<p>What I meant by core were the sciences. A's are best, B's can work, but if your pulling C's in the sciences your probably not going to fare well on the mcat. And then again it's a crapshoot. It how they feel about you, they certainly don't go by numbrers alone. Mine had a 33 on his mcap and a 3.8 overall (3.9 core) and he was turned down sight unseen at several schools. He also was turned down by his state school, yet they took somebody with an 18 mcat... so go figure? </p>
<p>All I can say is look at the med schools out there and find the ones that fit your scores and apply, then do some reaches too. As far A school over B school, being a user of healthcare (diabetic, hypertensive) I could care where somebody went to med school. I want to be able to communicate my concerns, be heard and communicated back with. I don't think any one school has a lock on that. </p>
<p>Both my S and one of his bf from hs are going to med school. We spent about $1500, the friend spent $5000 in trying to get into places. We got 2 interviews out of seven he got 6 out of 20. All you can do is try.</p>
<p>He is definitely interested in bio or chem engineering rather than a humanities or even straight bio. He's not sure what straight bio would lead him to, because he would take all the same classes for that, plus more, if he went into bioengineering.</p>
<p>The GPA is definitely an issue. Older son, for instance, is pulling about 3.6 after frosh year, but did make a c+ in a one hour lab. He is a social butterfly, though, was going through rush, does a ton of clubs, intramurals, activities. I'd hate to see him lose that sociability just to get a higher GPA (he, too, is thinking about taking the exam and seeing how it goes...)</p>
<p>"I'd hate to see him lose that sociability just to get a higher GPA (he, too, is thinking about taking the exam and seeing how it goes...)"</p>
<p>Just needs to keep the party till the weekend. All things are possible if you organize Mine had the life of Riley Friday, Saturday nights. It can be done.</p>
<p>People who do not major in science often take their full college careers to finish the premed requirements. It is now quite common for people to take time between college and medical school, and many finish up their requirements during this time.</p>
<p>The science majors are very demanding, and they often will force a student to go through all the requirements in the first few years. this is probably a source of much of the attrition.</p>
<p>Perhaps the best for someone who is fairly sure about medical school, but interested in engineering is to pick a college where it is easy to move in or out of engineering once there. Start out in engineering, but be prepared to jump ship quickly, like after the first semester, if you cannot maintain the grades and you still want premed. </p>
<p>Of course, the story is different if one drops the premed idea and wants to work as an engineer. An undergraduate engineering degree is a valuable commodity. An undergrad bio degree does not, by itself, prepare one for much of a job. Great background for graduate or professional school however. </p>
<p>It is easy for a doctor to say "don't worry about major, follow your bliss", but one thing doctors have in common is that they all got into medical school. For those who have not yet been admitted, careful choice of academic challenges is crucial.</p>
<p>Music majors don't typically also choose a medical career, but some do- these are people who have the science ability and enough music ability to be able to handle a music major. Likewise, it may take fewer required courses to meet the combined demands of premed and a science major, but there is nothing wrong with using your free electives to meet premed reqs instead of taking other courses. You need to do well in the college sciences to have the background expected in the medical school basic sciences, if you can't handle these you won't survive the first year of medical school. And, the basic sciences teach knowledge and skills to be able to continue to learn years beyond formal medical training. All medical students sometimes wonder why they need to know so much basic science, but knowing it does help later in evaluating treatments that didn't exist when the background was first obtained.</p>
<p>One should choose a major for reasons other than it being useful for meeting course reqs for medical school; therefore major in something you like and can see yourself pursuing for its own sake and/or the possible futures it offers- using the same logic any nonpremed would in choosing.</p>
<p>I understand's Afan's concern about "following one's bliss." If medicine is one's long-term goal, then there must be thought and effort put into planning one's coursework and courseload, regardless of major. I agree with wis75, there is a lot of self-selection among non-science majors. Those who do apply to medical school have done well (probably as well or better than their peers) in their pre-med courses. It could be argued that they may have spaced out their pre-med courses compared to science or engineering majors, and this may give them an easier courseload. On the other hand, I do not think majoring in music or humanities is "easier" than other fields-reading 500 pages/week for a course and writing several research papers in a semester can be difficult if the student does all the required work and does it well. I would say, in general, it is hard to fail non-science courses (which can happen in science courses), but that is very different than doing extremely well in them. Non-science majors interested in medical school have the extra burden of needing to do extremely well in their field of major. Medical schools want to see excellence in their field of endeavor in addition to high marks in the pre-med courses. I think a 3.5 in Biology or Chemistry would be seen as reasonable GPA by medical school committee whereas a 3.5 in English or Music might not. Part of this bias also is due to the fact there may be grade inflation in some non-science courses-even more reason to need to do extremely well in the non-science major.</p>
