<p>I think of engineering students as being “resourceful” and “solution driven”. I think those kinds of skill are conducive to being a physician. They aren’t just “book smart”…they’re hands on smart. (I’m not saying that others are just book smart… 
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<p>First, nobody diss CS or Engineering. I have benn in both, how could I diss them? I am very happy with my choice of CS and absolutely love my job to the point that I have no plans to retire. However, both of this majors are very time consuming and require huge commitment. They are NOT the same as Music or Business commitment. I second Curm who has mentioned impact on GPA and have to add impact on absolutely required involvement with Medically related EC’s. Engineering mosre than other majors is notorious for having lower GPA. These people are NOT less intelligent or slacker, complete opposite. They have to work much much harder than others (including pre-med Bio majors). I remember spending my whole days in CS lab at …CC. Yes, our assignements were brutal, since og the profs’ goal was attrition rate of 75% (we have learned about it later) and he has achieved it. But, if you think that CC assignents were harsher than 4 year college, you are incorrect in your assessment. Yes, now with all new technology, you can probably do it from your PC at home, but you still need spend time doing it. CS IS NOT THE SAME AS USING COMPUTER (user prospective as indicated in physician post). Everybody can use computers this days and some 8 - 9 years old can set up communication easily (my EE H. was amazed at what our 9 years old grandson can do, which was way beyond using computer, he actually has set it up at our house, but, sorry, he cannot write computer programs).</p>
<p>So, evaluate carefully what you actually want. If you decided to go with Eng. or CS, be prepared to be in UG longer than 4 years. Most Engineering programs are 5 years anyway, without pre-med requirements. Being longer in UG has no impact on Med. School acceptance. It is OK as long as one can afford it, has support system.</p>
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<p>The problem with being premed and engineering or computer science is you need more than a social life. You need to get clinical experience, volunteer, etc… I don’t if engineers are forgiven their GPA for med school admissions so I won’t comment on that but where the avg GPA for a smart motivated student outside of engineering maybe a 3.7 or something for engineering it’ll be 3.3 or something. I think part of this is that for people who actually go into engineering and not apply to med school, GPA doesn’t really matter.</p>
<p>"There are indeed CS and engineering majors who can make Dean’s List every semester – and still have a social life. Both my husband and I did! "</p>
<p>-So, both of you are MD? And you spend only 4 years in UG? I admire you. I am not sure how much you slept in those 4 years. But I am sure that you are very exceptional couple. My D. has been on President list for most semester, couple Dean’s list, but she is Music Minor, no engineering, no CS. Tons of EC’s though which is a must and she does have 4 acceptances at this point, did not decide yet.</p>
<p>My Chemical Engineering son has made the Presidential List each semester (all A’s) and expects to continue getting all A’s (he works his tail off, but still has a social life and time for med-related ECs). He will easily graduate in 4 years. He has senior standing and all pre-med req’ts complete. </p>
<p>He could graduate earlier, but will do a math and bio minor and wants an easy fall senior year for interviews. He’s only 19, so he needs to stay in undergrad all 4 years just to be really “old enough” for med school (I know that there isn’t a real age limit, but applying to med school as a 19 year old is not a good idea in my mind)</p>
<p>I’m not saying that he could do all this if he were at MIT, but he purposely chose not to go the elite route so he could have straight As and take the classes he wanted. Instead of having all his classmates in the ACT 32-36 range, his classmates are more in the ACT 28-35 range…certainly smart, but not the “jerky gunners” that cause issues described earlier.</p>
<p>I know some don’t agree with this strategy, but having read enough posts from students who went the elite route only to have tragic frosh grades and less than high cum GPAs in the end, this seemed like a less risky route to take. </p>
<p>BTW…I didn’t say everyone was dissing majoring in engineering or CS. It’s just that on this thread and other threads, this kind of dissing has taken place by a few posters. There’s an implication that a few are annoyed that someone can be an engineering major, do the pre-med req’ts, and have a high GPA while also having a backup plan if somehow the med school plan doesn’t work out. Why would that be annoying?</p>
