Major difficulty

[socal2014]

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Does it matter how difficult your major is?

Reason I ask this is because I can choose to major in something relatively easy such as plant biology versus something more difficult but helpful for optometry school such as Human biology.

The gap between difficulty is quite huge. I would not be taking classes like endocrinology, histology, neurobiology, anatomy, physiology in the plant bio major. Also, I do not have a preference for either, but I rather hate plant biology and while I imagine plant bio to be somewhat of a challenge, I do know for a fact it will be less stressful than human bio, just due to the difficulty between the intro courses, BIO1 and BIO2, which mostly covered plant bio and human bio respectively.

Many students have taken easy majors like psych or music and have had no trouble gaining an acceptance.

 

[Tone]

Uhhh... you shouldn't dismiss majors in psychology or music as "easy." Arguments can easily be started that way, and I've seen it happen. And it's always the hard science majors clowning on the soft science, liberal arts, english, etc. majors. In fact, the way you're thinking, physics and engineering majors might say the same about biology majors... Art, music, social science majors are all hard in their own way. Just pick a major that you're really interested doing while you complete your prerequisites. It'll make life a lot more enjoyable and can give you something better to talk about during interviews too.

 

[JMU07]

It really honestly doesn't matter what you major in. Pick a major that you love, whether it be bio or Spanish or music. As long as you can show that you'll do well in the pre-reqs it'll be fine.

 

[KHE]

Does it matter how difficult your major is?

Reason I ask this is because I can choose to major in something relatively easy such as plant biology versus something more difficult but helpful for optometry school such as Human biology.

The gap between difficulty is quite huge. I would not be taking classes like endocrinology, histology, neurobiology, anatomy, physiology in the plant bio major. Also, I do not have a preference for either, but I rather hate plant biology and while I imagine plant bio to be somewhat of a challenge, I do know for a fact it will be less stressful than human bio, just due to the difficulty between the intro courses, BIO1 and BIO2, which mostly covered plant bio and human bio respectively.

Many students have taken easy majors like psych or music and have had no trouble gaining an acceptance.

I would recommend picking a major that you are interested in.

Fact is, you may change your mind about optometry school. You may not be admitted. All sorts of things can happen. No point in graduating with a degree in something you hate.

 

[socal2014]

So some folks have said to major in something you love.

I don't think that is the best way to go about it. Looking at some of the classes like neurobiology and pharmacology on optometry schools websites sorta informs you on the difficulty of the material to be covered in optometry school.

Logically, it would be extremely difficult for a student who majored in drawing to do well in courses such as neurobiology in optometry school.

Wouldn't most of you agree that taking a pertaining and thus difficult major such as Human biology not only be helpful for optometry school, but also help with admissions? I would be surprised if the adcoms only look at pre-req grades - which doesn't tell much as most of the first year science courses are elementary in nature compared to most courses in optometry school which are at the graduate level.

 

[physicslover]

personally i feel a major in the sciences does help prepare you more for what is to be expected in terms of thinking style and concepts, testing methods. I think you may have to be naturally smarter in order to do a non-science major and excel in both thinking styles. I require a bit more prep to do well in things so thats why I would recommended a science background but there are ppl who do not need that much preparation in a field in order to excel so to each their own!

 

[KHE]

So some folks have said to major in something you love.

I don't think that is the best way to go about it. Looking at some of the classes like neurobiology and pharmacology on optometry schools websites sorta informs you on the difficulty of the material to be covered in optometry school.

Logically, it would be extremely difficult for a student who majored in drawing to do well in courses such as neurobiology in optometry school.

Wouldn't most of you agree that taking a pertaining and thus difficult major such as Human biology not only be helpful for optometry school, but also help with admissions? I would be surprised if the adcoms only look at pre-req grades - which doesn't tell much as most of the first year science courses are elementary in nature compared to most courses in optometry school which are at the graduate level.

Not necissarily. If you take the pre-requisites and do reasonably well, you will be "adequately" prepared to tackle optometry school from a knowledge base standpoint. That's why the pre-reqs are what they are. If the schools felt you needed to have a working knowledge of upper year molecular biology, THAT would be the pre-req.

The issue is then can you handle the workload. If you take an undergraduate major that requires a reasonable amount of self direction and has a significant workload, you will be fine. The other thing is to take a full course load. Try not to have too many semesters where you take less than 5 classes. Many people in my class had non-science majors and to my knowledge, none of them struggled any more than anyone else.

The "science" of most optometry school courses is not at a graduate level. There's a difference between graduate and professional school. "Neurobiology" does not require a huge background in biology even though I know the "neuro" part of it sounds ominous and seems to imply that.

 

[EyEnStein 07]

Logically, it would be extremely difficult for a student who majored in drawing to do well in courses such as neurobiology in optometry school.

Hm i cant say i agree with this. If that were the case, and students would be at some type of major disadvantage, optometry school would have more pre-requisites than they do now. If "neurobiology" is an extremely difficult course, then im sure it wont be a first year course or something where students non-bio majors have no idea whats going on, i find it hard to believe that schools would make such a system.

In regards to majors, its really an opinion. You might say human bio is harder than regular bio (im sure it is) but its also based on the individual. Im a physics/math major, and while the physics courses have been giving me a tough time, the math courses have been a piece of cake. But of course thats my opinion, there are many others who think math is a very difficult major.

 

[lsmc888]

um, neurobio is a first year course
but yeah i dont agree that a drawing major couldnt do classes like this cause, regardless of major, they have to still take prereqs anyways, which are more than enough prep. if they can handle the prereqs, i think they will be fine

 

[thecgrblue]

Science or non-Science?

It really doesn't matter, I roughly quote the book "The Cure" when I say that having a Bachelor degree in a science means to the science community that you roughly have the knowledge base of a kindergarten student. It just makes you a bigger egg-head than the music major.

Your undergrad is going to give you a good base of knowledge, but in most cases severely lacking on the application (which is what earns the bucks)...you've spent 4-years (and hopefully not very much money) learning how to effectively learn.