I am in the process of applying to college. Right now, I am looking to pursue a pre-Med track and to apply to medical school after college. My dream school is currently UPenn and I am applying Early Decision there. One of the characteristics that I look for in colleges is the flexibility of the curriculum. I was wondering how flexible the curriculum at UPenn is. I want to double major in a natural science such as Biology or Biochemistry and in a social science as well such as Psychology. Is this realistic? What are some of the requirements I would have to meet in order to graduate?
Yes that’s realistic—if you double major in the college, you can overlap a lot of the requirements. As long as you complete all the requirements for both majors, you will graduate with both. You would most likely take 5 classes every semester (vs. 4 for most single-major students) and possibly 6 classes for a semester or two.
It’ll be tough when you’re taking the core pre-med classes that are designed to weed out the students who don’t really want to be there, but otherwise go for it.
Achieving a double major in those two majors is definitely accomplishable. For the Bio Major, you would need 16 Bio classes inside the major and 20 classes outside. For the Psych Major, you would need 13 classes in the Psych department and 20 classes outside of Psych. So with a Bio + Psych Major, you would take 36 classes including your Bio and Psych majors, leaving 7 classes for personal growth or Pre Med.