<p>I have narrowed down my choices to accounting, engineering, and computer science. I like all 3. I'm leaning to accounting because it will probably be easier and more useful for private practice. I love business and medicine so I think it will be good, but accounting would take longer. So what do you think would be the best choice?</p>
<p>You should major in whatever you can excel in academically, and what you like learning about. Normally, people excel in subjects more readily when they also enjoy that subject. The admission rates for different majors is usually very similar across the board.</p>
<p>If you like business and medicine, you should consider an M.D M.B.A program. </p>
<p>Upper Accounting classes are very demanding. All 3 majors in your choices are very time consuming. Excelling in them academically wihtout additional burden of Med. School pre-reqs is a great challenge. However, some are capapble of doing that,. You are the only person who can assess your abilities in very very different academic classes as well as grea time management skills that will be required if you combined either of the 3 with the Med. Schools requirements. Remember, if your classmates in you major could afford Bs in many classes, you absolutely cannot if you consider Med. School. Your min. goal is about 3.6+. To have a realisitic goal of achieveing this GPA, your goal is every single class is an A. People who do not realize that right from the start, get derailed, some of them are coming with strong academic background, valedictorians and such.<br>
In addition, no business degree is required to run any business successfully. That could be learned as it goes. I have an MBA, you do NOT need it for medicine. It will not help you.
You also will be required to participate in several medical ECs. So, while others in yuor class will be focusing on completing the accounting homework which is essential for being successful in the class,. you might be spending lots of your time in Med. Research lab (for free in most of the cases),. volunteering, etc. …
In your 3rd year (when level of accounting classes is pretty high and they are not walk in a park at all) you will have to spend several hours every day for many weeks preparing for the MCAT. And if you get decent stats and everything else is in order, then in senior year you will be going to Med. Schools interviews, some might be far away and you will need to arrange your exams / tests make up, adjust you working schedule (most UGs work, pre-meds are no exception), your Research internship schedule, many other things. Nobody cares about your Interviews, it will be your personal responsibility, some profs are OK with it, others not so, but your GPA cannot suffer even in senior year after your apply.
Well, assess carefully and go from there. keep in mihd that most pre-meds have bio related majors and many have minors in some area of personal interest(s). It is a much better combo for the goal of the very high GPA. If this goal is not achieved, you are out. Ask yourself now, are you setting yourself for failure or you are very capapble of achieving success with your plan because you already ahve developed suprior time management skills you can easily multitask, you can focus under presure, you have been very top caliber student who is involved in several un-relelated ECs. </p>
<p>If you go with the accounting and pre-med route, when you graduate you will face two major challenges, the Mcat and the CPA test. Even you can handle both, the demand for the public accountant life will not allow you to handle the med school application process which requires undivided attention on the secondaries and travel for interviews. I don’t know how one can handle that and I certainly can’t . My d is currently full time on med school apps, had she being employeed by a CPA firm, I can’t see she will be able to work and handle the apps in the same time. </p>
<p>Accounting and med school really don’t mix very well. </p>
<p>I am not sure about the sequence of applications that your D. followed. Vast majority (non-accounting major) pre-meds" take MCAT during junior year (mostly after spring finals) and apply right after they get score. They go to interviews during senior year. That was done by my D. as well as ALL her pre-meds friends that are currently at various Medcial schools. The are exceptions, they take “gap” year. But you better be doing something productive during this year or it will not look good on your Medical School application. Your D. had a great job, she did not need to obtain some Research internship or anything of this nature. I do not think that flipping hamburgers would be looking favorably on the Med. School application.<br>
CPA exam is only relevent if you actually pursue Certified Public Accountant career. Not everybody take it.
I agree wholeheartedly that “Accounting and med school really don’t mix very well.”. I imagine that during 3rd year when they have to spend several hours every day for many weeks preparing for the MCAT, the accounting majors probably going thru the most challenging accounting classes. And this is on top the challenging upper Bio and possibly Physics.
On the other hand as I mentioned, the engineering is the most challenging UG major and many UG schools require engineering majors to spend 5 years in UG before they can obtain their diploma. While again, there are exceptions and some perform very well, engineering tend to lower the GPA to the point that it may not be possible to apply to Med. School anyway, You need about 3.6+ to have a reasonable chance.
