Hello everyone! So I recently started my University of California apps and I am applying as a public health/global disease biology major. However, I was told that I should have an alternate major in something that isn’t science related due to how impacted these majors are. I decided to go ahead and choose international relations/international studies as my alternate major. My question is, will this look bad? In my personal statement, I mentioned how I want to work in the medical field; so, should I choose an alternate major in anything other than the biological sciences? Or do you think it is fine if I have a social science as an alternate major. By the way, I am genuinely interested in international relations as I would like to work in the global aspect of the medical field.Thank you!
Why would this look bad?
The social sciences are integral to medicine too.
It’s totally fine to specify social sciences as an alternate major. Besides the fact that the social sciences are an important part of medicine and health, nobody expects a high school senior to have it all figured out - you’re allowed to have multiple interests.
It’s because I’ve heard some people say that if your major doesn’t match the career you describe in your personal statement, then it will hurt your application. Thank you though!
Majors aren’t rigidly tied to careers, and particularly with medicine, admissions offices of huge universities like Berkeley will be used to successful med school hopefuls majoring in all kinds of fields, everything from theater to biology. It might be a little strange if you said you wanted to be an astrophysicist but specified your major as dance - but medical/health is so broad that anything really could apply.