Aerospace Engineering & Pre-med: A bad idea?

[paranoid_eyes]

You just can't say stuff like this unless you're an engineer too. Even then, you can't predict what his GPA will be, seeing as he's a different person. Yes, it can be a killer on GPA, but I believe my GPA was actually stronger by being an engineer because I actually enjoyed it compared to being a chemistry major or something.

In fact, if you're still pre-med, you're don't even know for sure what it takes to get into med schools. For a lot of the top schools, GPA is completely irrelevant once you get past the screening cut offs.

i knew i would get flamed by the engineers....but statistically, this person will be at a disadvantage. average gpa's for engineers are lower than other majors. i guess you're right, may be this guy/gal is phenomenal in engineering courses, but experience shows that it can be a rocky path for most.

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[RSAgator]

I think it comes down to a risk vs. reward scenario. You'll have opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise as an engineering major, have something that makes your app stand out, but this is only if you perform well in it. Like anything in life you'll get out of it what you put into it, but if medicine really is your end goal then know it's one of the harder routes to achieving that goal, and the risks really may outweigh the rewards in the end. Good luck though =)

 

[ESzczesniak]

i knew i would get flamed by the engineers....but statistically, this person will be at a disadvantage. average gpa's for engineers are lower than other majors. i guess you're right, may be this guy/gal is phenomenal in engineering courses, but experience shows that it can be a rocky path for most.

This is just my experience, but I wasn't terribly short of hours for a cell bio major as well, so got a lot of experience on the "typical pre-med" side as well. What I found is that most of the pre-med classes were easier and kinder on the GPA because they were easily handled by brute force memorization. Engineering classes as a whole are not. You'd never find an engineering exam that says rank the tensile strength of 3 metals (instead, you'd calculate something from that), but you will find plenty of orgo exams that ask you to rank boiling points based on a rank order of functional groups you memorized. Of course you can learn the logic of intermolecular bond strength to rank these compounds, but it's usually in fact not necessary to understand this in order to do well.

This does not in any way mean that pre-meds are not capable of thinking (USMLE Step 1 would be a disaster if this were the case), but the typical class is easily handled without a lot of it. It is also possible that this depends on institutions-obviously I only have experience at one.

Bottom line in my opinion: If you've made it by using memorization, you probably should stick with the majors people have mentioned, as engineering is a different ball game. However, if you like the thinking part of things, consider engineering as well. In fact, I think I did better in engineering because I have a somewhat averse reaction to memorizing things like the subunits of bacterial DNA polymerase that seem very esoteric. As a result, I was better off in a major with a much lighter emphasis on this.

And to those who mentioned staying away from schools with a time consuming project, I fully understand what you see and that any sane person would think this is miserable. But let me say this--I worked 50+ hours a week on my senior project and truly loved every minute of it (of course, it did involve designing/building a race car). It's all in the perspective.

 

[Zanzobar]

i knew i would get flamed by the engineers....but statistically, this person will be at a disadvantage. average gpa's for engineers are lower than other majors. i guess you're right, may be this guy/gal is phenomenal in engineering courses, but experience shows that it can be a rocky path for most.

This is true. Engineers on average tend to have lower GPAs. That said, engineering prepares you well for med. Schools also do take into account the fact that engineers take a lot of advanced science courses (multiple interviewers remarked about this when I applied) that are generally difficult.
Also if you happen to do well, you will have a major advantage in the application process.

 

[BubbytheTourG]

Did all you guys/girls who are engineers make it into medical school?

 

[mleick]

My Engineering major (Biosystems) has the most premeds in engineering at my school and from what I've heard is that many don't make it into medical school because of an analytical approach to medicine rather than humanistic. They often lack volunteer/clinical hours, partially due to large courseloads which they then try to use as an excuse.

From what I've seen and heard theres no advantage to having an engineering major despite it being 1,000x harder than a cell bio degree (at my school at least).

I know this because I have engineering, biochemistry, and cell bio majors. And to the OP, it is absolutely doable- most of my semesters had 20 units or more even while I was studying for the MCAT and i ended up with 3.95 BCMP.

edit: I'm sure many other people could have done the same as me if they didnt have many hours of clinical/volunteer. This is something I lack severely and may kill my application and for that reason I dont recommend it. The outside activities are far more important than collection majors

 

[BubbytheTourG]

My Engineering major (Biosystems) has the most premeds in engineering at my school and from what I've heard is that many don't make it into medical school because of an analytical approach to medicine rather than humanistic. They often lack volunteer/clinical hours, partially due to large courseloads which they then try to use as an excuse.

From what I've seen and heard theres no advantage to having an engineering major despite it being 1,000x harder than a cell bio degree (at my school at least).

I know this because I have engineering, biochemistry, and cell bio majors. And to the OP, it is absolutely doable- most of my semesters had 20 units or more even while I was studying for the MCAT and i ended up with 3.95 BCMP.

edit: I'm sure many other people could have done the same as me if they didnt have many hours of clinical/volunteer. This is something I lack severely and may kill my application and for that reason I dont recommend it. The outside activities are far more important than collection majors

How many volunteer hours over 4 years would I need to be competitive?