<p>I also agree some majors are more"practical" and have much better immediate job prospects than others. While engineering may have good immediate opportunities, post-graduation, I would say you need to look at the long run. Getting a job that directly uses one's music, history, or biology undergraduate degrees may be difficult, with perhaps teaching offering the most immediate possiblities. For a biology major, working as a technican in a laboratory would be another immediate job possibility; although the starting salary would be much less than what a graduate with a degree in engineering would make. Most likely these graduates will need to work in areas that may only be peripherally-related to their major. They may or may not use what they learned from their major but hopefully they learned to think critically, write, and communicate well in college. </p>
<p>If medicine does not work out, there are a lot of options, even for non-science majors-it would be no different than for other non-science majors who are not pre-med. For science majors, advanced degrees are critical. A masters or ideally a Ph.D are needed for a career in science (There is a nice thread on how to prepare for a science career on this forum). On the other hand, fields like public health, business, and law increasingly need people with science backgrounds and I have seen students with those backgrounds pursue successful careers which combine their science background with another area.</p>
<p>My husband (prof at a med school) looks primarily at MCATs and the science courses for admissions. He's not going to keep you out of med school because of a B in English or engineering. My only qualm would be that engineering courses are reputed to be time-consuming enough that he might have difficulty getting enough As in the biology, chemistry etc that med school requires. Personally I think he should just go ahead and major in what he loves. Some kids do get As in engineering - maybe he'll be one of the lucky ones!</p>
<p>Apparently there is no sure and certain road to med school acceptance. I had breakfast with a couple of MD's awhile back. They mentioned that some folks in their med schools had been fledgling soap-opera actors and others had been dancers and/or bit actors on Broadway. Apparently all had taken the necessary core courses. I think there is some truth to the assertion the med schools look pretty favorably on those who have taken the less than standard path to med school. Diversity in life experience seems to be an advantage. I guess a class full of kids who had majored in pre-med would be too boring.</p>
<p>Nightingale--there is no such thing as a "pre-med" major, but I know what you mean. State unis are full of bio majors who never tire of reminding you that they are "pre-med." Snort.</p>
<p>I am impressed with musicians who go on to medical school, but I am thrilled by engineers who want to go into medical studies. There are so many new developments coming out of combined fields these days.</p>
<p>There are a couple of premises for all of these pre-med discussions on CC that just can't hold water.</p>
<p>The first is that medical school admissions committees are populated by morons who are not connected to reality and who robotically apply some numerical protocol that has no relationship to the needs and goals of their medical school or the medical profession in general. I don't think that's true at all. I'm sure that medical schools are pleased to attract engineering majors, and that allowances are made every day for the lower GPAs of engineering majors vs. humanities majors. </p>
<p>However, I also believe that many more engineering majors -- especially bio-engineering majors -- apply to medical schools than humanities majors. And medical schools do not want to admit classes consisting solely of biology and bio-engineering majors. So the stronger candidates in those crowded fields -- based in part on their GPAs and MCATs -- will have a significant advantage. If medical schools stopped accepting humanities majors altogether, however, I doubt enough slots would open up to change the statistical profile of which other students get accepted.</p>
<p>The second premise is that a student who would struggle to maintain a 3.5 GPA in engineering and pre-med courses can be a star with a minimum of effort taking English and pre-med courses. There may be some truth to that in introductory courses, but a student who isn't completely in love with literature is going to hit a big, solid wall in any more advanced English course. The CIA could probably "break" many of your engineering sons by forcing them to listen to my daughter talk about Gertrude Stein's use of language for more than 30 minutes, much less hour after hour, week after week.</p>
<p>Another physician here, I had lunch in the spring with a couple of med school admissions committee members, and the discussion of "what it takes" came up. What they perceived was that med school admissions were numerically driven, but the "numbers" of the MCAT scores seem to be more of a cut-off than GPA, in other words there is a little latitude for GPA, and the MCAT was used as a method to confirm the rigorousness of the undergrad education.</p>
<p>They saw little slack for engineering majors, unfortunately, and had plenty of applicants with solid GPAs and MCATs to pick from. They lamented the emphasis on health care experience, using as an example a bright, hard-working young woman who had little health care experience because she had had to work her way through college, and couldn't get that type of work.</p>
<p>One thing that might be different, though, is they aren't seeing many Ivy grads at this small state med school. I'm not sure what they do with the occasional Duke grad that would be coming through - perhaps you should know your competition. Their applicant pook comes from state schools where many of the applicants might have 4.0s.</p>
