Are there any minors that would be useful as a pre-med?

[Ihave Nonamè]

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I'm feeling as though I need to take away as much as I can from my University before I graduate.

 

[KnightDoc]

I'm feeling as though I need to take away as much as I can from my University before I graduate.

None. Take what appeals to you, and do well. Doing well will be useful as a premed, since grades are important. Other than that and prerequisites, for the umpteenth time, schools don't care about majors or minors, so no, they don't matter, and there is no such thing as a useful one.

 

[Goro]

Adcoms don't care about minors, but ideally, you should have something that you can fall back on as your Plan B, since 60% of applicants get rejected.

 

[drbatsandwich]

I wish I had minored in Spanish. Had a lot of exposure to the language at home throughout my childhood and studied it during middle and high school, but my fear of sounding like an idiot and making mistakes prevented me from developing fluency. Now that 15 years have passed and I’ve moved on from that mindset, I feel like it would be an extremely useful skill for a physician to have.

 

[meowkat]

I took two minors in school, Anthropology and Public Health. I like both subjects and I can imagine myself in a career within that field. If you're going to go for a minor, look for something you enjoy and something you can use in the future.

 

[QuizzicalApe]

Maybe improv acting to help BS your way through interviews

 

[Ihave Nonamè]

I wondered about language (mandarin), african american studies or business.

 

[Rachapkis]

Why don’t you care about miners? They built this country. Without the coal miners of West Virginia and movies like The Coal Miner’s Daughter, where would we be? Oh, minors . . . still, young people, especially those under 18, are very important to the success of this nation . . .

 

[Rogue42]

Yeah, some minor time off.

 

[lull]

I wondered about language (mandarin), african american studies or business.

Like another poster said, I think Spanish is useful. I'm not minoring in Spanish, but I took a lot of upper-level Spanish classes that go into not just the language, but a lot of cultural/historical topics that are really interesting and I think important to learn. I also think African American studies would be cool or any other minor that delves into other cultures. The classes I learned the most out of and came up in a lot of interesting conversations were from the humanities. I had to take a political ideology class as a part of my lib ed requirements where we read novels from important figures during the Civil Rights Movement (Malcom X, MLK, James Baldwin), and this was hands down the most rewarding class I took in college.

 

[Tenk]

You’d learn more about medicine taking a job in anything customer service related than minoring in anything. You’d also make money doing it instead of losing money so that’s cool too.

 

[PigsHaveWings]

@Goro will there be a big impact between an applicant with 1 major, versus graduating with double majors, or major with 2 minors to demonstrate a more rigorous college education ?

 

[Ihave Nonamè]

You’d learn more about medicine taking a job in anything customer service related than minoring in anything. You’d also make money doing it instead of losing money so that’s cool too.

Been there, done that. I hope to never have to do it again!

 

[Tenk]

Been there, done that. I hope to never have to do it again!

Then you better go into pathology or radiology...

 

[Goro]

@Goro will there be a big impact between an applicant with 1 major, versus graduating with double majors, or major with 2 minors to demonstrate a more rigorous college education ?

Sorry, but you are engaging in a classic pre-med delusion. You impress us by doing well. Period.

 

[Ihave Nonamè]

Then you better go into pathology or radiology...

Oh please. Let's just take a moment and ask everyone here why they aren't pursuing food service instead. I'd like to hear from you first.

 

[LunaOri]

Then you better go into pathology or radiology...

If you think pathology and radiology have nothing to do with customer service, I'd suggest spending some time in the lab or reading room...all other departments think path and rads live to serve them (and physicians can be tough customers!)

 

[LunaOri]

If you want to know what would help you deal with patients: psychology, any second language, sociology.... If you want to know what would help you when you are in practice, add business, management, or accounting.

 

[jjbittenbinder]

I chose to minor in a totally unrelated topic (religious history) because it was interesting to me and ended up being really fun! So maybe pick an academic field that you like but won't get to explore once you graduate undergrad. College gives you access to a lot of really cool faculty in a wide breadth of disciplines so I think it makes sense to study something weird and fun while you're a pre-med, since you're probably going to only be studying medicine during med school and residency.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

I wish I minored in Spanish. But if not that, do something you really enjoy. I took a bunch of labor studies classes because that was a niche I enjoyed learning about.

Don't just do more stem to do more stem.

David D MD - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
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