 

[Zanzobar]

Did all you guys/girls who are engineers make it into medical school?

There were definitely some engineers in my major who had lower GPAs than they otherwise may have had and decided against going into medicine. However, there were also MANY MANY people who did just fine and got into top notch med programs, both MD and MD/PhD.

I also disagree with previous posters saying that there's no advantage to being in engineering while applying for med school. I felt I was at a great advantage. I made engineering and my experiences with it a significant portion of my application. A number of my interviewers were very interested in my major and wanted to know more, so it definitely gave something to talk about.

 

[BubbytheTourG]

My brother told me that the people who drop out of engineering were the ones who copied each other's physics homework and played Halo 3 instead of study and work out problems. In fact, most of his close friends were slackers who just decided to quit. One of them is going back up to New York State to be a police officer, another is going into Italian or something, and one of them doesn't know what they want to do, 2 years into engineering, 2 years wasted. I would imagine pre-med dropouts won't be much different.

I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about putting in all of the effort that I can and still not having a GPA high enough for med-school if I decide to apply, knowing that I would have had a higher GPA in another major.

From all of the other majors that I had considered, including Biomedical Engineering, Biochemistry, Biology, Cell Biology, etc., the first year is basically the same anyway. So I guess I can easily switch after my first year, I would imagine.

I am still interested in the aerospace field in addition to the medical fields, so at this point I am still undecided to be honest. And I don't think I can really go anywhere outside of med-school with a Biology degree. Therefore I am surely taking this route. The deadline to decide majors is today, and for now I will do it.

 

[ESzczesniak]

The deadline to decide majors is today, and for now I will do it.

Welcome to the dark side!

 

[engineeredout]

This is true. Engineers on average tend to have lower GPAs. That said, engineering prepares you well for med. Schools also do take into account the fact that engineers take a lot of advanced science courses (multiple interviewers remarked about this when I applied) that are generally difficult.
Also if you happen to do well, you will have a major advantage in the application process.

Good to hear

 

[engineeredout]

I'm worried about putting in all of the effort that I can and still not having a GPA high enough for med-school if I decide to apply, knowing that I would have had a higher GPA in another major.

Definitely a risk, but I'm here to tell you it isn't impossible. My GPA would be so much higher if I learned to study correctly the first two years of college, but this past semester I got 6 As in junior level ChemE with classes like kinetics, heat and mass transfer etc...

From all of the other majors that I had considered, including Biomedical Engineering, Biochemistry, Biology, Cell Biology, etc., the first year is basically the same anyway. So I guess I can easily switch after my first year, I would imagine.

Definitely. First year is all the general sciences like calc physics chem

I am still interested in the aerospace field in addition to the medical fields, so at this point I am still undecided to be honest. And I don't think I can really go anywhere outside of med-school with a Biology degree. Therefore I am surely taking this route. The deadline to decide majors is today, and for now I will do it.

Thats why even while medicine was in the back of my mind I decided to go to engineering, because I wanted a useful degree if I didn't decide to go to med school

.

 

[bihari]

Hi. I am a recent high school graduate and am entering into a Top 50 university next year. I am definitely going to do pre-med and will probably try to apply to medical school, but I want to study Aerospace Engineering. The problem is, I have a very intelligent non-pre-med brother who just finished his second year of Aerospace Engineering and has slumped down to a 3.3 cummulative GPA, a low GPA which would be pretty difficult to raise. It is going to be quite a bit harder for me since I have the extra pre-med classes (although I am really only worried about Orgo... I took AP Chemistry and Physics and Calculus and did pretty well in them, although no credits will be used). My parents and teachers have advised me against this route, going so far as to say that I will pull two "majors" (premed ain't a major) only to succeed in neither and fail and become unemployment-line fodder. Is this a bad idea?

http://www6.miami.edu/umbulletin/und/eng/mech.htm#aerocurr

And how would I fit pre-med into an extensive AE course plan? I am willing to do summer semesters. Especially for Orgo.

my school has an MD/PhD program and one of the students is getting his PhD in Aerospace while getting an MD as well
http://www.med.uiuc.edu/msp/CurrentStudents.asp

hope that helps

 

[sealsk22]

d

 

[atomi]

Hi. I am a recent high school graduate and am entering into a Top 50 university next year. I am definitely going to do pre-med and will probably try to apply to medical school, but I want to study Aerospace Engineering. The problem is, I have a very intelligent non-pre-med brother who just finished his second year of Aerospace Engineering and has slumped down to a 3.3 cummulative GPA, a low GPA which would be pretty difficult to raise. It is going to be quite a bit harder for me since I have the extra pre-med classes (although I am really only worried about Orgo... I took AP Chemistry and Physics and Calculus and did pretty well in them, although no credits will be used). My parents and teachers have advised me against this route, going so far as to say that I will pull two "majors" (premed ain't a major) only to succeed in neither and fail and become unemployment-line fodder. Is this a bad idea?

http://www6.miami.edu/umbulletin/und/eng/mech.htm#aerocurr

And how would I fit pre-med into an extensive AE course plan? I am willing to do summer semesters. Especially for Orgo.

