Probably been posted before, but I'm new here :)

Welcome! The short answer, go for it. If you are sucessful in your major, the medschools will notice that.

I would think the religious studies would stand out more than psych. when you get your apps. screened. My two cents anyways. I agree with mdsh00...go for it!

its really all about what you want to do and how well you do it. most premeds still are the basic sciences (bio / biochem / chem for instance...). i've heard that it helps set you apart if you do another major (my roomate junior year was an english major and he got in to his top choice). everyone takes the same basic premed req's. after that, its just a question of how you set yourself apart, be it thru a 'unique' major or extracurriculars or whatever. good luck! its a long road but there's lots of people out there who are going thru it to. this site will be nice for ya

Because med schools are all about "diversity" they like to admit people with different academic backgrounds. Be aware, however, that you WILL NOT be as academically prepared for med school if you major in religion than you would be if you majored in bio or biochem or another science. I mean if you're really interested in religious studies, I guess you should do that, but I just don't understand how some people can major in fields completely unrelated to medicine but somehow still want to be a doctor. Makes no sense.

bigbassinbob said:

I just don't understand how some people can major in fields completely unrelated to medicine but somehow still want to be a doctor. Makes no sense.

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Doctors are not biologists. They teach you all the science you need in the first two years (and then some, according to many physicians). If you needed more than the prerequisites to succeed, the prerequisites would certainly be changed. If there were a correlation between undergrad major and success in med school, I'm quite sure we'd have heard about it by now.

Personally, I think avoiding the generally loathsome premed population is a great argument for majoring in something other than bio.

Pick the one that sounds the most appealing

jrdnbenjamin said:

Doctors are not biologists. They teach you all the science you need in the first two years (and then some, according to many physicians). If you needed more than the prerequisites to succeed, the prerequisites would certainly be changed. If there were a correlation between undergrad major and success in med school, I'm quite sure we'd have heard about it by now.

Personally, I think avoiding the generally loathsome premed population is a great argument for majoring in something other than bio.

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Doctors are human biologists. It just makes more sense to get educated in your future profession for 6 years than it does for 2 years. And I'm absolutely positive that there's a correlation between success in med school and undergraduate majors in the sciences, med schools just want to keep pulling the diversity argument so they won't publish this fact.

bigbassinbob said:

Doctors are human biologists.

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No, really they aren't. Doctors are to biologists as engineers are to physicists.

(By doctors I mean people who practice clinical medicine, and not physician-scientists, obviously.)

bigbassinbob said:

It just makes more sense to get educated in your future profession for 6 years than it does for 2 years.

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Sure, but your future profession is clinical medicine, not basic biology. Nobody learns anything in an undergrad curriculum that has clinical relevance and yet isn't taught in the first two years of med school, at least not according to any MD I've ever heard from.

bigbassinbob said:

And I'm absolutely positive that there's a correlation between success in med school and undergraduate majors in the sciences, med schools just want to keep pulling the diversity argument so they won't publish this fact.

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This doesn't make any sense. If such a correlation existed it would have been published somewhere, don't you think? Or perhaps the AAMC, CIA, and Freemasons are suppressing the information? Why would med schools value diversity in majors if it were known to detract from the quality of education? If they really thought it was important for doctors to know P-chem, why wouldn't they either teach it in med school or require that applicants take the class?

jrdnbenjamin said:

No, really they aren't. Doctors are to biologists as engineers are to physicists.

(By doctors I mean people who practice clinical medicine, and not physician-scientists, obviously.)


Sure, but your future profession is clinical medicine, not basic biology. Nobody learns anything in an undergrad curriculum that has clinical relevance and yet isn't taught in the first two years of med school, at least not according to any MD I've ever heard from.


This doesn't make any sense. If such a correlation existed it would have been published somewhere, don't you think? Or perhaps the AAMC, CIA, and Freemasons are suppressing the information? Why would med schools value diversity in majors if it were known to detract from the quality of education? If they really thought it was important for doctors to know P-chem, why wouldn't they either teach it in med school or require that applicants take the class?