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<p>I’m not. I’m just think they are terrible subjects to study if you don’t want to go into a profession where the skills you learn from the degrees are useful. I actually think they are pretty cool subjects and are much more intellectual than medicine. </p>
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<p>Yeah it’s kind of a misleading analogy because pro football is much more competitive than medicine and careers in football are far from being guaranteed, even if you do have the talent because of career-ending injuries. I might be wrong about this, but if you get a degree in medicine, you are pretty much guaranteed to make good money for the rest of your life because the profession is cartelized.</p>
<p>If a college football player knew he had an excellent chance of getting an NFL contract, and instead of focusing on football he decided to put all of his time into a graduate preparatory course of study in mathematics (this is hard), knowing full well that he doesn’t want to be a mathematician and wants to be a NFL player after college, I’d say he’s making a bad decision, too.</p>
<p>Hell, if you know you can get a fat contract after only three years of playing college football, and that your stock probably would only go down if you stayed in school, you’d be making a bad decision to stay in school. If for some reason you really need to go back to school, use your NFL money to pay for the remaining year.</p>
<p>And I think my post has been a bit misinterpreted (or at least my OP was hastily written and condensed too much). Yet another rambling post upcoming because I definitely wasn’t an English major.</p>
<p>I’m aware that it doesn’t take a CS major to operate a computer, but I’m also very much aware that CS/Programmers have an incredibly difficult time designing a system that MD’s do need (and get out of the way) and most MD;s are not even computer literate enough to even help describing a system that helps more than it hurts in day to day practice. Having someone with both skill sets has got to be incredibly useful to someone or some group. </p>
<p>Having been on committees (both at Practice and Hospital level) trying to merge to 2 disciplines has been beyond painful because neither group understands what the other needs and EMR;s to date have been a powerful timewasting (and $$ wasting) process rather than complementarytime-$$$-life saving. What almost always ends up happening is a trial and error disaster – the MD try to tell what they need, the Computer folks come up with what they think they were asked for (or sometimes what they think we need), the MD freaks out when it doesn’t work the way he thinks it should (often user error honestly), and either the cycle repeats or people just give up and you end up with a royal expensive mess in a way that only a Multipurpose committee can mess things up. Again, I’m at least marginally computer literate, but only at the most basic level and I’m the top of the heap in my community of a couple hundreds physicians and I;m WAY OVER my head.</p>
<p>The same with engineering – even biomedical engineers have a difficult time designing/delivering equipment that patients need and can live with. One side doesn’t know enough in depth Biology/Medicine knowledge and other doesn’t know even about the Technology capabilities to fill in the gaps without a lot of pain. Even the most ardent cutting edge medical researcher has to work with the Engineer to design what is needed. Having a detailed working knowledge of both areas has to be more helpful than having to filter everything through 3 levels or interpretation and translation.</p>
<p>Being a general Primary Care MD may not need the skills of a CS major/Engineer though I know quite a few of the latter who make excellent physicians (ChemE, EE, MechE, Biomed Eng, etc) and though CS was at best in its infancy when I was UG, I know a couple very good primary care who thinks their UG degree gave them career boost just by virtue of their analytical skill sets. Almost to the person they think their UG majors made them a better physicians in many ways and I haven’t met many that in retrospect would have majored in something different. I do know a handful of folks who actually got to Med School and even to Residency who eventually decided the Medical part wasn’t really what they were interested in and went back to some sort of engineering career and many used their Medical training to an advantage that direction as well. </p>
<p>Again, move more toward Research heavy Medicine and Academics and I think not only the indirect skills, but the direct knowledge moves them way up the success ladder. With the way technology is moving to combine with Medicine I can’t help but feel this is only going to become a more useful double skillset to have. I think there is a underestimate of how many MD’s are involved on the development side of this issue and not just in its implementation.</p>
