confused about the route

[jpalmer]

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I am a psychology major at the University of Massachusetts: Amherst. I am here to ask for help on the route to become a psychiatrists. Currently my major is psychology, does this lead to psychiatry later on? Do I have to declare myself as pre-med? I am not sure what the path is so I cannot ask the questions. I can only leave you with my start point and end point. I started college as a psychology major, I wish to end my college/graduate school as a clinical psychiatrist. Could anyone fill me in on the route to this goal?

 

[Anasazi23]

Technically, you can major in anything you want, but you must fulfill your premed requirements to be accepted to medical school. This includes a few semesters of biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics at an absolute minimum. Most pre-meds take many more premedical classes in order to be competitive and more competent, such as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, genetics, calculus (required at many schools), . I myself was a psychology major in undergrad, and did a post-bac premed program after graduation to fulfill the above requirements.

After this, you must apply to medical schools and complete your undergraduate medical training of four years. Following this, you finally declare your residency choice, which can then be psychiatry.

My suggestion is to peruse these websites:
http://www.aamc.org/students/considering/careers.htm
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/2320.html
http://www.psychiatry.com/student.php


I'm post call now and exhausted...I'll try and write more later if you need it.

 

[PublicHealth]

I am a psychology major at the University of Massachusetts: Amherst. I am here to ask for help on the route to become a psychiatrists. Currently my major is psychology, does this lead to psychiatry later on? Do I have to declare myself as pre-med? I am not sure what the path is so I cannot ask the questions. I can only leave you with my start point and end point. I started college as a psychology major, I wish to end my college/graduate school as a clinical psychiatrist. Could anyone fill me in on the route to this goal?

Go here and have them guide you: http://www.nsm.umass.edu/NSM_Web_Pages/premed.htm

 

[purpledoc]

I am a psychology major at the University of Massachusetts: Amherst. I am here to ask for help on the route to become a psychiatrists. Currently my major is psychology, does this lead to psychiatry later on? Do I have to declare myself as pre-med? I am not sure what the path is so I cannot ask the questions. I can only leave you with my start point and end point. I started college as a psychology major, I wish to end my college/graduate school as a clinical psychiatrist. Could anyone fill me in on the route to this goal?

You definitely don't need to major as "pre-med." My major was psychobiology as well -- my college didn't even allow "pre-med" as a major. I simply made sure that I took all the classes that are required for admission to medical school. One of them, organic chemistry, I took over the summer, but only because cramming it into 8 weeks is a much better way to survive it if chemistry is not the love of your life. Otherwise, you should be able to major in psychology, take pre-med classes, and even fit in a couple of electives here and there, without needing to take any summer classes.

I do recommend psychobiology instead of psychology as a major if your school allows it and doesn't require extra classes, since it lets you count some of your pre-med courses as psychobiology courses -- this gives you more time for electives.

Good luck!