Pre-Med Major Advice

Colleges and Universities A-Z Ohio State University
1

I will be a freshman starting in the fall semester and need some guidance for picking classes/majors. I want to be on a pre-med track and am thinking of computer science and engineering or electrical and computer engineering. At Ohio State, is it manageable to pursue these majors while also being on the Pre-Med track? What EC and internships would you recommend? More geared towards medical things or computer?

2

Read this website; they handle all MD applications:
https://students-residents.aamc.org/

Except those contrarian Texas medical schools:
https://www.tmdsas.com/medical/homepage.html

3

CSE or ECE tends to have a high volume of major requirements, many of which do not overlap with pre-med courses. Of the pre-med courses:

  • Physics: required for major
  • Calculus: required for major
  • Statistics: may be required for major
  • General chemistry: may be required for major, otherwise needs to be added
  • Organic chemistry: need to add it to your schedule
  • General biology: need to add it to your schedule
  • Upper level biochemistry, etc.: need to add it to your schedule
  • English composition: overlaps with general education requirements
  • Psychology, sociology: choose these for general education social studies requirements

So you need to plan your schedule carefully to fit in all of the additional pre-med courses around your schedule. Depending on the volume of non-overlapping courses for your major, it may require overloading your schedule. Note that AP credit does not reduce the volume of courses required, since medical schools often expect substitution with more advanced courses if using AP credit for lower level courses (also, if you repeat AP credit or a previously taken college course, you will have to mark “repeat” on your medical school application, which looks bad).

In terms of extracurriculars, medical schools expect them in clinical experience, helping others (including the more disadvantaged / underserved), etc…

You may want to post your questions on the pre-med forum section.

4

ChemE and BiomedE have more premed overlap than EE or CompSci, so they are more advantageous in that sense. Disadvantage is the ChemE is the hardest major at any school, including OSU (it is dog hard). Doing premed anywhere in the College of Engineering is the hardest way to go premed because the mix of coursework is harder. The conventional Chem/Bio in Arts & Sciences is easier. A lot of engineering premeds switch to Arts & Sciences after freshman year after they figure that out.