<p>Here is the short version of my situation. My ultimate goal is to go to med school and become a physician. Right now i will be a Junior and am just begining to look for colleges. I have been very active in theatre over the past few years, and would like to continue with it in college. I am also not comfortable majoring in biology because only 1/3 of premed students are accepted into med school. So I am looking for another major other than biology, chemestry, or physics to pair with Theatre (which would possibly be a minor) that would be good for med school. (possibly buisness administration??) Any input would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>I would pick something that you are interested in.</p>
<p>In the unfortunate event that you do not get into med school, you will want to have majored in something that you enjoy and show interest in.</p>
<p>you can't pick your major based on statisitcs. if you like science, go for it! like impactangel said, pick something you will score well in and like.</p>
<p>I know this may sound trite, but a lot of med. school applicants are psychology majors. Psychology gives you a lot to work with, isn't too difficult to deal with (in addition to all those science classes), and would allow you to be a theater minor. But, so would any major. I mostly just like Psych. because I'm a Psychology major :D.</p>
<p>Are there really only three people who have advice? Come on people.</p>
<p>ive heard from people, and also my cuz whos on the admissions at mt sinai that a science major isnt as important or common anymore. Med schools like to see you're a good student all around and you have an open mind. My friend got accepted into BU med school and he was an economics major from brandeis. You dont need to be a science major anymore...major in what you love and what you will do well in, because in the end you want a strong GPA</p>
<p>i know someone with a similar situation. he's premed, with a minor in film studies, at yale.</p>
<p>I was a mathematics major / music minor. A lot of interviewers absolutely loved that, since only about 200 or so math majors apply to medical schools (and there acceptance rate is anywhere from 60-65%).</p>
<p>I've heard that as well. Medical schools love math majors, but again, I wouldn't major in math unless you want to. </p>
<p>Major in ANYTHING that you want. Medical schools care more about GPA than what you major in.</p>
<p>Well, philosophy majors tend to hit a good score to. Logisticians as well. A combination of mathematics, and one of the two majors listed in the former make you a superior candidate for med school. The reason being: having the ability to reason, quick thinking, extremely good at analysis and quantitative deduction. It all comes back to, "Can you think for yourself? Can you work under pressure in order to save a life?"</p>
<p>Sure, med schools need a good memorizer... but you can't really memorize books and keep referring to them. Thinking process is valued at med schools more than anything. Those are the people that will save lives, not book readers (sorry biologists). Leonardo da Vinci had a good quote to summarize this,"there are three types of people in the world: those who see, those who need to be shown what to see, those who do not see."</p>
<p>You figure out which one med schools want...</p>
<p>Thinking process is important, but the body is bluntly too complex to be reasoned through. There is simply no alternative but to brute-force memorize your way through medical school itself.</p>
<p>People save lives by knowing, instantaneously, how to treat the conditions that walk in their door. In many fields, there is no time to look things up, reason out a process, and fine-tune your assessment and plan. You have to know, and you have to know instantly and with extremely high accuracy.</p>
<p>You have to memorize your way through medical school, period. You can get by reasoning your way through undergraduate work and even the MCAT, but once you hit medical school itself, you will have to become a first-rate memorizer.</p>
<p>^ummm... i would like to disagree... who came up with the facts to memorize??? Obviously to be the best you have to get out of the idea of structure and following... like i said previously, there are three types of people... and it seems u rely on being shown what to see to live in such a field... yes memorizing is extremely important.... and a must component of med school student... but it isnt ur ticket to become someone important... remember that...</p>
<p>Btw... Wilder Penfield, Harvey Cushing, William Stewart Halsted.... all were known to be social science majors... William Stewart Halsted, considered the father of medicine, actually never set foot in a library and decided to go into medicine from his liking of sports... again... the very best dont resort to brute force memorization...</p>
<p>As the saying goes... medicine is a science, healing is an art. In order to be the best physician, dont resort to one or the other... in order to be the best, amalgamate those 2 important things... But, strictly speaking, it all comes down to the eye of the beholder... u wanna be a leader, or a follower... do you wanna live within a boundary, or feel infinite progression... u decide...</p>
<p>Speaking myself as a social science major who went into medicine, it is not possible to get by without intense memorization. You have to memorize your way through medicine, period. The true greats of the field supplement that with creative thinking and abstract research, but they have to memorize their way through the vast majority of patient care. You don't have the luxury of theorizing which type of antibiotic your patient's infection might be susceptible to, or debating the merits of whether IVIG ought to work in Guillan-Barre syndrome, or rederiving the sources of Brown-Sequard syndrome every time you see a patient with a time-sensitive spinal injury. You have to KNOW them.</p>
<p>You won't survive long in medicine -- and neither will your patients -- if you rely on creative thinking, experimentation, and reasoning your way through problems. Patient care depends on knowing the correct answers and, often, knowing them instantly. The greats are great because they can ALSO think creatively -- but they had to memorize to care for patients first.</p>
<p>You should be reluctant to insult people who are actually in their medical training and living it as we speak -- at, by the way, a school which tends to produce those leaders you seem to envy so greatly.</p>
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[quote]
Sure, med schools need a good memorizer... but you can't really memorize books and keep referring to them. Thinking process is valued at med schools more than anything. Those are the people that will save lives, not book readers (sorry biologists). Leonardo da Vinci had a good quote to summarize this,"there are three types of people in the world: those who see, those who need to be shown what to see, those who do not see."</p>
<p>You figure out which one med schools want...
