our daughter’s biotech coursework was a year. Six months of intense training, in knowledge of universal precautions and procedures, how to operate all the machines in the lab, and six months at UCSD working directly with patients in vitals-samples, etc. The staff who interviewed her, knew that she had taken biotech coursework, as well as lab experience, from the pet hospital.

During her time at the pet hospital, she had to get past learning about blood, bile and urine. She had to effectively sanitize those areas.

She worked with specimen samples and performed lab procedures with direct supervision. With 3 summers of volunteering at the pet hospital, she learned how to accommodate and work in customer service. She had to deal with seeing patients deal with loss.

This was while she was in high school.

Shadowing for a month is nice, but also seeing the “not so nice” parts of working, in a clinical setting, can be really eye-opening.

I was a lab tech, at a woman’s clinic, during grad school to pay the bills. I was often called into patient rooms to assist the clinician. It’s not fun for the patient and it’s definitely not fun for the physician at times.

It can be trying for a young student to see difficult situations and procedures. Our daughter went through Covid, with the first initial cruise ships full of patients who would eventually succumb to Covid. Illness does happen in women’s health.

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UC Merced is the easiest for (b), since all majors require only prerequisite course completion and a college GPA of 2.00: Changing Major or Declaring Minor | Bobcat Advising Center

However, it has fewer majors than other UCs, so be sure that the available majors are of interest to the student: UC Merced Majors and Minors Programs | Apply Today

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A biology major generally has very high overlap with pre-med course requirements, and most colleges with generalized liberal arts and science offerings offer a biology major, so your claim that “most schools have at least one major whose lower divisional requirements are a complete over-lap with pre-med majors” is trivially true because of biology major programs.

Because of this “convenience” in requirement overlap, it is not surprising that about half of applicants to medical schools are biology majors.

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I would imagine there is some marketing behind the names of the majors as well. UC Davis recently changed the name of their Microbiology major to Molecular and Medical Microbiology. They even included, “The microbiology major prepares students for graduate studies and a variety of health-related careers.” in the description. I wonder if they will see an increase in applicants because of that.

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