Are these majors beneficial for the MCAT and how is the major itself?
You can major in any field you’d like so long as you complete all the pre refs for med school. Many pre meds major in biology or chemistry because there a high overlap between pre med requirements and major requirements that makes scheduling classes easier. Psych has less overlap but is still a popular major for pre meds.
The general advice for pre med hopefuls is to choose a major that you enjoy ( because students who enjoy their classes tend to do better academically) and that provides good Plan B career options ( because most pre meds will not get accepted to med school).
The MCAT includes topics from intro level biology, general and organic chemistry, physics, biochemistry, statistics, intro psych and intro sociology— all of which are pre req classes for meds school.
Beneficial for the MCAT in the sense that premed req course material tends to provide background for MCAT. These premed courses are not targeted to premed hopefuls and are open to anyone with an interest and has completed any course prereqs. There’s a good chance, especially at large schools, profs wouldn’t know or care who is premed or not. When time comes, you’d need to self prep or take formal review course (egg Princeton Review).
Neither Psych or Bio is a good major for Plan B, if the premed did not work out. Both subjects require advanced degrees to make a living. But if those are interest to you, they are very popular majors as a premed because they have a lot of overlaps with premed requirements. In addition, GPA repair is easier in these majors if there are shortfalls in the lower level classes.
From this perspective, Bio is better than Psych simply because MCAT covers more Bio than Psych. As for your second question “for the major itself”, Psych is generally considered an “easy” major in college than a science major such as Bio and your GPA with Psych major is expected to be higher than Bio.
For whatever reason, the majority of JHU pre-meds major in neuroscience. The number surged since 2015’s new MCAT exam. In 2014, less than 300 graduated with a neuroscience degree. However, two years later in 2016, close to 400 graduated with a neuroscience degree. More than 80 graduated with a behavioral biology degree in the same year. Yale recently created a new neuroscience major too. There is no best major for premed per se but a large number of pre-meds choose neuroscience for a reason. ( if that interests you)
no difference