<p>Rather than discussing in general terms what major may be "easiest" for med school admission, it may be helpful to sit down and specifically review a tentative class schedule for each alternative major of interest and evaluate how the pre-med requirements can be built into each program. Each college has different general requirements as well as requirements for each major. This strategy helped our D both select a college and a major with enough flexibility to meet her interests as well. </p>
<p>One of the first questions is whether the student wishes to go to med school right after college or take a year or two off in between. Med school with the subsequent internships and specialty fellowships is long enough as it is, so one can easily look at 12 years or more before actually starting to practice. This decision has a major impact on how many of the pre-med requirements need to be scheduled in the first few years. While not required by all med schools, most of them want the premed requirements completed (and graded) by application time. With one year of calculus, one year of physics, two years of chemistry and at least one year of biology (some med schools strongly recommend biochemistry as well), it may be virtually impossible to complete these classes by the end of junior year unless you are in a science major such as chemistry or biology while also meeting any general core or institute requirements. Don't plan on using AP credits for the premed requirements except possibly for a semester of calculus. Even for engineering students, the schedule can become very packed as the chem and bio requirements are generally in addition to all the engineering classes. Taking organic chemistry (the prototypical premed weeder class) at the same time as multiple intensive engineering classes can spell disaster. </p>
<p>So while it is true that technically a med school applicant can major in any discipline, the amount of schedule rigging can be vastly different dependent on the main area of study. For the fifteen so colleges we surveyed we found virtually all the direct from college applicants majored in the sciences. Some LACs that claimed very high acceptance rates at med schools had less than a handful TOTAL applicants applying straight ot of college. Most waited a year or two before applying. Taking a year abroad junior year, a popular plan at many colleges, can be a major handicap for med school applicants seeking admission right after college. </p>
<p>I agree with previous posters that it is somewhat silly to plan your entire college experience simply to try to optimize med school admission. On the other hand, the path can be vastly more complicated for certain majors, which probably explains the very high dropout rate among premeds. At many colleges, as many as 25% of entering freshmen declare themselves as premed. At the end, at many colleges, less than 10% of that original number actually apply.</p>
<p>That's a great, informative post, cellardweller. I suspect you are right on the money. Of all the non-science major MDs I know (lots), only one went directly from college to medical school.</p>
<p>A couple questions: What survey? Just the reseach you did in connection with an application? Also, does the 25% -> 10% shift take into account the people who apply to medical school after graduating from college rather than as college seniors?</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies.
Younger son is vaccillating between Biology and BioEngineering. The biology major definitely allows for more electives, humanities, and social studies than the bioengineering. The engineering also has students go on for four and five calculus levels, whereas bio doesn't. </p>
<p>Older son (Bio Engineering) is entering his soph year and has already taken: Bio I (+L), Bio II (+L), Calc I, II, III, Chem I (+L), Chem II (+L) and Physics I (+L). Actually he AP-ed out of the Phsy I class, and was planning on going into Phys II next year (soph). He will also take Org Chem, Bio Chem, and Differential Calc next year with some other engineering classes. You are right, engineering doesn't allow for a lot of electives. Older son also clepped out of Frosh English, and several Humanities. This is, in a way, going to hurt him as he will take the GMAT with little or no writing/critical reading (other than science and math texts) after his senior year of high school :eek:</p>
<p>Younger son definitely wants to have solid job prospects or go on to grad school if he doesn't go med. He will not be spending a year overseas or anything of that nature. Both sons are motivated to either work in the science fields- research- or med school (if they can get in).</p>
<p>I don't think that the need to wait a year between finishing college and starting medical school should be considered a dealbreaker. It is a small price to pay for majoring in what you want.</p>
<p>I majored in biology in college. I never had any interest in becoming a physician, but many of my friends and fellow bio majors did. As we reached the end of our college years, quite a few of them realized that they didn't have what it would take for them to be admitted to medical school. </p>
<p>At that point, some of them deeply regretted their biology majors. They had chosen that major primarily because it was the one most compatible with the pre-med requirements and because they thought that a knowledge of biology would have helped them to become better doctors. But they had no interest in biology per se and did not want to go into the kinds of careers, such as scientific research or science writing, for which a biology major had prepared them. Most drifted into careers totally unrelated to anything they had studied in college and were angry that some career paths that they might have wanted to follow were closed to them (unless they put in a great deal of extra time taking additional courses to make up for what they had not done).</p>
