<p>I'm going to be a sophomore at Stanford this fall, as a pre-med majoring in computer science, possibly specializing in robotics. I'm really interested in both medicine and computer science, and I would love to work as a doctor in a developing field like robotic surgery technology. Obviously, it isn't necessary to have both an MD and an engineering background to be in that type of field, but I think having experience in both the technical and operational areas would definitely be advantageous.</p>
<p>My concern is that pursuing this major is too difficult. Without the pre-med reqs, it's a very hard major at a competitive school, and with the extra classes, I fear that I will be putting myself through an unnecessarily difficult undergrad experience. My GPA freshman year was around 3.6, which is good, but it will only get harder from here.</p>
<p>My question is whether I should continue in this more difficult engineering major (which I am definitely interested in) or switch to something else. One other option for a major would be Human Biology, which is a very popular pre-med major. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.</p>
<p>You don’t just get an engineering degree and immediately know everything that there is to know about a particular technology. You learn about the basic science and a little bit about design, but it really takes years in graduate school and/or industry to know enough to be useful. </p>
<p>If you want to become a doctor and practice medicine, you’ll be practicing medicine and not working as an engineer. This is why I think that studying engineering before becoming a doctor is typically not a good idea. Having that ‘engineering background’ sounds good to the lay man, but that ‘engineering background’ only becomes useful with additional experience in engineering.</p>
<p>I have little personal knowledge about how medical technology is developed, but from what my optics professor said about laser eye surgery, eye surgeons have little to no knowledge about how their lasers work and just use the tools that the scientists and engineers make for them.</p>
<p>Be a doctor --whose focus is on seeing and treating patients in hospital or office setting? Or be researcher developing new surgical technology?</p>
<p>If it’s the latter, then you need to stay in engineering and look at PhD in biomed engineering or MD/PhD programs for biomed engineering. </p>
<p>Most medical tech isn’t developed by doctors–it’s developed by research engineers/physicists/computer scientists. Physicians don’t need to understand how a device works–only how to use it.</p>
<p>If you want to be a doctor, then you need to do what’s necessary to protect your GPA.</p>
<p>So it’s decision time for you—what is it you really want to do?</p>
<p>(BTW, it is possible to do well in BME at Stanford. Know a student there who is a rising senior with a 3.8 GPA in BME and who was going to apply to med school next summer. But he’s also a top ranked runner who’s been offered a professional athletic contract and a chance to try out for the US Olympic team. He’s decided med school can wait…)</p>
<p>And you might also check out med school curricula if you’re really wanting to do medicine. I think you’ll find that there isn’t really any time to pursue “outside interests” (academically-speaking at least) during med school. So if you have this thought that you’ll be able to learn a considerable amount about how medical technology works (from a fundamental level) while you’re a medical student (thus utilizing your engineering background)…well, I just can’t imagine you’d have the time, resources, or quite frankly the energy to do that. </p>
<p>I think there’s something to be said for studying what you want to study while you’re an undergrad because if you have interests in addition to medicine, there’s a good chance that your last chance to study that topic in any detail will be during undergrad. So to that end, if you’re studying engineering because you’re truly interested in it (with the full knowledge that it will be difficult and probably not super applicable to medicine), I’d say go for it.</p>
<p>Is it a general trend at your school that GPAs get higher as one moves to higher level courses? Or do GPAs get lower?</p>
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<p>CS does give you a much better backup career option than biology does in the event you do not get into any medical school (most pre-meds do not get into any medical school). Majoring in biology for pre-med basically bets your entire undergraduate study on getting into medical school – if you do not, your job and career prospects are not very good. With a CS degree, you may find better job and career opportunities writing the software that controls medical devices and the like, or any other type of software job, if you do not go to medical school.</p>
<p>Is CS at your school considered “engineering”?<br>
Anyway, you will have to spend ton of times writing and debugging your computer programs (unless it is hardware, according to “engineering” label for your CS major). Well, I would say that engineering is even much more demanding than writing software. I do not know how you could combine any of these with Med. School requirements where academics is only part (although the most important one, that is why 3.6 is on a lower side). </p>
<p>This is just my opinion. I am a parent of successful Med. School applicant who has started at Med. School this year. I have also successfully swithced from Electrical Engineering (BS and 11 years of experience, but hated it) to CS (non-engineering, just writing software) (CC, BS, MBA and over 30 years of experience, still love this job).</p>