<p>As far as Business majors, I know more than one business major/MBA who went on later to become an MD and they have combined those talents very easily. I actually know a couple MD who went back to get their MBA as well. Most of these people have transitioned to more Administrative positions within Large Hospital/Physician groups (and make MD salaries look like a joke) while some still do at least some day to day core Medicine while also running some sort of Medical Business – large multispecialty clinics either as the equivalent of a CEO/COO or Medical Director.</p>
<p>Now the most absolutely successful of these people DID NOT do their UG studies in something they considered either a backup career or Plan B in case they failed at getting into MS (or b/c they thought it would impress an AdCom or it would look good on a resume). They did it b/c they liked it, were good at it, and it was interesting to them. Not all, but many of these people from day 1 had at least a basic Plan of how they wanted to use their UG to supplement their Medical aspirations.</p>
<p>I also will come to the defense of the Music majors since I lived with a couple of them in my UG – I absolutely guarantee that I didn’t work any harder or longer than they did. It always shocked me that they often spent 50% more time outside of class doing their stuff than I did. While it’s true they couldn’t have done what i could do in a Biochem or Orgo class, there is no way in the world I could ever do what they were capable of either even it they gave me 10 years to accomplish what they did in 6 months. I will also say that once we got to MS or after it was always a lot more fun and interesting studying with the Music/Philosophy major/English crowd than the Hard Science UG’s and those people often excelled at the clinical 3rd/4th year classes.</p>
<p>*Quote:
This isn’t a perfect analogy, but imagine that you want to be pro football player and you get recruited to play college ball. Well, in case you don’t make it to the pros, it’s a good idea to major in something that will lead to another career that you would also like to do. </p>
<p>Response:
Yeah it’s kind of a misleading analogy because pro football is much more competitive than medicine and careers in football are far from being guaranteed, even if you do have the talent because of career-ending injuries. I might be wrong about this, but if you get a degree in medicine, you are pretty much guaranteed to make good money for the rest of your life because the profession is cartelized.*</p>
<p>No, it’s not “misleading” even if it isn’t a perfect analogy (which I already said). Yes, getting drafted to the NFL is much more rare in sheer numbers, but when you compare the number of students who start out as pre-med students vs the number who get into med school, the numbers aren’t probably that proportionally outrageously different. Even players that are annointed as having NFL potential need to have a back up plan…just in case…so the point remains…leaving options open. </p>
<p>And, it’s not just about getting into med school, it also deals with the issue of a junior or senior deciding against even applying to med school because the thought is no longer appealing (for whatever reason). Yes, some kids make it thru with high stats and yet still decide against applying for many reasons.</p>
<p>*If a college football player knew he had an excellent chance of getting an NFL contract, and instead of focusing on football he decided to put all of his time into a graduate preparatory course of study in mathematics (this is hard), **knowing full well that he doesn’t want to be a mathematician **and wants to be a NFL player after college, I’d say he’s making a bad decision, too.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Again, you’re changing the situation from what I’ve presented. I was never talking about a student who knows “full well” that he’d “never” want to be a mathematian (or engineer). </p>
<p>Can’t you understand that a 18, 19, 20 year old can have more than one **genuine **career interest?</p>
<p>I majored in Astrophysics as an undergraduate and had a 3.65 overall GPA and a 3.7 science GPA, an MCAT score of 31 and not a single EC but was accepted at and got my MD from a mid tier U.S. medical school, did my residency and am now in private practice. It seems to me that even if your major does not have anything to do with medicine and you would rather spend your spare time studying the Theory of Relativity rather than volunteering at a hospital it will not make that much difference as to whether or not you will get accepted at a medical school. It does appear however from what I have observed that you need to have a good GPA and decent MCAT scores to have a chance for admission to medical school.</p>
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Hmm…I heard that in recent years, volunteering at a hospital and/or shadowing a doctor is a must-do item for premeds. It is almost as if you did not do it, you would be at a great disadvantage.</p>
<p>If what you said was true many years ago when you applied to medical school but not true today (by any chance, are you a parent?), I can think of two reasons:</p>