<p>If you're interested in science and would consider a career in the sciences to be an excellent alternative if medical school does not work out for you, then go ahead and major in your favorite science. But think about it first. Imagine that -- for whatever reason -- you don't become a physician. What kind of future do you envision for yourself? What kind of work might you like to do? Then take those thoughts into account when choosing your college major.</p>
<p>For example, if you find yourself thinking, "If I can't become a doctor, what I would really like to do is be a high school teacher -- preferably a math teacher," then majoring in biology is contrary to your goals. You would be better off majoring in math and finding out what you would have to do, either as an undergraduate or in a master's program -- to qualify yourself as a teacher. And while you're doing that, you would complete the pre-med requirements as electives.</p>
<p>While many regular biology majors may be somewhat limited in regards to direct from college job opportunities, those that specialize in molecular biology, DNA sequencing or biotechnology do very well. Chemistry and biochemistry majors are also in very high demand by biotech, pharma and energy companies. Others pursue law school to become patent attorneys which are also in high demand in the life science area. Still others go to business school. Most premeds end up with a minor in chemistry so it is not a stretch to double major in chemistry and some other field. It is not clear that a ChemE or BioE major has better job or grad school prospects than a chem or biochem major.</p>
<p>The numbers I collected were representative of many top LACs and Ivies and actually showed nearly a 90% drop between initial interest in medicine and actual application to med school while in college (from a high of 25% to less than 2.5% taking the MCATs as a junior). I had no real way of tracking the percentage of applicants after graduation although at most colleges, the numbers of post bac applicants exceeded the number of college applicants. Most top LACs such as Swartmore and Amherst typically had less than 10 medical school junior year applicants each year. This seemed in part due to the fact that many LACs have proportionately fewer science majors, allow very few AP credits and encourage study abroad programs all factors which tend to delay application. They actually encouraged students to defer applying until their senior year or later. The percentage of college applicants were significantly higher at research universities. It seemed that strong premed advising at an early stage was a big factor in retaining a high rate of applicants. At schools like Harvard or Yale, premed advising is built into the residential advising system starting sophomore year so that any scheduling issues are worked out early.</p>
<p>I also think the campus culture is relevant. If your kid is at a big party school and is the odd man out stuck at the library on Thursday nights when everyone else has started their weekend, that tends not to be a very supportive environment for a focused, scholarly type regardless of major, pre-med or not. (And people, don't flame me... I'm sure your nephew got into a great med school from Party Central so yes, it happens.) However, at some of the schools where everyone (or almost everyone) works hard and studying isn't seen as an abberant activity, there will be more support for the kind of effort required for med school.</p>
<p>My kid at MIT knows lots of people who decided very late in the game to apply to med school. They weren't pre-med, and they hadn't consciously decided to be pre-anything... but since MIT's core essentially covers the med school requirements, and is a solid prep for the MCAT's, and the culture was generally supportive of kids working really hard from day 1-- they were competitive candidates for med school without having to think about it since Freshman year. A couple had GPA's which were much lower than the MCAT's would have suggested-- they did fine in admissions, and according to my son, had been told by the med counselor and their regular, departmental faculty advisor not to worry about it- admissions committees knew that a Materials Science major or a Mechanical Engineering major from MIT typically suffered from grade deflation.</p>
<p>Can your son get perspective from the med counselors at his college????</p>
<p>Lots of good advice. Let me add a little more.</p>
<ol>
<li>There is a dichotomy here in that choosing to major in engineering and seeking to get into medical school are - or at least can be - two different goals, with two different ways to achieve those goals. And the goals are not necessarily compatible, at least not at graduation time. If you want to become an egnineer, study engineering. If you are aiming at medical school immediately or soon after college (I skip over whether or not that is a good idea, as I have nothing to contribute there) then major in what you like and in what you can do well and put special emphasis on doing well in the required premed courses.</li>
</ol>
<p>IMHO, one should not major in any form of engineering unless one would like to become an engineer. I do not recommend majoring in engineering because it seems like a good idea at the time, for some reason or other. Engineering programs are math-intensive and require heavy concentrations in the necessary subjects. If you don't like heavy math and science, you will be in a difficult and unpleasant program.</p>
<p>Chemistry majors, by the way, are generally (unfortunately, in my view) not offered great job opportunities with only a bachelor's degree, and in patent law many chemistry majors get at least a Master's. If you want to work with "only" a bachelor's degree in a chemical subject, study chemical engineering or pharmacy. And think about getting some graduate education later.</p>
<p>Biological science majors are the most numerous applicants to medical schools. You will likely have to get higher grades and test scores because of the competition from similar applicants. If you are an engineer (or drama major for that matter), medical schools might spot you a few points as long as you have fulfilled the course requirements. </p>
<p>Choose the field that interests you the most.</p>