I’m going into pre-medicine in preparation for a career most likely in geriatric neurology. My question is whether a neuroscience/neurobiology/neuropathology major or a general biology/chemistry major would be better. Or what about bioengineering? I’m interested in both these majors’ abilities to prepare me for med school and their usefulness in other careers I may be able to pursue as a backup.
@VinceLestrade major in whatever you want to major in for undergrad. Just make sure you take any courses required for medical school admissions. That’s all that matters in terms of undergrad coursework. Oh…and you need a very strong GPA and SGPA.
In my opinion, none of the majors you have listed will provide good job opportunities after an undergrad degree.
In terms of a specialty like geriatric neurology…if m not mistaken, you will need to do a fellowship after residency to do this specialization.
Your choice of undergrad major has ZERO to do with your choice of specialty. AAMC surveys reveal that med students change their choice of specialty an average of 3 times during med school. So chosing an undergrad major in hopes of matching into some future specific specialty is foolish and futile. (Data reveals the only med students who tend to persist in their pre-matriculation specialty preferences are those who are gung-ho on being surgeons.)
None of the neuro-related majors you’ve listed are particularly employable, even at the PhD level. Their post- undergraduate employment prospects are equivalent to the more generic bio major. (i.e. not terrific.)
Biochemistry is more employable. So is chemistry. And I always suggest pre-meds consider adding a minor in mathematic or statistics and develop some computer programming skills.
Bioengineering has better employment prospects but many students find maintaining the high GPA need for med school difficult. (And, no, “hard” majors do not get any GPA leeway with med school admissions officers.)
But the plain truth is, no undergrad major will prepare you for med school.
BTW, @thumper1 is correct. Geriatric neurology is a fellowship level specialty, and requires
1 year preliminary IM residency, 3 years neurology residency, 1 year geriatrics fellowship.
@thumper1 @WayOutWestMom Why do you think people tend to change their specialties so much? Also, why is it that every major except engineering majors has bad employment prospects?
Would you then recommend neuroscience to the same degree as general biology, the latter of which I believe is the most common for pre-med? I was thinking doing as many anatomy, physiology, pathology and human bio courses as possible would be helpful for med school. Is this inaccurate? Am I just as well-off majoring in something random like English as long as I take the pre-requisites?
I don’t see engineering as being worth it given how difficult it is and how little interest I have in the field.
I’m having real trouble finding backup careers I like. I like working with people, so research is a no for me.
I really want to go into neurology. Thinking I’ll go into anything else is discouraging atm, but I’d of course be open to changes. I really see fulfillment in a geriatric speciality. What are the pros and cons to specializing?
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- Step scores, didactic & clinical grades aren’t high enough for chosen specialty
- poor aptitude for the hoped for specialty
- poor performance during the clinical rotation and/or sub-I for the specialty
- clinical exposure during rotations shows a specialty isn’t what the student thought it would be
- exposure to a breadth of different specialties allows student to find a field that is better match to their personality
This requires a very lengthy answer which I am reluctant to get into. The quick [and hugely over-simplified] answer is for biology majors is that colleges graduate way, way too many of them for available job market. Only a very small minority of bio grads are accepted into medical and other health profession schools each year. On the graduate level, academia uses grad bio students as cheap labor, producing 3X as many new PhDs every year as there are jobs in academia. Many bio PhD end up taking jobs that in the past would otherwise have gone to MS or BS level bio majors. It’s an old. old problem, well documented back to the 1970s.
Biology is also not a professional major–i.e. one that directly prepares a graduate for a specific job. Unless an undergrad bio major has worked to develop particular job competencies and done employment based internships, they end up with a general education without any real immediately employable job skills.
Yes. Medical school will blow through a semester’s worth of undergrad level science in 3-4 lectures. (~1-1.5 weeks). It may initially give you a very slight head start but that disappears very quickly. The old saw about attending med school is like learning to drink from a fire hose is pretty much the truth.
Your choice. What do you want to study? What do you enjoy?
If you look at AAMC data, the majors with the highest acceptance rates to med school are the humanities and mathematics. However, the number of applicants with those majors are small (compared to biological and physical science majors) and there is significant selection bias involved.