<p>either the premeds today are more “seasoned”, or the bar is set higher today. But because it was even more difficult to get into a medical school a generation ago, the reason must be the former, that is, the premeds today generally become better at “packaging” themselves, just like the college applicants today. (I guess those who are into the i-banking/consulting and earn big bucks right after college are likely even better at packaging themselves.)</p>
<p>I am a parent and applied to medical school 15 years ago so it is likely that things were different then. I did have an observatory in my back yard and spent a fair amount of time at night observing and photographing astronomical objects through my telescope but I doubt a medical school would consider that a relevant EC.</p>
<p>either the premeds today are more “seasoned”, or the bar is set higher today. But because it was even more difficult to get into a medical school a generation ago, the reason must be the former, that is, the premeds today generally become better at “packaging” themselves, just like the college applicants today.</p>
<p>I agree. And, I don’t know, but maybe med schools think that those who take the time to do medically related ECs are students who aren’t just seeking an MD degree because they see it as a ticket to money. (I’m certainly not implying that the above MD was such a person).</p>
<p>Astrophysics is an incredibly difficult major, not only do you have to take basic courses in Calculus, Calculus based Physics, Astronomy and Chemistry but you also have to take many very difficult upper division Math, Physics and Astronomy classes as well. Besides studying you have to spend hours a day in laboratories and nights at the University observatory. </p>
<p>Getting a B in a course like Quantum Mechanics or Celestial Mechanics is an enormous intellectual accomplishment. I was given weekly problem sets of five problems in some classes where it can take ten to fifteen hours to do one problem. But as hard as getting a B was in those courses, I had to do better than that because a 3.0 GPA will not get you into any medical school unless you are a URM. I had to get more As than Bs to get a GPA of over 3.5 which is the minimum to be competitive for medical school. Medical schools do not care how difficult your courses were, what matters is getting a high GPA in whatever it is that you did take. I was told this directly by an admissions officer at a medical school that rejected me because they did not think my GPA was high enough. </p>
<p>I simply did not have the time for ECs. It was a choice between ECs and a competitive GPA and I realized that all the ECs in the world would not get me accepted into medical school if I had a 3.2 GPA. As it is, of the twenty medical schools I applied to I was only accepted at one. Fortunately, that is all you need to become a doctor.</p>
<p>I would be awesome. My boss is a nationally recognized physician and his undergraduate was in chemical engineering. What I love about this idea is that you enter as a freshman wanting to be a doctor. But over four years your mind may change several times. If you graduate with a CS degree, you can get a job. But if you graduate with a typical degree in Biology, you can do bench work in a lab or teach. The CS degree gives you the huge bang for your buck. End of story, the student has to like what they are doing, but encourage different ideas.</p>
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A well-respected physics professor/scientist at a flagship state university once said: Because of the importance of high GPAs independent of where/how you get your high GPAs for medical school admission, it is a national movement of encouraging the brightest mind in this country to waste their brain power…easiest class (while the course name still looks “normal”), easiest major (while its name still looks academic), and easiest school (while the school name is recognizable.) The definition of the “easiest”: the least amount efforts needed to get a “medical school admission worthy” GPA while maximizing your time for other non-academic activities (this may be especially true if you are interested in getting into a medical school instead of a very top one.) Joining some high power research group that is overly demanding in your time commitment can be bad – if it sucks too much of your time. (One physician/parent on CC once likened this kind of high power research to a “black hole”, because it sucks up all of your time and turns you into a not-rounded, nerdy applicant, if in the end you do not get published.)</p>
<p>Thus, it is better to keep a “safe distance” from some high power professor in a famous department in a famous school (read: the ranking of the science department of a college does not matter much) if (this is a big if) that professor, being a hardcore scientist, is only interested in educating those who will likely follow his/her footsteps on the academic track.</p>