Students majoring in something not related to Pre-Med

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>Hello again everyone,</p>

<p>Quick question, wondering if anyone can shed some light...</p>

<p>Does anybody know how MCAT scores differ between students who major in something pre med related (bio, chem etc) vs students who major in something completely unrelated to pre med?
If that is too broad of a question, can anyone share their personal experience with such?
I am just wondering since someone who majors in something unrelated to pre-med is also focused on another subject, so would that not =hinder their focus on pre med pre reqs etc?</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!
--Mark</p>

2

<p>AAMC has a table showing the mean MCAT scores and GPAs of applicants and matriculants to medical school broken down by major:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Math & statistics majors had the highest average MCAT scores among both applicants and matriculants; specialized health sciences had the lowest among both applicants and matriculants. </p>

<p>Matriculants’ average scores were: Math (32.8), physical sciences (32.4), humanities (31.8), social sciences (31.4), biological sciences (31.0) and other (31.0), specialized heath sciences (29.6).</p>

3

<p>I’ll be damned. I guess the samples are large enough that the difference in scores between math and science matriculants and specialized health sciences matriculants is statistically significant p<0.0001</p>

<p>Humanities vs. Bio also different, p<0.0001</p>

<p>If you want to run any other combo: [GraphPad</a> QuickCalcs: t test calculator](<a href=“T test calculator”>T test calculator)</p>

4

<p>I’ll just give some personal experience of people who are older than me that I know.</p>

<p>I know a bio major who studied a lot and got a 34.</p>

<p>I know a psych major who studied a lot and got a 32.</p>

<p>I know a chem major who did not study very much and got a 26.</p>

<p>As they test on the pre-req’s, I think what is mostly important is truly understanding the material and studying very hard for the exam. </p>

<p>The psych major told me she studied over 400 hours for her MCAT and the bio didn’t keep track but he told me he studied a lot.</p>

5

<p>^duh, my point was just that i figured those differences were small enough to be explainable by sampling but the samples are so large that there is indeed an association. I am in no way implying that correlation equals causation though.</p>

6

<p>^
Sorry, I didn’t doubt your statistics! I didn’t even think of the contrast of humanities and science, I only know the scores of three people and that just happened to be what they told me.</p>

7

<p>Well the only caveat is that Math majors make up less than 1% of the applicants and Bio majors make up close to 53%. ;)</p>

8

<p>My son’s primary major is Computer Science. He made a late decision (at the end of his sophomore year) to double major in Biology also. He scored a 38 on MCAT recently. He thinks that the pre-med courses (which you have to take, regardless of your major) are sufficient to do well in MCAT.</p>

9

<p>kdog,</p>

<p>Of course. Reminds me of the fact that at Brown the Classics department has a 100% medical school placement rate for more than a decade (on the order of 1 or 2 kids per year). It’s surely not that studying Classics makes one competitive but more a reflection of the type of student who engages in both in depth study of the Classics as well as pre-med preparation.</p>