I was an electrical/computer engineering major in college.
I dont know if there is any advantage per se to being an engineering major in college and relation to med school acceptance chances. I know that statistically, engineering majors fare better than some other majors, but I think that has more to do with self-selection moreso than any kind of cause-effect relationship.
To be more precise, with engineering people only the very best tend to apply. Contrast that to bio majors, where pretty much everybody applies because its "expected" from them or they were all planning on applying to med school when they first started college.
At my interviews, I did run into a fair number of interviewers who seemed impressed with my engineering experience. I talked about some of the design projects I worked on, most of the projects had nothing to do with medicine but they still seemed interested.
One of the strong points in engineering that I talked about in interviews was teamwork. I talked about how I felt I had good team skills because of all the practice I got in my engineering design classes. I think thats an attractive quality for med school admissions people.
As far as the scope of engineering and how the med schools perceived it, I didnt encounter any tangible negative perceptions (i.e. engineering people are all nerds and geeks with no people skills). I think most of them are wise enough not to make those kinds of automatic associations and evaluate YOUR personality, not the supposed pre-conceived personality of the engineering profession as a whole.
You do need to make sure you participate in activities that are not totally science-driven though. But I think that your burden to show you are well-rounded enough for medicine is not higher than it is for any other major. Some of hte people I interviewed with made comments about how they felt engineering was a difficult major, but thats just anecdotal so I dont know if thats a prevailing assessment of the engineering academic rigor viewed from the medical school perspective.
