<p>Hi!
Can you guys help me find a suitable premed major?
The criteria (in rank) are:</p>
<p>1) Easy to get a 3.9+ GPA (I plan to study hard, but the easier it is = more time for the MCAT)</p>
<p>2) Wanted by medical schools (I realize that all majors are considered and that there is no right or wrong one. However, I've heard that vocational majors like economics, accounting, or business administration are frowned upon)</p>
<p>3) Job prospects with a bachelor's degree (I plan to save up some money before going to medical school, so I need a degree that offers good prospects. I'm pretty sure that this requirement rules out Bio/chem and the sciences)</p>
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<li><p>The 10 pre-med courses alone make a 3.9+ highly difficult with any major. This is not HS, you don’t need that high a GPA. 3.5+ tends to be fine for most med schools, sometimes even lower if combined with a strong MCAT, although admittedly the two are linked.</p></li>
<li><p>Not true, you can major in anything pre-med and there is some thought that non-traditional majors are becoming more favorable over the traditional bio/chem majors. However, majoring in something that lines up with the pre-med courses does make it easier to complete with less effort. Engineering, though impressive, tends to make doing the pre-med track difficult, not to mention maintaining the GPA. </p></li>
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<p>If going non-traditional, you might consider a school that has few core course requirements so that you have space to take the pre-med classes. This is one of the reasons my daughter chose a LAC with no cores, she can do pre-med and double major, though one of the majors lines up closely with the pre-med courses. She might change her plans and only major and minor, but the option is there.</p>
<ol>
<li>Older applicants to med school are becoming the norm, not the exception. Median age to start med school is now around 25, which means that the average med school 1st year has been out of school 3 years. Thinking about job prospects is not a bad idea, just remember that life has a way of getting in the way of future plans, the longer you take to go back. For women who also want children, this can be a concern as well.</li>
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<p>Economics is not a vocational major. It’s a social science major within the liberal arts and sciences.</p>
<p>Also, this</p>
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<p>Is not true. What kind of employment you get after college is more determined by what you do in college than your major. If you do good internships and get good work experience during college, plus develop some skills, you could get a good job in virtually any major. I know a philosophy major managing a business, a biology major who is a consultant now, a psychology major working at a major marketing firm, a French major studying to be a registered dietitian, and an English major who works for a Fortune 500 company.</p>
<p>You will see that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the life & physical sciences (7.7%) is about the same as it is for business majors (7.4%) and engineering majors (7.5%). The rate for humanities and liberal arts (9.4%) and the social sciences (not including psychology; 8.9%) but not enough to be a cause for serious concern.</p>
<p>Now, of course you will find the highest entry-level salaries in computers and mathematics and in engineering. But surprisingly, business majors only make, on average, $2K more per year than social science majors.</p>
<p>In addition, AMCAS doesn’t really release acceptance rates by major. They do release, however, the number of applicants and medical school matriculants in each field. Matriculants were not only accepted, but decided to go - so it’s possible that there were some people who got accepted to med school and decided not to go, but here they are anyway:</p>
<p>Biological sciences - 41%
Humanities - 48.5%
Math and statistics - 47.2%
Other - 40.3%
Physical sciences - 46.5%
Social sciences - 42.2%
Specialized health sciences - 32.6%</p>
<p>The major fields also had roughly equal mean GPAs (math and statistics was the highest at 3.69; the social science and humanities tied for lowest at 3.59) and MCAT scores (math and statistics was the highest at 33; the specialized health sciences was the lowest at 29.8, but everyone else’s mean score was above 31) so there’s no real reason to believe that any major(s) are especially favored.</p>
<p>So yeah, the answer to this question really is “major in whatever you want.” Pick something that seems interesting to you, and make sure you take the pre-med prereqs.</p>