My daughters had classmates with all sort of majors. These are all doctors I personally know of. [undergrad major/current specialty] Forestry (MD/PhD IM-gastroenterology w/ a research fellowship in hepatology), music composition (IM), English lit (pediatric surgery), Italian (IM-critical care), theology (IM- hematology/oncology), classics (surgery), classics (MD/PhD pathology), chemical engineering (neuro-radiology), biomedical engineering (otolarynology), history (ophthalmology), electrical engineering (urology w/ kidney transplant fellowship), electrical engineering (cardiac & thoracic surgery), biology (pediatrics), biochemistry (MD/PhD, pediatric endocrinology w/ research fellowship in growth disorders), biochemistry (IM with practice limited to LGBTQ+), human geography (FM), biochemistry (FM), public communication (IM), bioengineering (EM), physics (EM), naval science (EM), anthropology (radiation oncology), neuroscience (OB/GYN).
There is zero correlation between undergrad major and eventual specialty choice.
Fortunately or unfortunately, you will have to specialize in something. To get a medical license, all states require the completion of 1-3 years of an accredited residency. No post-grad medical training (residency) = no medical license. Which means you are not eligible to practice medicine of any kind.
(And geez, no med grad fresh out of school knows anything and should never been allowed to treat patients unsupervised. It’s dangerous. You don’t know what you don’t know.)
And unfortunately with the exception of a very few jobs (prison physician, performing pre-employment physicals for insurance companies, for example) unless you have completed a full ACGME accredited residency training program, no one will hire you because insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid won’t pay/reimburse for your services.
There are tons of people-oriented jobs–sales, education/teaching at all levels–even academia, public health, social work, public communication, just about anything business related–think human resources or personnel management, clinical psychology/counseling, clergy/ministry. Just a few off the top of my head.
And one of the most personable, people-oriented individuals I know is a funeral director. You need tremendous people skills in that job.
If you want to stay in the healthcare fields, here’s website [Explore Health Careers](https://explorehealthcareers.org)
It’s a searchable database of health-related careers
@WayOutWestMom — Your comments have been immensely helpful. I appreciate all the info.
Would you say, then, that I might as well get a degree that I’m passionate in — even if it doesn’t pay well and is unrelated to medicine. I actually am really passionate about literature, English and classics, so I think it’d be a good opportunity, even though it might limit me in terms of future career choice.
My thought is that, if major doesn’t significantly matter for med school, I may as well at least major in something I enjoy. I could do engineering, computer science, business, or something else that gives me more career opportunities, but I feel my grades may suffer due to how little I care about the field. Funeral direction has actually always been an interest of mine. I could see that as being an option. From what I’ve heard, majoring in something less-than-conventional like classics, literature, etc. would also give me something to talk about in my med school interviews. I’ve heard that med schools may see a non-general-sciences major as a breath of fresh air given the over-saturation. Given what you’re saying about there being too many bio grads, I’m going to avoid it; I don’t want to get lost in the crowd.
I guess I’m not too opposed to the possibility of changing my med speciality. I would be really bummed if I had to do it out of necessity due to poor grades, though. Like, I spent almost two decades working — however indirectly — to one day be a neurologist, and then I have to be some random kind of doctor for the rest of my life because I slipped. That’s a scary scenario. If I changed my speciality due purely to interest changes, though, then at least I’d hope to find fulfillment in that new path.
Oh please. You are a high school senior and you say you have spent almost 20 years preparing to be a neurologist? That’s just not believable.
College is a time to open your mind to the many many options available to you for a career as an adult. I’m glad my kids went to colleges with a very strong core course requirement (8 courses across a lot of disciplines) because it forced them to think about and learn about things that might otherwise have not been chosen.
If, and I mean IF you eventually get to medical school, you will be forced to do rotations in fields other than neurology. And if your school has a neurology rotation, it’s not likely you will get to do more than one if those (4-6 weeks in length). So prepare yourself to be required to rotate in internal medicine, family medicine, OB-GYN, emergency medicine, psychiatry amongst others. You won’t get to only rotate in neurology. That doesn’t happen.
Understand also that the interview phases of becoming a doctor are extremely important as well. You will need to interview to even get accepted to medical school. You will need to interview for residency programs.
Oh…and in case you didn’t know…for residency…you can pick the specialty to apply to…but you don’t get to pick the program you will do your residency at. You rank the places where you interview, and the places that interview you rank you. Then a computer algorithm does the matching…and you are offered ONE choice of a place. One and done. Take it or leave it.
Go read on the premed topics now. There is a thread there called something like “residency comes next”. Folks are right now getting their rank order lists submitted. And get to wait wait wait until Match Day (March 20) to get the result.
I think you can become a funeral director by going to mortuary school…which does not require a college degree IIRC. However, if you want to own your own place…get a degree in business.
