I am interested in doing pre-med. For premed, can I do biomedical engineering as a major and also a music major? I want to incorporate the following items:
Pre Med
Biomedical or Aeronautical Engineering
Music.
Accounting
Can you get a dual degree like a BS/MS program and incorporate these above topics? To get like a BS/MS in Biomedical or Aeronautical Engineering and a Bachelors and Masters in Music (like Music Education,etc) and accounting?
Thanks!
You can do any degree with premed, but engineering degrees may be more difficult with time management. Strong applications to medical schools usually have quite a bit of volunteering, shadowing, and clinical experience in them.
Not every interest you have has to be a major. Are you really going to see patients, design satellites, and run the books for your local symphony orchestra on the side? If not, why are you training for four different careers at once?
If you are that undecided, apply to a broad range of colleges–you’ll have until May 1 to pick one and maybe by then you’ll have narrowed down your major a bit. Otherwise, try to go to a college that offers lots of opportunities to explore, and choose the major that fits you best after a year or two of study.
If you have time this summer, try to meet a doctor, a CPA, a musician, an engineer, etc and do informational interviews about their careers (what’s a typical day like, what do you love/hate about your job…) and educational/career paths (where did you go to college, what was your first job out of school…). Ask your parents, relatives, parents of your friends who they know who you could talk to. Linked In helps people find contacts, too.
Thanks! Is it possible to do all of the above? @Syrxis
I think it would depend mainly on the school you are considering. Double majoring is pretty difficult already, perhaps I would consider minoring in music instead? But, take that with a grain of salt because I don’t know your personal situation. I would talk to college counselors at schools you are considering.
Thank you so much!
Doing premed and bme alone is hard to complete in 8 semesters. The curriculum is approximately 140 credits for graduation. If you add any more than that you are looking to spend more money and time in college. If your primary interest is in getting into med school you want to be able to incorporate your premed class requirements into your schedule along with the classes required for your major. At the same time you want to work towards maintaining a high gpa. (mostly A’s in majority of your classes)
The more you add to graduating with one major and adding premed classes the more complicated your schedule will be for you and the more difficulty of maintaining a very high gpa.
My daughter has completed 3 years of undergrad as premed/bme with honors and she has taken close to 18 credits every semester. Her program is actually a 9 semester program that she is completing in 8 semesters.
It has been a very rigorous program but she loves bme and couldn’t imagine majoring in anything else.
The most challenging part is making a timeline for the next four years so that you are able to meet the requirements of being premed and completely the prerequisite classes for your major. There is a very good chance you will need to take a gap year after graduation to fulfill all the requirements needed to have a strong application to apply to med school.
You need to think about what you want to major in. In my child’s graduating class the freshman bme class started out with 60 students and now into senior year it is down to 20 students. Out of the 20 students at most 4 of them are premed/bme since most that were dropped out of the program because their gpa was too low.
Think about what you’re committing too because once you start out with a low gpa it is very difficult to bring it up to be competitive to apply to med school. If you decide to major in bme between those classes and premed there is not going to be any room for any other classes while trying to graduate in 4 years.
Sample semester. (3rd year student)
Organic Chemistry 2
Biochemistry
Physiology
Bioengineering upper level class (for bme majors)
Bioengineering upper level class (for bme majors)
Total 18 credits.
Thank you so much! I appreciate it! Good luck for your daughter! @raclut
You can do any thing you want in premed, as long as you will be able to complete the pre-req for premed.
Practically, there is not enough time to complete all you are listed as MAJOR. I am an accountant, so if you want to get a CPA license, you need about 80 credits or more just for the Accounting Major, how can you do BME, music and premed at the same time with only 130ish credits for your UG? Do you wish to graduate in 6 years?
Besides, for a CPA license, you need at least two years working in a CPA firm. that conflicts your desire being in med school.
So if you drop the idea of pre-med and med school, is it possible to do accounting,music, and biomedical or aeronautical engineering? @artloversplus . Thanks so much!
Main concern with trying to do too many things at once is messing up your grades. I don’t know what schools you are looking into but in engineering if you are not performing well you may not have the option of staying in the program.
Another thing to consider. At some schools you have to apply for admission to a specific department for example,
college of engineering, college of business, college of arts. Your admission offer would be specific to the dept. Once you are accepted to one dept you maybe restricted in the types of classes you can enroll in. For example some bme classes are only restricted to bme majors or some accounting classes are only for accounting majors. There is no crossover allowed at specific schools.
For example at UVA you would apply the college of Arts and Science and take general business classes the first two years and then end of sophomore year apply to the business school where admission is not guaranteed. If you were interested in engineering you would apply only to the college of engineering where you maybe able to complete a minor in business. End of sophomore you would apply for bme or aeronautical engineering.
What do you hope to achieve with an accounting and engineering degree? What field would you apply for summer internships for? Accounting or Engineering? At some point you will be forced to focus on one area so that you can obtain employment in that field after graduation.
It appears you are not quite sure what you want to major in college. You may want to apply undecided and take the first semester to take one class in each area. For example, biology, intro to engineering, intro to accounting, music and work with the counselor to narrow down the field you would like to pursue. Keep in mind many students change their majors once they are enrolled in college. Lots of premeds drop out and focus on other career paths. A lot of students get weeded out of engineering classes too. They simply don’t have the strong math, science, and programming foundation to handle the tougher engineering classes.