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In my opinion, I would call a doctor a human biologist. Of course the level of science applied on the job varies depending on the type of specialty, but even a primary care doctor must know various aspects of endocrinology, microbiology, biochemistry, physiology, etc. All of these courses are part of the required curriculum for an undergraduate biology/biochemistry degree, but are not part of the premed-required courses. Granted that you don't learn 4 years of pure science in college, it still makes much more sense that you take the above-listed courses during your upperclassman years than, say, the history of Islam in Eastern Europe from 1800-1821. You may be taught these same subjects again in medical school, but they will certainly be easier/more familiar the second time around than they were the first.

As for the correlation between science majors and succesful med students, I firmly believe that the AAMC is trying to hide the fact that diversity=lower board scores and less proficient physicians. Aside from racial discrimination (which is a huge factor in the admission of thousands of underqualified applicants, but that's another discussion entirely), there is a discrimination against science majors. The MSAR lists biology majors as having a 52 % acceptance rate compared with a 60 % rate for humanities majors. Why would they choose to accept a greater percentage of humanities students? Simply because biology students aren't "diverse" enough. Med schools are, unfortunately, ranked partially on the diversity of their student body, and they all want to be the school with the "different approach to healthcare." Simply put, it is only logical to say that science majors do better in medical school than humanities majors do. Unless, of course, humanities majors are better at science than science majors are...

To the OP: Like I said before, you won't learn as much about human biology being a religion major, but you will certainly be more attractive to med schools than a life sciences major would be. Pick your poison.

*Yawn*

I suggest taking what you're interested in since your chances of doing well in your classes are higher if you enjoy the material more. I don't agree that you need to be a biology (or even related) major in order to do well in medical school. Unless you're planning on doing research in a lab as a physician, you don't need higher level biology courses in your pre-med undergrad degree. Sure it'll be easier when the time comes to learn some of the fundamentals; but an intro level course in biochem is sufficient to give you the basics you need; hence it is a standard pre-med requirement.

Sure you need to be familiar with the basics, but how many of you biochem majors actually remember the myriad of biochemical structures you were taught in your classes? I'll give you this: learning the same material the second or third time around is easier, but you don't need a 4 year degree in biochemistry in order to learn the basics!

Take what your heart tells you to take and you won't waddle through the last two years of your undergrad hating yourself, your school, your professors and the learning process in general. You'll learn the medical material when you get to med school.

P.S. - Though this varies from school to school, the pre-req's for Medicine are as follows:

Physics (one full year)
General Chemistry (one full year)
Organic (1/2 year; in some cases, one full year)
Biochemistry (1/2 year; in some cases, one full year)
English (one full year)

You can fit these courses in the summer time or take an extra year to complete these. You can do it!

TheProwler said:

Picking a non-science major will make it more difficult to get all your science prerequisites into your four years (this is pretty much a fact), but you should pick a major that will keep you interested for four years. Being a biology major is convenient, because every med school prerequisite is also required for my major, so I don't need to take extra classes, but I'm interested in biology.

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I agree with you on that one. I'm an econ major and part of my degree entailed 33 units of electives. Guess what I was taking? O-chem, Physics, Biochem, etc. All to the tune of 67 total science/math units. I will end up with an extra 26 units or so over what my degree requires. But then again, I was taking something that I was interested in so it wasn't too bad. Plus, the big benefit of being a non-science major is the fact that there are no labs to deal with. Since I'm not really interested in research, this suited me just fine, giving me more time to work/volunteer/etc.

bigbassinbob said:

history of Islam in Eastern Europe from 1800-1821.

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More people should be taking courses like this!

bigbassinbob said:

even a primary care doctor must know various aspects of endocrinology, microbiology, biochemistry, physiology, etc.

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Yep, that's why the first two years of med school exist. Also, there's a difference between knowing science and doing science. A scientist is someone who DOES science.

bigbassinbob said:

You may be taught these same subjects again in medical school, but they will certainly be easier/more familiar the second time around than they were the first.