@thumper1 — I mean that, by the time I’m finishing up medical school, I will have wanted to be a neurologist for almost twenty years. Obviously, I’m not even twenty years old, so to say that statement about my current state would be ludicrous of me.
I’m totally open to take tons of different courses and rotations. My concern is not that I’ll discover something I like better, but that I’ll be almost forced to go into something unfulfilling due to inadequate performance on my behalf. Obviously, though, that’s still a long way off and there’s nothing I can do now to prevent it. I suppose it comes down to how hard I work in medical school and how circumstances play out. I’ll of course have to roll with the punches regardless.
It’s interesting how residencies are chosen. Of course that, too, is a long way off, so there’s little I can do. I don’t think I’ll be overly picky about programs, though. I don’t currently have preferences, and I’ll be happy as long as they give me the opportunity to pursue something fulfilling in which I can help people.
I would not major in business. I hate the idea of selling products and working exclusively for some corporation. I understand that that’s “the game,” but I really don’t want to play it unless I absolutely have to. It’s also wrong to assume that only careers one finds miserable can pay enough to live off of, though I’m not saying you think that, just that it’s a common theme I see online. I get that I can’t just get payed to have fun — and I by all means plan to work immensely hard — but I want my career to involve helping people directly, and I want my career to be intellectually intriguing to me. That’s why the medical field means so much to me — I think it’s pretty unique. There’s few other careers that interest me in such a unique way; that’s why I’m having difficulties thinking of back-up options. Business, computer science, research, engineering all present little for me in either of the aforementioned career goals. It would have to be something that involved working with people to help with a problem they actually have. Are there really any other options that fit that?
There doesn’t have to be just one option for you. There are tons of ways to help people and be intellectually satisfied. Why don’t you let life happen, at least for the next couple of years, and see where your true interests lie? You are trying too hard to make everything about the college experience 100% predictable. Life isn’t predictable. Learn to be tolerant and flexible. Otherwise you’re going to be unhappy when things doesn’t work out to your predetermined plan.
You want to help people and be intellectually satisfied. You can do that. Get top grades and apply to medical school. Be sure you take the prerequisites for med school. There will be advisors at your college who will ensure you stay in that track, if that is your goal. There will also be a career center that will help hone your interests and provide opportunities. Take advantage of them. Stop worrying about things that are beyond your control and that don’t really matter.
@Lindagaf — Yeah, I think it would ultimately be difficult to predetermine where I’d be at if I abandoned med school down the road. Obviously, I would be much different than I am now to do something like that, so it’s hard to tell. I think I’ll just try to enjoy what I do at college, fulfill those pre-requisites, and have some ideology tying it together for med school interviews. Also, if I pursue something intellectually intriguing in college, I’ll probably do far better grades-wise, which always helps.
Sorry @VinceLestrade but what exactly do you think you will be doing if you go into private practice in your own practice? This is a business. It’s smart to know how businesses are run. You should be understanding of things like billable hours, costs/income, insurances (liability, as well as insurance of your belongings, disability both short and long term, and of course, malpractice) and costs etc.
You will be selling your “product”…you and your knowledge to your patients. If you work for a hospital owned practice, you will be working for a “corporation”. Many private practices around the country are being bought up by hospitals. Did you know that?
Knowing how a business is run, especially if you want to be a part owner of a private practice seems like a smart idea to me.
But back to your question. If you love English and literature or whatever…major in that…but keep mindful of the required courses for medical school admission or competency based Med school admissions.
“Like, I spent almost two decades working — however indirectly — to one day be a neurologist, and then I have to be some random kind of doctor for the rest of my life because I slipped”
In the US, there is no such thing as a “random kind of doctor”. Every med student is taking a standardized course of study, and every med student IS a random kind of doctor until residency/fellowship/board certification kicks in.
People who want to become psychiatrists have to deliver babies first. People who want to become anesthesiologists have to spend time diagnosing ear infections in children or shingles in the elderly. That’s how you become a doctor- FIRST you become a random kind of doctor, and then you specialize, not the other way around.
I have a couple of suggestions for you.
1- Spend some time reading so you understand what med school is and is not.
2- Spend some time with an actual neurologist (if you can find one who will spend time with you) so you can learn what neurology is and isn’t.
3- Read up on other health fields so you have a better idea of your back up plans.