Again, only person can assess. </p>
<p>The decision when to take MCAT differs from school to school, person to person, major to major. As an accounting major myself, I doubt any Accounting majors can fit the Science requirements for med school into their program by Junior year and prep for MCAT in the same time. Regardless, I think Accounting and Engineering majors will have difficult time to fit in pre-med courses into their schedule. It is possible but vast majority of these majors will require post-bacc or 5th year preparation if you are serious in medicine. </p>
<p>MDP’s D is a PBK or top of her UG class, unless you are in the same position, you cannot compare her achievements to your own.</p>
<p>Well, I actually mentioned that I was talking about non-acounting majors. On the other note, all pre-meds are close to the top if you think that they need 3.6+, many in D’s pre-med crowd were in fact Summa Cum Laude / PBK (and requirement for Summa in D’s department was brutal 3.96). Yes. D. was both PBK (like several others), but she was the one who received top pre-med award which was a recongnition for both academic and non-academic achievements and frankly many others were close to this position and some were accepted to Med. Schools were D. was not.<br>
One got to be somewhere at the top if considering Med. School. And having any goal lower than A in every class is basically shooting yourself in a foot. so assessing where you are with both your abilities and time management skills is a key given that you are a very hard working student which is absolute requirement at the Med. School. No matter what efforts you put into your UG studies they are nowhere near your efforts at the Med. School, as D. mentioned, “they exist in different universe”. However, there is no exceptional talent required to take the MCAT and going thru interviews while still in UG and having Bio-related major. Major will make a difference. And I strongly agree that while it is possible for some exceptionally great time managers, for the most, either of OP’s majors have high probability of derailing this plan.<br>
On the other note, some who have just one bio-related major graduate earlier as did my D’s best friend who was some Bio major at private pre-med oriented college. This girl graduated Summa Cum Laude in 3.5 years and spent another 6 months doing research. </p>
<p>“So what do you think would be the best choice?”</p>
<p>Correct answer is in Jweinst1’s post above (“You should major in whatever you can excel in academically, and what you like learning about”). Don’t pick a major because you believe it will translate into something useful in medicine. Consider med school goal as Plan A with your major choice Plan B if Plan A gets derailed along the way.</p>
<p>No matter which of your three choices you pick, it’s not only the major and premed reqs, but the GEs reqs as well that have to be entered into the equation. “…Almost assuredly you will end up taking a gap year…” You probably should accept this quote as your reality from day 1 of college if you’re set on say a premed/accounting pathway. It would make things somewhat easier for you. A gap year is not a terrible thing, my S did it.</p>
<p>You might consider having a long chat with yourself and solidify in your mind that med school is really your Plan A. You don’t want to waste a lot of time and money taking premed reqs which will not translate into accounting.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>MDP I totally disagree that a candidate for med school needs a PBK, SCL, GPA 3.8 and MCAT 40+. If you look at the AMCAS stats, maybe a few top schools had an average GPA ~3.8, that is average, not the minimum. Yes, when you have that kind of stats it is easier to get into a top medical school. However, with ~150 MD schools in the US, you do not need that high stats to get in ONE of them. </p>
<p>In the following thread, one CA med school admin mentioned that one of his best admits had a MCAT 29.</p>
<p><a href=“how medical schools pick applicants : | Student Doctor Network”>http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/threads/how-medical-schools-pick-applicants.1085339/</a> </p>
<p>@artloversplus </p>
<p>As long as you are not automatically screened out for falling below a minimum GPA/MCAT while applying to a particular medical school, you technically have some non-zero chance to be accepted. So what is “needed” it hard to put a value on because even for the people that have a 3.8 GPA and 40 MCAT, there acceptance rate is still not 100%, as no medical schools have a criteria of credentials where you are guaranteed an acceptance. All miami meant to say was that, statistically, you have a higher chance of acceptance at a higher GPA and MCAT.</p>
<p>@MiamiDAP </p>
<p>An MBA is not essential for private practice, but if the OP were to become interested in a career in healthcare investment or healthcare private equity, most of those firms highly value an MD/MBA.</p>
<p>"MDP I totally disagree that a candidate for med school needs a PBK, SCL, GPA 3.8 and MCAT 40+. "
- I totally 200% disagree with this also and have never ever stated that these are requirments. I have stated one thing is that GOAL (not the result) should be an A in every class. It may not happen, however, one should keep in mind to put in the best effort to achieve it. If your set the lower goals, the good chance is that you wiil not make a cut, which I have stated many time is about 3.6+ or so (do not have a personal experience but have seen stats like this). MCAT should be somewhere 31+. 3.6/31 with all other things present should result in a reasonable list of acceptances. Nothing guarantee acceptance anyway so the list of schools that applicant will apply should match somewhat his / her stats. How close the match depends on the personal goal of acceptance percentage. Surely, if 2 people have very similar stats, but one can tolerate 25% acceptance rate vs. another wish to be accepted at 75% of schools that one apply, their list will be very different. D.'s goal was 50% (for references).
Any additional education is ALWAYS a plus as long as one is truly interested / passionate about it. Pursuing anything as a generally “good career choice” is NOT a good idea, it will backfire. It has happened to me and I have never had any connections to medicine. Pursuing Med. School is adding entirely different consideration. Now you are in pursuit of excellence. If you do not reach this goal of about 3.6 / 31, you will not be a strong Med. School candidate. While All I cared being in the worng field for myself (engineering) that I hate it with all my heart (despite of strong academic results), if you choose something that is very challenging and in addition you do not like so much, there is a good chance that your primary goal of getting into Med. School will be derailed.<br>
Again, it goes back to a very close self-assessment. There is nobody in a world can tell how person feels about various fields (and how his feeling will change over time), person’s ability, working habits, time management skills, passions. But when the field of study is very challenging, like engineering or accounting, then you add another layer of risk.</p>