I’m an anthropology major with a psych minor getting ready to finish my second year in a couple of months. However, as I’ve been talking with my friends, who are biology majors and taking the grad school route instead of med school one, I’ve been studying up in my free time in a lot of biological fields, such as human anatomy and physiology, molecular and microbiology, neuroscience, physical anthropology, genetics, and primatology and they have been really peaking my interest! I’ve even taken a few courses like Primate Behavior and Evolutionary Anthro, and I’ve decided I want to study bio in grad school. However, my biggest worry is that when they see that instead of being a biology major and I took anthro, it may ruin my chances of getting into a Graduate bio program. Sadly the undergrad biology program at my university doesn’t really offer as much courses in the top fields, and it since it doesn’t offer doctorate programs, which irritates me. Can someone give me advice on anything I
Biology is an extremely broad field, so you will have to be much more specific about what you’re interested in studying. If, for example, you want to study go to grad school to study molecular genetics, you would be poorly prepared. If, however you want to study evolutionary biology, you might be okay.
My advice to you is to first decide what area of biology you specifically want to study in graduate school. Look at top graduate programs in those fields and see what their requirements are. You still have two years-ish left to take courses they require for admittance. Most biological science undergrad programs require chemistry+lab (2 semesters), organic chemistry+lab (2 semesters), physics+lab (2 semesters), introductory bio+lab (2 semesters), more advanced bio classes, possibly calculus, genetics, and statistics. Grad programs will definitely require you to have taken these classes. Also, if you find programs you’re interested in, you might want to see what courses they have their graduate students take and take classes at your school that are similar.
Lastly, if you are seriously considering graduate school, your first goal should be finding research opportunities in a lab on campus, through an REU, summer research program, etc. Research experience is one of the absolute most important components to any graduate school application. Research experience is required to get into most, if not all, good graduate schools for a doctoral program.
With an anthropology undergraduate major you won’t be competitive for a PhD program in biology unless you have significant biology coursework (probably close to the equivalent of a major).
However, it sounds like what you are really interested in is physical anthropology, which you can absolutely do with an undergraduate major in anthropology. You may want to change your minor to biology or at least take some biology courses (I would recommend at least 5-7).
And yes, see if you can find someone to do research with! See if any of the anthropologists in your department are doing physical/biological anthro work and/or if some of the biologists in the biology department are doing work that intersects with anthropology.