And your comment that you like working with people so research is out- is also inaccurate. Yes, bench science (working with compounds, in a lab) is often a solo pursuit, but most of the current research on geriatric brain function is HIGHLY inter-disciplinary. Psychiatrists, Neurologists, Chemists, Pharmacists, Statisticians, Epidemiologists, Geneticists- the functioning of the brain is a highly complex animal and requires large teams of people focused on a particular area.
And of course- someone needs to be interacting with the actual humans in a clinical trial. And those people need very deft and sophisticated interpersonal skills. Families, patient, funders, lab or hospital administrators, the public… research doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
@thumper1 — I have no issue with the idea of being good at running a business. I was just saying that I wouldn’t want to go into business if medicine didn’t pan out. Like, I wouldn’t want to manage someone’s company or market it. I know no matter what a career needs to account for money — obviously — but I’m just saying that I don’t want it to just be about that.
@blossom — I just meant that I don’t want to be forced to take up an undesired speciality due to poor grades. I am fine with trying everything out and getting to know various fields — that is integral, in fact — but I don’t want to have to stick with some undesired speciality for the rest of my career. By “random” I just meant “insert some undesired speciality;” I didn’t want to be more specific because I don’t want to seem like I’m discounted any specific speciality so soon.
I did mean working with patients, specifically. I don’t really care for researchers much, I want to interact with the people with the actual issues I will be working to resolve. Yes, clinical trials would open up the opportunity to talk with some patients, but that wouldn’t likely be the majority of my work, and many clinical trials don’t even involve people with conditions; therefore, it might be hard to spend a significant amount of my time working with patients directly.
I have spent the past three years working directly with neurologists in an out-patient neurology facility. I have talked with neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuropsychiatrists, and nurses on a weekly basis for that entire period. I have shadowed neurologists before as well as participated in neuroscientific research in small ways. I have read journals about medical school, participated in medical school forums, watched vlogs about medical school and read countless articles about the field of neurology, in addition to a number of books concerning neurodegenerative conditions. I am not just interested in neurology because it sounds cool, or it pays well: I am truly passionate about every aspect of the field. That doesn’t mean things can’t change, and that doesn’t mean that I’m an expert at anything, but it does mean I aim to put a lot of effort into my path towards becoming a neurologist specifically.
I’ve almost entirely given up on establishing a backup plan. If I were to give up on neurology but still attend med school, I would probably work to become a pathologist or cardiologist, but neither of those fields have truly drawn my interest like neurology has thus far. If I were to not go to med school, I would probably pursue low-paying career paths, simply because most other high-paying ones disinterest me or conflict with my sense of ethics. However, in college I’m sure I’ll find other interests, and I’m open to those evolving into future passions as well.
Your interest in neurology is terrific, but I am curious as to why you consider every other medical specialty somehow second-rate. A lot of med students have the problem of loving every single rotation (except for one where they can’t see themselves doing it) because they love medicine, they love hands on patient care; they love both the art and the science. And you will likely find that in many, many specialties. You just happen to have fixed on neuro for now. But you haven’t explored oncology in the same way and to the same degree, you haven’t shadowed OB-GYN’s, you haven’t spent time reading articles about new treatments in endocrinology-- so naturally, you assume that the only cool things you’re going to love is neuro.
I doubt that’s the case.
And you are WAY too young to decide that if you don’t go to med school you’re going to pursue a low paying career path. For sure that sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy writ large.
I work in corporate America and I can assure you- I don’t have my ethics violated on a daily basis. I have worked for highly ethical companies and with incredible and kind and smart and empathetic people whose honesty and integrity is a joy to watch.
Once in the last 10 years- I was asked to do something that didn’t sit right with me. I told the person I’d need to sleep on it, and after a sleepless night, decided I’d rather be unemployed than do something that made me feel icky. So I set up a meeting and walked in, prepared to say “fire me if you want, but the answer is no” and instead I heard, “You seemed so uncomfortable by the “ask” that I went back and talked to a couple of other people I respect and they all said that I was out of line in asking you, and that it was a terrible idea besides. So thank you for allowing me to do the right thing by your discomfort”.
And that was that. If you believe that all jobs are divided into the good guys and the bad guys, you are both wrong, AND will be both pleasantly surprised AND somewhat shocked.
There are doctors who lie and cheat and steal (Google the pharmacy in Florida which sold more Opiates than hundreds of pharmacies combined. And they did so with the active help, collusion, and planning of board certified physicians of all specialties). There are doctors who are drug addicts and leave their patients impaired, or abuse them sexually while they are unconscious.