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Sure, and maybe they'd be even easier the fifth time around, but a lot of people are capable of learning the material in a class the first time. Being an undergrad is a really unique opportunity in life; you'll probably never again be able to study whatever you want for four years. Why waste that assuming that you'll need remedial instruction in a professional program you haven't even begun yet? Have some faith in yourself.

bigbassinbob said:

As for the correlation between science majors and succesful med students, I firmly believe that the AAMC is trying to hide the fact that diversity=lower board scores and less proficient physicians.

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Ah, I see that I've underestimated you as a scientist. Clearly you understand the importance of believing things without evidence.

bigbassinbob said:

Aside from racial discrimination (which is a huge factor in the admission of thousands of underqualified applicants, but that's another discussion entirely)

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Not even gonna touch this one.

bigbassinbob said:

Simply put, it is only logical to say that science majors do better in medical school than humanities majors do. Unless, of course, humanities majors are better at science than science majors are...

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You don't go to med school to study science, you go to med school to study MEDICINE. I have no problem believing that humanities majors are as good or better at that than science majors, and I still fail to see why med schools would prefer to admit people that they know to be less qualified.

This is like saying an undergraduate business major will make a better MBA or an undergraduate government major would make a better JD. Very little of what you learn in your undergraduate classes will be directly useful when you are a physician.

It would seem to me that science majors would have a slightly easier time in medical school, all things being equal. However, that's why the MCAT exists, to equalize applicants between differing schools and majors, to some degree.

Doctors need to know a lot more than biology. You have to communicate with patients, find out health issues and concerns they may not be initially willing to tell you, be sensitive to issues in their background that may make particular health problems more likely or cause them to have communication issues ... you can be the best "human biologist" in the world, but if you're a conceited, overbearing jacka$$, your patients aren't going to want to mention that nagging twinge in their chest or that pain they experience during sex, and that could make all the difference in whether a problem gets diagnosed and treated. (For that matter, they won't want to continue being "your patients" at all.) Psychology, sociology, religious studies, communication, anthropology, etc., as undergraduate majors, can all give you the kind of cultural sensitivity and communication skills that may not be emphasized in med school but can make you a great doctor instead of an okay one. Unless you're planning to go into research or surgery, there's a lot more to medicine than biology.

bigbassinbob said:

<snip>Unless, of course, humanities majors are better at science than science majors are...

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According to MCAT examinee data, humanities major matriculants score on average 0.8 better (0.1 lower on BS, 0.8 higher on VR, 0.1 higher on PS) than do biological science majors. Assuming that MCAT performance correlates to med school performance and board scores--which AMCAS also claims--it would indeed appear that humanities majors are better at science (or at least as good as) science majors.

The humanities major matriculants are also similar in science GPA, trailing by just .07: humanities 3.50, biology 3.57.

liverotcod said:

According to MCAT examinee data, humanities major matriculants score on average 0.8 better (0.1 lower on BS, 0.8 higher on VR, 0.1 higher on PS) than do biological science majors. Assuming that MCAT performance correlates to med school performance and board scores--which AMCAS also claims--it would indeed appear that humanities majors are better at science (or at least as good as) science majors.

The humanities major matriculants are also similar in science GPA, trailing by just .07: humanities 3.50, biology 3.57.

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A lot of it has to do with the fact that part of getting a good score on the MCAT has nothing to do with how much you know but how you are at critical thinking and expanding on written material. Something that people with humanities training seem to have.

TheProwler said:

I would guess that this might stem from the fact that a lot of pre-meds don't really know what they're doing, so they grab a major that sounds like it would work, without actually being interested in that field. I happen to like biology, but some pre-meds might not, but they pick that major because they think they're "supposed" to.

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Probably. It's interesting to look at the trend:
Math > Physical Sciences > Humanities > Social Sciences > Biology > Specialized Health Sciences

The specialized health sciences folks are a real outlier, at 27.9 composite, which is closing in on a full standard deviation. To me, this data suggests that adcoms believe that students with this major are better prepared for med school even though they may not be as smart (MCAT-wise) as, say, the math majors.