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</p>
<p>I agree with BDM. </p>
<p>I think you have it wrong. It is the biologists who do the thinking, the guys who are designing and carrying out the experiments. Medicine itself is actually a very conservative profession that involves memorizing sets of diseases, symptoms, and protocols. Experimentation is not encouraged. Insurance companies refuse to reimburse for any experimental procedures. You will not get sued (even if your patient will most certainly die) if you stick to the standard protocol. If you try something extra and your patient dies (which may or may not be related to what you did), you will get sued and you will likely lose the suit. </p>
<p>There is obviously some thinking involved in forming a diagnosis. But, you are not House. You will often times be going through a prescribed differential and coming up with the most likely and most common (and most conservative) diagnosis. If you want to put that creativity to work, go into academia and do research.</p>
<p>You already have the arrogance down though so you'll be ready to be a doctor in no time.</p>
<p>First of all, I was not trying to be arrogant. You coming to such a conclusion via internet vibe is 100% BS. Sorry to say that. </p>
<p>2nd of all, I just don't believe that you guys are not getting the point that who came up with these processes to go about all the stuff you are memorizing? Its like you do not bother to figure it out yourself... Kind of like deriving equations. Yes, I have already clarified that memorizing is extremely important. But that shows how ignorant some people are because you can program a robot to process information if it is all about memory. So, here is to not having the job in the next 20 years.</p>
<p>Ambitiousteen, are you in or past medical school?</p>
<p>I take it the answer is "no", because your username is Ambitious*teen* and you registered in 2007. I think opinions on medicine and med school should be left to those who know what they're talking about, eg NCG and BDM.</p>
<p>
[quote]
2nd of all, I just don't believe that you guys are not getting the point that who came up with these processes to go about all the stuff you are memorizing? Its like you do not bother to figure it out yourself... Kind of like deriving equations. Yes, I have already clarified that memorizing is extremely important. But that shows how ignorant some people are because you can program a robot to process information if it is all about memory. So, here is to not having the job in the next 20 years.
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<p>The comments are on the state of medicine today, which is very different from what it was 200 years ago or even 20 years ago. Unless you are doing formal research, there is very little experimentation and creativity that is encouraged. For example, if you work at a HMO, there are preset rules as to how you should do an examination, when to order what tests, how long to spend with a patient, etc. This loss of autonomy is what doctors are decrying right now. In a sense, yes, you are treated like a robot.</p>
<p>Much of the new information/advances in medicine today is discovered through research, not through epiphanys or through a physician's creativity (unless the physician is doing research in a lab). You can't willy-nilly experiment on patients like you could in the past. Even if you want to do clinical research, you have to get your research project approved by the ethics board, formally enroll patients (get their consent), and then do your thing. In that scenario, you are not so much working as a physician but rather as a scientist.</p>
<p>The stuff I'm memorizing right now in med school are most discovered and taught by PhD's so I don't know where this idea of doctors being more of a "thinker" than a researcher comes from. And, yes, the progression is towards more automaticity. Right now, we do have machines do a lot of things that used to be done by people (like take blood pressure or read a ECG). Right now, a physician can input a list of symptoms into a computer and get a recommendation (from the computer) of a list of drugs to prescribe. A pediatrician I shadowed had that kind of technology. So, yes, we are discovering that many of the processes in medicine can be done by robots or people with lesser education (hence, NP's and CRNA's taking over the roles of primary care physicians and anesthesiologists, respectively). </p>
<p>I recently attended a talk given by the Chief of Surgery at one of our teaching hospitals. The talk was given on the evolution of laproscopic surgery and the possibility of using robots to perform surgery. In fact, our hospitals recently purchased two of these robots. They aren't fully automatic and require input from the surgeon but the technology allows the surgeon to be nowhere near the operating table and still be able to perform the surgery through a joystick. There is currently a list of 8 or so simple surgical procedures for which these robots are approved.</p>