<p>First of all, I really hope this is the right place for my thread, if it's not, please let me know, so I can put it where it should be.
I'm a junior and recently I started researching universities. I want to be a pre-med student in the USA, but since pre-med is not a major, I started thinking what I'd like to major in, so a few hours ago I was struck by the brilliant idea that I want to study neuroscience and genetics at the same time. That's why I'd really really like to double major in those two subjects. My first question is -- am I allowed to do this? There aren't any restrictions against pre-med and double major in sth else, are they?
My second question is, do you know of any good schools in the USA that offer good courses in those three areas I'm interested in that I can research? Thank you in advance.</p>
<p>the only things that matter for med school are: GPA, MCAT, volunteer/research experience.</p>
<p>i suggest you think carefully before embarking on a path that may reduce your GPA and eat into volunteering time.</p>
<p>also consider that the vast majority of premed students either change their minds about medical school, or have such low GPAs (do note they’re still significantly higher than 3.0) that they don’t bother applying to medical school. remember, medicine is a cartel, the US is the only country in the world where doctors limit the number of new doctors. trying to join the field of medicine as a doctor is like trying to join any other cartel: extremely difficult. have a backup plan.</p>
<p>It’s definitely possible to do a double major and pre-med, especially since genetics will likely encompass many courses that you need for pre-med. Genetics isn’t a major option at my school, so I don’t have any university recs for you, but know that it is indeed a very ambitious path. </p>
<p>Then again, I have a friend who graduated last year with a double major in Bio-Chem & Physics. I’m pretty sure she was pre-med but decided that she wanted to do research instead, so she’s now in a joint masters/doctoral graduate program.</p>
<p>Remember that medicine is a cartel and that the US is the only country in the world where doctors actively prevent the number of doctors from expanding in order to drive up the cost of medicine and collect millions in insurance payouts.</p>
<p>As a cartel, just like the Mexican cocaine cartels, the barriers to entry are formidable, to become a “partner” in the cartel is brutal, and the work once you get there is not very savory or enjoyable.</p>
<p>The price for failure is immense. Now, Mexican cocaine cartels shoot those who fail the entry, but failing to get into medical school with a neuroscience degree will make you feel like you want to die. All biological sciences have low average incomes; neuroscience is likely the lowest and genetics is not much better. In fact, they are comparable to psychology. You will have destroyed your life if you majored in any biological science or anything that had to do with biology, and fail to go into medical school. The cocaine cartel doesn’t seem so bad now.</p>
<p>If you’re in it for the money, get out and do business or math and go to Wall Street to become a trader or quant. If you’re in it to help people, remember that a surgeon can save at most 700 people per year, assuming start work at 30 and live to 70, a surgeon can save 28000 people in his/her lifetime. A civil engineer, however, can design a sewage system that will reduce disease and save millions; same for a chemical engineer that designs a water treatment plant or a new, cheap water disinfectant.</p>
<p>Thank you very much, guys, you’re being really helpful!
I will definitely consider a back up plan as I know how hard medicine is. @Eternal Icicle, as I did a little bit more of research, I didn’t find universities with Genetics major; I guess it’s something like a concentration of Biology, so I think you’re right.</p>
<p>I have one more question – today there was a college fair in my school and one admission officer from the USA told me that it is nearly impossible to enroll in a med school as an international student, so I got really frightened and depressed. Is it really impossible or just hard? That’s really what I want to do, I am willing to drop the other things like neuroscience and genetics if they will be obstacles in my pursuing of perfect GPA in order to be considered for a med school afterwards, I would pick an easier major just to alleviate my schedule, but I need to know now whether this is the case and I basically stand no chance of getting in med school in the States.</p>
<p>If you don’t at least have a green card, then it will be a pretty serious obstacle. It will however, depend on the Medical School. Start looking at Med School admission pages and see what they say about Int’l students to get a feel for what you’ll be facing. Some schools, like Harvard, may be fine as long as you’ve gotten your Bachelor’s in the US. Other schools (especially state programs) might see it as a waste to develop talent that will have to leave.