And there are bankers who lend money so that a woman who is a terrific cook can open a catering company in a depressed neighborhood, and then help her set up a business plan to expand, and get her MORE capital so that eventually she’s got 50 people on the payroll, some of whom have never held a job. There are companies developing cooking stoves for sale in the developing world which are green/use sustainable technology AND can help stop deforesting when people no longer cut down trees to use for fuel. There are companies creating technologies to turn undrinkable water into safe water, and companies creating robotic arms for veterans who lost limbs in Afghanistan.
If you are interested in science and interested in working with vulnerable people, there are literally hundreds of things you could do with your life. And medicine might indeed be one of them- but for sure you are smart enough to come up with a Plan B!
If you sincerely feel this way—DO NOT GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL.
You have to want to be a physician first and foremost, and above all other things. You have to have a passion to serve in any capacity you can.
If you only want to be a certain kind of specialist, med school will disappoint you and you may well end up in stuck in a undesired specialty with $300K in student loan debt. And that will make you a terrible doctor. (And this is why medical schools screen out people like you who have expressed an overwhelmingly strong interest in pursuing one and only one medical specialty.)
RE: your alternative specialties. Right now there are more pathologists than there are jobs. Cardiology is one of the most competitive and difficult to achieve sub-specialties. If you’re not competitive enough to get into neurology, you certainly won’t be able to get into cardiology. (Besides cardiology is fellowship level specialty that will requires completing a 3 year IM residency first. And you either like IM—or you don’t.)
Study whatever you want, but don’t assume that med school adcomms are going to be somehow intrigued if you’re classics or English major. An unusual major isn’t going to make you stand out from other pre-meds. Adcomms do NOT care what your major is. It’s not even a blip on their radar when they are considering applicants. They aren’t going to talk to you about your major during interviews.
@blossom — I have nothing against bankers and businesspeople. My dad works for an insurance company, and I’ve always admired investors and entrepreneurs. I just don’t see it as a fit for me, though.
My interest in neurology stems from experience: many of my family members have had Alzheimer’s, a good friend of mine had two brain tumors and my mother has had neurological issues for many years now. Throughout all these instances, neurologists have been immensely helpful, kind and comforting. Surely this is true for other specialities — and certainly this is not true for all neurologists — but my experiences have made me very connected to the field on a personal level.
I don’t think any medical specialty is “lesser.” I respect all physicians based upon their personal merit, not their title or speciality. I just don’t feel as passionate about any other speciality. If I do discover that anesthesiology, oncology, cardiology or any other speciality induces in me a greater sense of passion, I will pursue it will all due vigor and enthusiasm. I just know no other specialty has as much of a connection to me personally, so that gives an advantage to neurology in my opinion.
I was thinking of backup plans in dentistry or pharmaceuticals. I’ll have to keep thinking about it, and see how my opinions develop throughout my college experience.
@WayOutWestMom — What are the most reasonable and likely specialties one may go into? Certainly, people don’t go into medical school willing to go into ANY specialty; however, I do understand that one may have to be less particular. If I end up in anesthesiology, oncology, pathology, immunology, geriatric medicine, or hematology, I would consider that adequate, but I would find it unfortunate for myself to end up in the field of dermatology, gynecology, urology, psychiatry, orthopedics or any form of pediatrics. I am profoundly interested in which specialities are considered relatively easy to get into, and which ones relatively hard. Perhaps if I am interested enough in an “easier” to attain specialty, that would dispel worries of not being good enough to practice anything interesting to me.
There is NO easy specialty in medicine. Everyone has the same courses and many exams to get to the point where they apply to residencies. Some specialties like ortho require higher Step scores for consideration for residency interviews…but frankly, the bar for all specialties is high.
Beginning in 2022, the Step 1 test will be pass fail. So every single person moving on to step 2 will have the same grade…Pass.
Step 2 scores will continue to be reported by number. There will be some subspecialties that will require higher Step scores but that doesn’t mean the road to others is “easier”.
I think you need to enter medical school with a very open mind. Be welcoming of all specialties. You may be surprised about what you like…and don’t like…once you are doing the doing (in rotations) not just watching.
Yes, hopefully you will tease out your favorite specialty. But you might be surprised that it’s not what you think it is now.
They absolutely do.
If you are not willing to be a family medicine/primary care provider in a small rural town, you should not go to medical school.
The vast majority of med school grads practice in primary care fields–FM, IM (without sub-specialization), pediatrics or OB/GYN.
Your idea of what is an “easy to get into” specialty is deeply flawed.