My college roommate’s kid took 5 years and majored in engineering and an instrument.
People get really really good at something because they devote themselves to that thing at the expense of other things. Real satisfaction and pride takes time.
Pre-med + BME (or any engineering) = no room for mistake. Once you start getting C or worse in pre-med BCMP courses, your pre-med dream is quickly going out of door. Once you start getting more C’s or worse in your eng courses, your BME (or any engineering) is out of door too (most schools require 3.0 GPA for engineering).
Over-ambitious and over-estimate one’s capability are top reasons why pre-med kids get weed-out. Remember you are competing against some really smart & talented kids for very limited A’s in pre-med BCMP courses, and then you throw BME (or any engineerring) on top of that, it just looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Of course, some people were able to make it, but most people we saw here on CC were crying with their tanked GPA…
Thanks @Andorvw . So if you forget the idea of Pre-Med, is BME or Aeronautical Engineering, Music, and Accounting a good option? Thanks for the tips!
It depends on how strong your science background is (for engineering) and what college you will be in. How did you do in your SAT 2 subject tests (Phy, Chem, Bio, Math)? What college will you be in? I’d assume you got music talent, why you choose BME or Aeronautical Eng and accounting?
Again, going back to the title of your original post, what kind of career are you thinking of that you need such a disparate collection of majors?
You almost certainly can’t do all that in four years. You will almost certainly have a terribly packed courseload, with little free time for fun electives or all the extra opportunities a college offers. Keeping a decent GPA will be difficult. Doing the extras to make all those majors valuable will be near impossible. The accountant major is stronger with a business internship, the engineering major is stronger if you find time to do research your professors’ labs, the medical school application will be better with leadership and community service hours, the music major may require performing in the school symphony and traveling to perform would be recommended as well, etc. Oh, and are you made of money, or will you have a student job to pay part of your college expenses? There aren’t enough hours in the day.
What sort of career are you thinking of? How do all those majors (plus medical school) fit together in your mind?
Yeah, it would need at least five to six years plus if you are going to get a masters. There is a BS/MS program where you can get a masters as well, and some programs where you can get a degree in engineering (or music) and education, so you can teach. I was thinking to drop the idea of pre-med and just going with BME (either the BS/MS program or getting a degree in education/engineering in the program), a degree in music education, and accounting. I guess some classes would overlap with music education and engineering with education. Basically, I wanted to incorporate music education, biomedical engineering, and accounting to get a sort of well-balanced experience. I don’t know how rigorous it will be (which many are saying that it is extremely rigorous). I thought that it wouldn’t be as rigorous, so while I’m going for the BME degree, if you have a program where you can get either a BS/MS in BME or a degree in BME and education. This way, if you have the education degree (as well as the BME and music education), you will be fit to teach somewhere in related topics. I was keeping accounting as well, as the job market for musicians is slowing down. Would minoring in music education make a difference? Would I get a degree for that? SOrry fr taking too much of your time! @AroundHere
To me, a degree in biomedical engineering, music, and accounting is not “well balanced” - it’s jumbled. These fields do not seem to mesh into a coherent vision of your education. “If I can’t get a job in engineering, I can always be an accountant or a teacher,” is not a vision. It’s just fear of not finding a job.
The best way to figure out if you can do all of these things is to read college websites and see what they offer in terms of getting into multiple majors or doing multiple degrees.
Even if you can theoretically do all these things, please stop and think about whether this is wise. Your first employer in whatever field will not pay you more for having taken a bunch of hard-but-irrelevant classes. Don’t assume three degrees in one person will even look attractive to employers. It could very well look as unfocused and scattered to others as it does to me.
- If any one interested in medicine, should be super focused since it is extremely competitive. It does not matter what major you do. What matters is your GPA, MCAT score, strong EC related to medicine, underserved population community activities etc., Since you no longer interested in this, let us stop here.
- It is true and possible students may have interest in multiple areas like engineering and music. So this is possible, you can do minor in music with 4 years target.
- If interested in engineering and management or master in engineering, it is possible for BS/MS or BS/MBA in 5-6 years. There are many schools have special program for BS/MS and if that is of your interest areas, get more details and see how you can increase the chances to get admission.
- What is not clear is Engineering and Accounting. If you have interest in accounting, it is better to do major in accounting and do minor or second major related to that domain that can expose you to some related areas and also can benefit in getting a job. For example, like economics, finance, MIS, management in conjunction with accounting.
- Management (MBA) is more generic and can benefit with many UG majors. But in general it is preferable first you should work for few years in professional world before doing MBA. In general engineering or science are more analytical in nature, so you learn concepts and try to apply them and use them in job. Management to great extent part art and part science and hence in learning and using it benefit more when you have real world experience and how business runs than just having theoretical knowledge by doing it right after UG. Just a view point and I am sure others may or may not agree with this point.
- In real life majority of folks what they do in career and what major they did have no relationship. Education is to some extent a passport to enter the workforce for many mundane jobs. Only very specialized jobs like research or specialized design/engineering or scientists do work on whatever they studied.
- Though it is good to pursue a career which interests you, need to balance to some extent what opportunity it provides to make a living also.
- Doing a minor is not hard since some time it can double dip with some general education (GE) requirements you need to do for any major.
- Doing double major/minor in "related" fields within 4-5 years is doable if you are very keen. Few schools also take care of the tuition for 5th year also. Check OU which gives 5 years of free tuition if you are NMS.