Don't do it unless you want to work in aerospace. Be a mechanical or electrical engineer.

Aerospace engineering knowing you want to go to medical school is a complete waste of time.

Be an ME or EE and get involved in some biomed research. If you're just looking to get into medical school and don't care about exercising your innovative capacities as an undergrad in engineering, then just major in something like bio or geology that will allow you to obtain a high GPA easier.

 

[atomi]

Did all you guys/girls who are engineers make it into medical school?

Yes, but I had a 4.0.

A lot of school like engineering majors and it really gives you a great hand to play in your interviews. Especially if you've done research and a co-op in industry.

Generally speaking an engineering degree and a high GPA will be a huge boost, but a engineering degree and a normal GPA won't be any advantage over a premed degree and a normal GPA.

 

[mcclesm]

Hi. I am a recent high school graduate and am entering into a Top 50 university next year. I am definitely going to do pre-med and will probably try to apply to medical school, but I want to study Aerospace Engineering. The problem is, I have a very intelligent non-pre-med brother who just finished his second year of Aerospace Engineering and has slumped down to a 3.3 cummulative GPA, a low GPA which would be pretty difficult to raise. It is going to be quite a bit harder for me since I have the extra pre-med classes (although I am really only worried about Orgo... I took AP Chemistry and Physics and Calculus and did pretty well in them, although no credits will be used). My parents and teachers have advised me against this route, going so far as to say that I will pull two "majors" (premed ain't a major) only to succeed in neither and fail and become unemployment-line fodder. Is this a bad idea?

http://www6.miami.edu/umbulletin/und/eng/mech.htm#aerocurr

And how would I fit pre-med into an extensive AE course plan? I am willing to do summer semesters. Especially for Orgo.

You sound just like me when I was a freshman deciding on a major, though I didn't go in with the intention on applying to medical school. I majored in aerospace engineering because I thought airplanes were cool, like you. I also thought I was pretty smart and engineering wouldn't be a big deal. Long story short I graduated, worked 6 years as an engineer, and now I'm going to apply to medical school next year. If I could do it all over again I absolutely would not not not major in aerospace engineering. I was very naive at the difficulty and content of the subject matter. You won't be designing airplanes. That's not what you will do in school. I also recommend a pilot's license--I did this as well. It's much more fulfilling than an AE degree. Another caution: if your brother is struggling as a sophmore, he likely hasn't even really taken any engineering classes yet. It's the last 2 years that are difficult.

If your end goal is med school pick an easy major that you will enjoy and take flight lessons. If there is any doubt about that and you think you want to be an engineer, then and only then major in aerospace engineering.

 

[Makarov]

In my opinion, any engineering is just ridiculous to do if you are a pre-med. You already have enough stuff to worry about and engineering is TOUGH. Also, it's much harder for you to compete with most people who are bio majors because your GPA will be inevitably lower.

 

[atomi]

You won't be designing airplanes. That's not what you will do in school. I also recommend a pilot's license--I did this as well. It's much more fulfilling than an AE degree.

HUGE second. The pilot's license will be the best thing you ever do for yourself. Do it now while gas is cheap.

Also agree about not designing airplanes. Actually getting a job where you design airplanes is a million times harder than getting into medical school (which is already pretty tough). There are very few jobs for aerospace engineers in that field, and there are very few airplane designers. Mechanical and electrical engineering are much better choices if you want to be involved in airplane design IMO, because you will do things like design jet engines and avionics. Even if designing airframes is your total goal, ME still might be a better choice.

I'm not sure why aerospace engg. exists.

 

[sunny1]

I'm not sure why aerospace engg. exists.

Wha??? Because there's more to aerospace than just planes - like rockets, satellites, defense, and space stuff. Obviously I'm not an aerospace engineer so I don't know all the technical terms, but my husband is and through his (admittedly biased) perspective, the people who work in those fields and have AE backgrounds do much better than the MEs.

 

[RawR]

I graduated with an AE degree in May and am taking prereq's for medical school. The pursuit of an AE degree will teach you the basics about why and how an airplane flies and how they are designed. In this regard, there are a few specific areas that most curriculums concentration on: propulsion, structures, aerodynamics, and flight control systems. I am sure each of these areas can contribute to the medical field greatly. For example, aerodynamics is one form of fluid dynamics and can be applied to map blood flow; the principles are quite similar. Also, research has already begun in the use of aerospace composite materials for joint replacements, which last longer and are much more durable. There are plenty of opportunities in melding the two fields of science.

 

[Dumitru Ivanov]

I find it funny how some of you think you can judge how difficult an engineering major is compared to others. Unless you've majored in them all, you really don't know, do you?

Absolutely! I often hear this overestimation of difficulty regardless of field. Everyone thinks they have it the worst.
________________________________
Dumitru from Canada aerospace brokerage

 

[Ejm1]

I would not do it, but only if you are dead set on going to medical school. There is really no need to pick one of the most difficult majors out there if you want to be a doctor, not an engineer. Give yourself more time to volunteer and do research. Just my $.02

 

[Lucca]

Advice is about 9 years too late, I'm afraid.

Closing old thread.