<p>A MS level degree will have a more limited range of career options than will a PhD.</p>
<p>A MS medical physicist will often work in radiation safety and monitoring, dosimetry, occupation health, safety & security surveillance of radiation emitting devices, optimization of equipment & procedures for safety and security, and similar areas.</p>
<p>Generally speaking a MS degreed health physicist will not work with patients or patient therapeutics, nor with radioactive pharmaceuticals or tracers intended for human use.</p>
<p>There are good employment opportunities for MS-level medical physicists. (Medical physics was D1’s back-up plan had she not gotten accepted into med school.)</p>
<p>MS in Anatomy is very helpful at Medical School (if planning to attend a Med. School)</p>
<p>I know I should not put this question here, but since there are so many docs, MDs, moms and dads here, so I post it here. </p>
<p>My mom had severe abdominal pain over the weekend. So she breath too fast, her fingers cramped, numbness on arms below elbow, feet, two thigh, chest area and area around mouth and neck. My family got so scared and did not know what was going on since the numbness and she could not move her fingers anymore. My dad called 911. They came in less than 5 min. Paramedic said it was hyperventilation. After they instructed my mom to breath slowly, all the numbness went away slowly. Now she is OK. </p>
<p>My question is: if fire truck came like 15 min later, will the numbness became permanently? Will this cause paralyzing?</p>
<p>I kindly decided to have CS as my major instead of bio. CS is just a better back plan with good job market. I still plan to take as many as bio classes I can. </p>
<p>A parent told me that her son was financial engineering major in UG and was very dis-advantage when applying to MS (he eventually got in one MS). MS thinks with that major, her son was not serious enough for MS. Maybe MS prefers bio or chem major students? MS wants you to put 100% into it.</p>
<p>Is this true? Will my CS major hurt me when applying?</p>
<p>A CS major won’t hurt you so long as you have a good answer to “why medicine?” and plenty of medically related ECs to with. (You need to demonstrate that medicine is your first choice, not a fall back position.)</p>
<p>A former poster’s son was CS major at JHU and had a very successful application season this year.</p>
<p>Regarding medically related ECs. </p>
<p>I could not find any hospital or clinical volunteer in the summer. All of them require min 6 month commitment which I cannot since I will be gone for school in Aug. I don’t know if this is the case in other states. I don’t know how other students handle this?</p>
<p>So I will do my pediatrics shadowing (so nice the doc brought it up by herself to me before I asked). Usually how many hours do I need? I am doing homeless, humanity volunteers. Also I work Mon-Fri morning coaching kid tennis. </p>
<p>I guess this is not enough? Please share your advices, any websites. Thank you!</p>
<p>General guidelines:</p>
<p>Shadowing --50 or more hours. (You might be able to get by with 30-35 hours if you have substantial clinical experience)</p>
<p>Clinical experience – 100 hours minimum</p>
<p>Non-clinical volunteering --as much as you find meaningful. Adcomms particularly like to see long-term involvement with one volunteer activity–demonstrates commitment.</p>
<p>**D2 only had 35 hours of shadowing, but she had over 3500 hours of clinical experience, most of which was working directly for several physicians in a medical center.</p>
<p>There are opportunities online for shadowing. The first day my D returned from Chicago found a small clinic to shadow online locally in CA.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind while going for CS or engineering majors. CS is not challenging, however, it is very time consuming. The great amount of time is required of novice programmer to debug the software written by them. Engineering is the toughest major out there, period. One will have to work extremely hard (much harder than other pre-meds who work very hard anyway) to achive a high GPA. How do I know? I have done both and have a good amount of job experience in both (but I was never a pre-med). In addition, I am aware how challenging is just regular Bio major based pre-med (D. went thru that). Not sure if combining CS + pre-med or engineering + pre-med is a good idea, but it has been done successfully. So, you have to assess your time managing skills and keep in mind about all the pre-med ECs. While it is possible to pursue ECs during summer, many (including my D.) are unable to do so due to the lack of spots in the summer. D. was forced to participate in all of her pre-med ECs at her college during school year (on top of her job, couple minors,…), but she was not in CS or engineering. So, assess your time managing skills very carefully, your body still require certain number of sleeping hours, despite of the fact that some pre-meds do not think so. These get burned a bit faster than others.</p>