Hello,
I was wondering if selecting Neuroscience as an undergraduate program would be a smart choice if I planned to go to medical school and study Psychiatry. I have always been interested in Neuroscience, but more so in Psychiatry. I thought that neuroscience would be an interesting alternative to the default psychology major. Although the two fields overlap quite a bit, I have read about clashes between beliefs and questioning about the relevance of neuroscience to the psychiatric field. Would neuroscience be a smart major to enroll in along with pre-med courses? Thanks for the help!
-Cameron
Major in what interests you. Your major plays no role whatsoever in your ability to get into med school. Nor does our major have any bearing on what your eventual specialty will be. (If you want to be psychiatrist, you’ll learn everything about psychiatry during residency. Nothing you learn in undergrad will help you.)
Neuroscience (like psychology) is a broad field which has many subfields and areas of study.
I’m not sure what clashes of beliefs you’re talking about regarding neuroscience and psychiatry. There’s a ton of overlap between the two and no hostility between practitioners of each discipline. In fact, there is lots of collaboration between the two fields.
I have a strong suggestion for you–don’t choose your major based on a putative future medical specialty. You’ll likely change your mind a half dozen times before you actually have to choose a specialty***. (And that’s assuming you do eventually get into med school–and there are no guarantees on that.) Until you complete your clinical rotations as a 3rd and 4th year med student, you really can’t know what you’re going to end up specializing in.
**There’s data showing that med students change their mind about their eventual specialty an average of 3-4 times during med school. If you want to go back to high school or undergrad-- younger students really don’t have a clue because they haven’t had sufficient exposure to what clinical medicine in various specialties actually entails.
Any major is a fine choice if planning for medical school. “The smart” one is the one that you enjoy. No UG major will prepare you for the medical school academics, the UG allows you to gain some background in required science classes and (equally important and overlooked by many!!) to grow personally. My own D. was interested in psych for awhile, although it has always been her second choice of specialty. So, she had a Neuroscience minor at college, which was very interesting for her academically. Both, her volunteering and medical research internship while at college were related to Neuroscience / Psychology. However, she got disappointed in psych after her psych rotation while at medical school. While she liked one on one sessions and had above average skills in this area (as pointed to her by her superiors), she decided to focus on her #1 choice of specialty and was able to match to this specialty last yer.
Be prepared to be open minded and explore other options while in medical school. But do not think about it now. Right now your priority is to do well in UG. Many UG students do not make it as pre-meds for various reasons. The primary reason though is that they fail to adjust to the higher academic challenges at college in comparison to HS. I would suggest focusing on that now
Thank you for the advice!