Hi, I’ve been struggling with deciding on a major. In college, I would be a freshman in summer 2016 or fall 2016. I want to become a radiation oncologist, what will be the best choice as a major?
The good news is that there is no best choice major, it doesn’t exist. So you can relax and feel free to choose what will make you happy and productive. Best is ‘best for you’. You can major in anything as long as you take the premed requirements. Visit the premed forums while you are here:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-medical-school/
It is so unusual to find someone in America who has already picked a specialty like this. It surprises me less when it has to do with health professions, however
It’s not that unusual. Poll American teens who are interested in medicine and they’ll tell you they have an image in mind: pediatrician, neurosurgeon, oncologist, plastic surgery, etc.
Not many of them say: internist, geriatrics, podiatry, ENT, etc. They don’t have a breadth of knowledge of what the medical profession needs/trains its physicians.
If you were to poll 16 year old Americans, they’d tell you the only money making professions would be: doctor, lawyer, engineer and “business” – it’s an absence of knowledge – not something to be particularly lauded, IMHO.
You can major in literally anything you want as long as you do your pre-med reqs
Yes, I did make the exception for health professions.
I see many potential premed students on CC who already have a medical specialty in mind. I think it’s premature beore they’ve even been exposed to the various specialties in med school, but perhaps they’re influenced by a family member who has a particular specialty or through personal experience with a particular illness.
OP, you could consider a physics major with a subspecialty track in medical physics, a major in cell biology, or a major in biomedical engineering.
You can major literally in anything and still be eligible for medical school so long as you complete all your med school pre-reqs.
My oldest was a physics major who is now a physician. She considered radiation oncology as a potential specialty for while. The rad onc group at her med school loved and actively recruited her since she had 3+ years of hands on work in irradiating targets (crystalline matrices, humans–not a whole lot of difference) and could talk the talk and walk the walk. (She did undergrad and post-grad research in medium energy particle beam physics.)
In the end she opted for a different specialty because rad onc was “every thing [she] ever hated about physics research”.
However, being an undergrad physics major, she did have an alternative career pathway in medical physics open to her.
BTW, it’s rare to find a program that offers a medical physics undergrad concentration. Most medical physics positions require a PhD plus 1-2 year internship. There are, however, plenty of health physicist jobs available that only require a specialized MS.
Physics is a great choice for any future premed - a seriously surprising amount of physiology is physics. If you were really serious about Rad Onc, then physics is even more appropriate.