What’s the difference? What’s better for someone who wants to be a doctor?
I graduated from ND in '87 and went to medical school and am practicing now as a general surgeon.
At ND there are many different ways to fulfill the requirements for med school.
- Science pre-professional is a major that is the essential pre-med track. Everyone in it is going to apply for med school or dental school. Benefit: streamlined pipeline for getting people into these schools. Downside: if you decide not to go to med school or you don't get in, this major is rather generic for other science careers. Also, all of your peers in it are basically the same; you are not differentiated from them.
- Arts and Letters pre-professional: you get an arts and letters degree and use your electives to do the med school required science courses. Benefit: you get to have a course of study that you may be very interested in and get a degree that you could use in other ways. I did this one and studied PLS (ND's Great books program). This also differentiates you from the average med school applicant. You could do a number of different things with this. Downside; you will use up all of your elective time doing the science classes.
- Chemistry or Biology major: Easy to fulfill the requirements of med school. Most common way that students do pre-med in other schools. Allows you to have a usable degree if you change your mind or don't get in.
- Engineering: less common path to med school but very marketable to med school or job. Engineering teaches people how to think in a problem solving manner which med schools like.
As you see there are many paths to med school.
You have a tremendous opportunity in going to Notre Dame.
Use it to its full potential and get a broad education.
Notre Dame graduates are sought out by med schools, with an 80% acceptance rate.
Do what you want to do rather than what you think someone else wants you to do.
Good luck.
From the sounds of it, Biology seems to be the better choice. However, does preprofessional studies have an advantage over a major in biology or vice versa when it comes to chances of getting into medical school? And also, could you please tell me the major differences In terms of a typical curriculum?
Here’s a chart that outlines the requirements for the three main pre-health majors:
http://preprofessional.nd.edu/preprofessional-major/pre-health-major-comparisons/