I aim to become a genetic pathologist with a md/PHD program in medical school. My main goal is to get into a really strong research medical school. I plan to major in either biomedical physics or biomedical engineering, but people have been telling me this will kill my GPA and I should major in biology or biochemistry. I have taken two years of Calculus and Physics in high school. I have a high A in Calculus and medium A in physics. Calculus and Biology are my favorite subjects which led me to choosing these two majors, but am I killing my chance at medical school or will it help me stand out?
Thanks
It almost sounds like you should go down the Physics/Math track, not biology. You can always take the med-school pre-reqs. Play to your strengths.
While I agree with @Mandalorian, there are a few things to keep in mind:
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Like you said, engineering usually results in low GPAs, and that can certainly hurt you come time for medical school applications. For the most part, the engineering degree will not help you stand out any more than any other degree.
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Not all MSTPs are open to candidates who want complete the PhD portion of the MD/PhD in an engineering field. You might want to do some research on which MSTPs allow students to complete an engineering PhD for the PhD part of the MD/PhD.
That said, I think you should go the engineering route. I’m a little biased (ok, maybe very biased), and there will be people who disagree with me, but as someone who was once on the molecular biology/biochemistry side of things and then switched fields by getting a graduate degree in engineering, I think the engineering approach to solving problems in biology and biomedicine is far more effective than the conventional approaches employed by most biologists. Yes, I am generalizing, but I think that, if your ultimate goal is research, you will be far better served–not only in terms of employment and earning potential, but also with regard to doing good research and solving problems–by going the engineering route, regardless of whether you do an MD/PhD or a PhD alone. Engineering, and other quantitative fields, gives you more tools and more effective tools with which to tackle issues in the world of biomedicine, and if you’re a quantitatively inclined person, I think you owe it to yourself to take advantage of that.
Look at the web pages of the engineering departments at a number of universities, and look at the faculty with research interests in the area of biology and medicine to get an idea of how engineering might be a good path for what you want to do.