This site may be useful for you: [OVPI</a> - Premedical Studies Program](<a href=“404 - Not Found | | | Pre-Health Advising Office”>404 - Not Found | | | Pre-Health Advising Office)</p>
<p>Medical school for internationals is impossible. Don’t bother, I will tell you that right now. If you want to be a doctor, you should’ve applied in your own country, because in everywhere except the US, you can be a doctor with an undergraduate 5 year MD (in China and South Korea it’s labled MD, in British systems called Bachelors of Medicine, and both have the ability to practice medicine in the US as long as they pass the license exam). Like I said, medicine in the US is a cartel.</p>
<p>Don’t hate me for this, but I’m suggesting engineering or a physical science. These degrees (except Civil) are employable around the world and can work in ANYTHING they want except clinical medicine. Finance, management, sales, process engineering, research, in every sector ranging from oil/gas to electronics to aerospace to IT. A math/CS/physics/Chem/ChemE/Mech/EE degree will make you learn many transferable skills, gain the ability to think quantitatively, and provide you with both the hands on and theoretical knowledge needed to suceed in today’s high tech global marketplace.</p>
<p>Hey LastThreeYears, I’m curious. Since people seem to want to go into medicine either for money or to help people, and since you said both of these aren’t good reasons, then why should anyone want to be a doctor, in your opinion? I’m not attacking you; I’m just wondering.</p>
<p>Do what the smart premeds do, take something easy like sociology or psychology, so you can get a 4.0, your major doesn’t matter all that matter is you prereqs, gpa, mcat, ECs</p>
<p>There is no major, no matter how science related, that will prepare you, or help you in medical school</p>
<p>Good question ikat.</p>
<p>Those who can’t handle quantitatively analyzing things or hands on technical work, but can stand sitting down for 10 hours a day memorizing useless theoretical trivia, are perfect for medical school. A bonus is that it pays somewhat well though not as much as finance, and it seems like it helps people but it actually doesn’t. Remember, a doctor is probably worse at math, physics and chemistry than your average high school student. Surgeons are the only hands on doctors, most only need theoretical knowledge and couldn’t synthesize anything, operate instrumentation, or program a computer if their lives depended on it. It is the ideal job for those biology and liberal arts people who love memorizing, can’t do math, and don’t want to get their hands dirty, so to speak, with high tech.</p>
<p>@LastThreeYears Oh, I see. So basically the best of society that can handle quantitative reasoning and math (as this is very much how you’re making it sound) become physicists and engineers, constantly saving the world. Or they become investment bankers or statisticians and bring home bags of money. And the rest of us biologists and liberal arts majors are stuck with a lowly job like doctor. Man, doctors can’t do ANYTHING. You’re starting to sound like Plato, except he wasn’t this wrong. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is, ANY major can have a use. There are tons of kinds of people, and not all of them should be interested in engineering or physics or finance or math. The degrees you’re constantly badmouthing DO have practical uses. Take linguistics for example. People have pondered it for years, and many have claimed it’s useless. But now computational linguistics is on the rise; people are working to make computers understand, process, and create speech, and none of this could have been done without the “useless,” liberal arts, social science discipline of linguistics. It’s not fair to talk about everyone who isn’t what you want to be with such negative connotation. </p>
<p>I’ve seen you doing this on these forums enough. You claimed you weren’t good at bio. So why did you go into it in the first place? What was your motivation? It’s unfair to want everyone to be an engineer and equally as unfair to put down all other majors as “useless”. And it IS a put-down. A crappy engineer won’t save any lives if he/she was meant to be a good doctor. Or museum curator. Or translator. Or teacher. Or medical researcher. Doesn’t society need all those things as well? Or should we just build ourselves a society of engineers and see where that gets us? Jeez, what is with people defining themselves by what they study for four years? It’s the individual that makes the difference, not the major. </p>
<p>If this was incoherent, my apologies. I’m rather tired, but after reading your response, I couldn’t contain any of this anymore.</p>
<p>I was “good enough” for the school, in that my GPA wasn’t under 3.0, but it wasn’t ”good enough" for me, because I got nothing out of the program. I followed the “practical” advice of counselors, took the classes that were “in demand” by industry. Then when I got on a job I found that none of it mattered and nothing I learned was useful in the least besides for washing glassware. </p>
<p>And I’m just warning people about this - A low GPA is usually correlated with learning little, but high GPA is definitely not correlated with learning much! Again, I’m not badmouthing anything, I’m just providing the information that your counselors don’t tell you because they want to sound “neutral” when the real world is anything but.</p>
<p>Engineering, physical sciences, finance, etc. don’t guarentee a good job. In fact, most don’t do well. But they are slightly more likely to do well than others! In biology, you have to be an NBA superstar type person to avoid poverty.</p>
<p>Uh, so here you say that engineering/physical sciences/finance, etc. are only “slightly more likely to do well than others.” And you say you’re not badmouthing anything…but this is REALLY inconsistent with pretty much EVERYTHING else you’ve been saying up until now.</p>
<p>"A math/CS/physics/Chem/ChemE/Mech/EE degree will make you learn many transferable skills, gain the ability to think quantitatively, and provide you with both the hands on and theoretical knowledge needed to suceed in today’s high tech global marketplace. "</p>
<p>And then in the philosophy major thread which I read a few days ago:</p>
<p>“Don’t want to see others waste their lives on a useless degree.”</p>
<p>It certainly sounds like you think engineering and whatnot give you a MUCH better chance at finding a job, whereas other things are a waste of a life. Yeah, I’ll agree with you that counselors are not always the best sources of information. My advisor is completely useless, and so I don’t listen to her. You’re making it out to sound like you’re just telling it how it is, when in reality you’re giving an extreme and biased account of what the workforce is like, based entirely on your negative experiences. Engineering is not the kind of thing you recommend to everyone. You have to have a knack for the kind of work it takes, or else your degree will be just as useless as you perceive a biology degree to be. </p>
<p>And as for saying you aren’t badmouthing anything? I find this very difficult to believe. Deeming an entire academic discipline “useless” is pretty insulting to ANYONE who wants to study it and make something of themselves with it. Your response to my question about who becomes doctors is quite insulting in it of itself, suggesting that many doctors suck at chemistry, math, and physics and cannot do quantitative reasoning. That sounds like you’re badmouthing it to me.</p>
<p>And as for your views on helping people, why are you so set on believing that there’s a formula to accomplish this? The truth is, there is no set method for saving lives or helping others. Again, it’s the individual that makes the difference here. One person with an idea can save more lives that one hundred engineering grads without a clue. The degree is not what changes the world; the person is. And (nearly) every discipline is needed. I think people should be informed of when it’ll be difficult to find a job (say with a philosophy degree or an English degree) but not discouraged and told to become engineers. If they see the risks associated with a particular field of study and decide that it’s not worth it, they can back out and study something with more uses. But if they decide that this is their passion and that they WILL find a use for it, then I think there’s nothing wrong with them pursuing it. </p>
<p>A lot of things you’ve said right above me just don’t add up.</p>