Business Administration Majors?

[ctaborda]

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I am just curious to find out how many people here have majors in Business Administration and are getting or have gotten into medschool.

Carlos.

 

[XYF]

I heard from some MDs (who've served on ADCOMS themselves) that adcoms just don't like anyone majoring in business (even though they state they have no preference) and even a minor should be avoided.... They say that must adcoms are traditional clinicians and business gives the impression that you're using the degree to make more money instead of treating patients.

Comments?

 

[IndyZX]

I think that's just plain silly. Changing your interests to suit such a narrow-minded view as that professed by the MDs above would be totally selling out.

 

[Fermata]

Study what you want.

Trying to tailor your studies completely to what you think medschool adcoms will like is not a good idea.

 

[DadofDr2B]

The medical profession had better wake up and understand that they are in a business. Healing is number one but being able to keep the doors open financially is also important.

Did you know that an OB-Gyn in South Carolina gets paid $850 for full term care including delivery if the patient is from Medicaid. Nine months of care with false alarms with the possibility of being sued and sometimes not appreciated. At some point money will be an issue if you plan on private practice.

 

[ctaborda]

anyone can confirm anything here?

 

[ctaborda]

bump

 

[bonez318ti]

I heard from some MDs (who've served on ADCOMS themselves) that adcoms just don't like anyone majoring in business (even though they state they have no preference) and even a minor should be avoided.... They say that must adcoms are traditional clinicians and business gives the impression that you're using the degree to make more money instead of treating patients.

Comments?

These MDs that you talked to obviously have never been in business. There is much more earning potential in business than there is in medicine, especially if you leave the corporate world and work for yourself. Even in the corporate world, if you are smart (and are willing to take the highest offer), you can probably clear 125k by the time you are 5 or 6 years out of college. That is certainly not to say everyone does, but i know of several people personally who do... and if you have the smarts to get into and through medical school, you probably have the smarts to maneuver yourself up the corporate ladder.

btw.. I have a business admin/finance undergrad and worked in the corporate world for 3 years with relative success, and I am certainly not doing medicine for the money.

I've also heard from a person on an adcom that they look for people who can understand the economics of medicine.. that gave me some hope when I heard that.. in anycase, I hope I don't get those people you mentioned on the adcom when I apply

 

[skypilot]

My business degree and experience as a CPA was a prominent part of my personal statement. I think you have got to tie your business background to medicine somehow.

 

[Howard Roark]

we have one business/finance guy in my medical school class

good luck

 

[Utopify]

My opinion, which is also unbiased because I have been invoved in both worlds to some degree....

Patient=Customer

Its all business. There is business in everything. Depending on the area of medicine, espeically if its a private practice, if a patient is treated poorly, they can and will go elsewhere. You just lost a customer, which is income.

I think its a good thing. I think the whole "business means he/she's money hungry" is a bunch of trash. That comment was about as smart as a bag of wet mice. There are a lot of business majors out there, and there's another IT professional on the way...to all of them, lets do this.....

-utopify

 

[OmahaMX80]

...and there's another IT professional on the way...to all of them, lets do this.....

-utopify

B.S. in Computer Science here. 🙂

 

[!dr_nick!]

My opinion, which is also unbiased because I have been invoved in both worlds to some degree....

Patient=Customer

Its all business. There is business in everything. Depending on the area of medicine, espeically if its a private practice, if a patient is treated poorly, they can and will go elsewhere. You just lost a customer, which is income.

I think its a good thing. I think the whole "business means he/she's money hungry" is a bunch of trash. That comment was about as smart as a bag of wet mice.
-utopify

i agree. I focused on these points in my secondary apps and my interviews. I related the patient/doctor relationship to the customer/customer service relationship.

Also, i pointed out that if money were my main motivation for medicine, i would not be going into primary care. I would go get an MBA and make 6 figures without all the crap that a med student must endure.

And, a lot of docs recommended a business degree to me, because when they got out of school they had no idea how to run a practice as a business or manage their money.

btw yes i got in to med school.

 

[Utopify]

...adda boy! (OmahaMX80)

Where you in the field awhile like me? What approach did you take when applying?

-utopify

 

[ut_stephen]

At UT-Austin, the business honors program had like a 95% acceptance rate into medical school for those who applied last year. 😱 I don't know if that is just because the average BHP student is more qualified than the average premed, but obviously being a business major doesn't (and shouldn't) heavily impact an adcom's decision.

 

[txguy]

At UT-Austin, the business honors program had like a 95% acceptance rate into medical school for those who applied last year. 😱 I don't know if that is just because the average BHP student is more qualified than the average premed, but obviously being a business major doesn't (and shouldn't) heavily impact an adcom's decision.

I wasn't BHP, but I was a McCombs School of business graduate as well!

-tx

 

[ctaborda]

Well, it seems that I have found my major!.

Anyone else has experience in this?

 

[OmahaMX80]

...adda boy! (OmahaMX80)

Where you in the field awhile like me? What approach did you take when applying?

-utopify

Not very long, I worked full time as an application developer creating IVR applications (programs that operate over the telephone... automated voice/touch tone systems, allow you to check your balance, make payments to credit cards, etc.). Cool stuff... I started working there in September making good money but by the end of October I had decided to apply to medical school. I kept working there until March, by then I had a nice amount of money saved up, so I quit and studied my @$$ off for the MCAT for a solid month. I kind of had to, because it was a 50/hour a week job in all reality, plus a rotating pager (you could depend on getting paged every night). People on pager duty basically didn't sleep, and it lasts two weeks at a time. So, there just wasn't enough time to study and keep working. But before I graduated I did a few internships and held a few IT related positions on campus. I did a lot of free lance web development as well.

As far as approaches I took... honestly I wasn't as creative as I could have been. I played up the necessity of computer skills (which is true for most jobs now), I talked about bioinformatics. *duh* There's a lot of things you can explore... using your medical education as well as your technical knowledge to help define how to use information digitally while being HIPAA compliant, for example, or more scientific topics like using technology in DNA sequencing, expression profiling, alignment methods, gene expression studies, protein profiles and HMMs, metabolic and signalling pathways, structure and function prediction, etc. (I found that list of topics in a journal description at http://www.henrystewart.com/journals/bib/ ) Just think about the possibilities. I highly doubt I'll ever use my technical background in any of the capacities I've listed above... just make it apparent you've given it some thought and you see the tremendous pluses. Read some articles on bioinformatics, that will help more than anything else I can suggest.

 

[joselind]

Study what you want.

Trying to tailor your studies completely to what you think medschool adcoms will like is not a good idea.

this is exactly right. do well in a major you love, and at the same time do well in the science pre-requisites. study what you will enjoy most. 👍