Psychology vs. Biomedical Engineering as a Major?

[EdwardElrich]

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I'll be starting college in a week! I'm very excited and I'm pretty much set on pre-med. I will be attending an Ivy (I don't know if this matters). I'm currently registered for Biomedical Engineering but I was considering Psychology because of all the horrible things I've head about BME on this forum 😕

I'm not THAT smart but I do well if I try really hard. I think that's my only shortcoming when it comes to engineering. I've heard there are just some concepts you get or don't get no matter how much you study. Things like psychology on the other hand, if you put your time into it, you do really well.

On the other hand, BME sounds extremely cool. It would be amazing to learn about engineering that affects things internally and externally in the human body. It's plain amazing. But honestly, I don't want to end up being a biomedical engineer - I definitely want to be a doctor. So what would be the better major for me? (I know major doesn't matter but what I mean is the sequence of classes). Thank you everyone!

 

[theseeker4]

I'll be starting college in a week! I'm very excited and I'm pretty much set on pre-med. I will be attending an Ivy (I don't know if this matters). I'm currently registered for Biomedical Engineering but I was considering Psychology because of all the horrible things I've head about BME on this forum 😕

I'm not THAT smart but I do well if I try really hard. I think that's my only shortcoming when it comes to engineering. I've heard there are just some concepts you get or don't get no matter how much you study. Things like psychology on the other hand, if you put your time into it, you do really well.

On the other hand, BME sounds extremely cool. It would be amazing to learn about engineering that affects things internally and externally in the human body. It's plain amazing. But honestly, I don't want to end up being a biomedical engineer - I definitely want to be a doctor. So what would be the better major for me? (I know major doesn't matter but what I mean is the sequence of classes). Thank you everyone!

If you don't want to be an engineer, don't major in engineering. It is one of the most, if not the most, difficult majors to get the high GPA's needed for medical school (even if you are going to an Ivy Undergrad). Major in whatever you find interesting and CAN DO WELL IN with an eye to what job you would want if you never get to medical school. Since you don't want to be an engineer, I would rule that out immediately.

Remember you can learn about whatever you want to by reading; majoring in something difficult like that is silly if you have no interest in working in that career, and you ultimate goal is medical school.

 

[blackandgold1]

HONESTLY do psych. non-science majors have the same chance at med school as do science majors.. adcoms arent gonna discriminate over that. anddd being a senior and filling out secondaries and going on interviews is easier when you have easy classes... im a microbio major and pretty close to wanting to kill myself due to my insane courses combined with applying to med school.

 

[TheMightySmiter]

I would do psych, for sure. If you know you don't want to do BME as a career, and want to be a physician, why lose sleep and valuable free time over ridiculous engineering classes? Do psych as your only major and take a bunch of fun and interesting elective classes. Do a lot of extracurriculars too. Plus, psych has great opportunities for research that will be WAY more interesting than bench research, IMO.

 

[lacrosse87]

Penn Bioengineering alum here. It's an awesome field and it is a great feeling after you accomplish things like 1) finally figuring out the correct code for a program you've been trying to write for the last month, spending hoursss everyday on it 2) mastering crazy math like partial differential equations, Laurent series, and Fourier transforms where if you just sit back and look at the math, you can't help but think how insane it is that people came up with this stuff and that you now understand how to use/apply it 3) gaining the ability to quantitatively investigate and answer biophysical questions. Bioengineering labs were pretty cool too.

The field will help prepare you to think quantitatively as a physician and give you a very "problem solvey" mind set that may be lacking in other pre-medical disciplines that involve mostly memorization (not saying other courses of study don't involve significant conceptual analysis; they do. But I would argue that the emphasis is definitely there with an engineering curriculum). Despite the advantages that I've touted, they will not matter much if you're not able to get IN to medical school. I'll admit, my GPA blows...much lower than you'd see in the pre-med forums when people normally say "oh my gosh, my gpa is so low at a 3.4 blah blah." Hell, I WISH I had a 3.4....

Anyway, if your goal is to primarily be a physician, I must warn you to only choose this course of study if you are absolutely certain you will be able to keep the grades up. Admissions committee's have the unfortunate reality of having thousands of applications and need a metric (GPA) to compare applicants. Also, everyone is concious of "rankings," and GPA is weighted in evaluating the schools. Therefore, difficulty in curriculum doesn't really mean squat to them.

I'm all for taking intellectual risks. I did it... but I'm also paying for it. Although I enjoyed it and wouldn't change a thing if I had to do it all over again, it still was very tough. I'm in my second year out of Penn and finally applying to MD & DO schools now. I just hope someone is willing to look past the GPA...

With that being said, only do it if you are certain you can do well and you DONT let your grades slip while simultaneously NOT being lame/antis-social/only studying. Life is short and you want to make sure you actually get some real world experiences too.

Despite everything I've said, some of my classmates did extremely well and are attending some awesome med schools, some doing MD/PhD @ Ivy's. I'd say Bioengineering is an especially good course of study if you're interested in academic medicine.

 

[Lil Mick]

Major in psychology and take interesting BME courses. Would they let you minor it in? You'd have a good gpa and still get a good taste of BME material...

I have a few MD/PhD friends who majored in a field of engineering. Seems to be a trend--all very brilliant people who want to use it in their research. However, there are very few MD-only people I know who managed to get into medical school after a BME major; many of the BMEs I knew didn't get into medical school, even with post-bacs.

Bottom line--don't do it unless you'd be happy as an engineer or you are brilliant enough to be at the top of your classes...

 

[deleted357625]

If you don't want to be an engineer, don't major in engineering. It is one of the most, if not the most, difficult majors to get the high GPA's needed for medical school (even if you are going to an Ivy Undergrad). Major in whatever you find interesting and CAN DO WELL IN with an eye to what job you would want if you never get to medical school. Since you don't want to be an engineer, I would rule that out immediately.

Remember you can learn about whatever you want to by reading; majoring in something difficult like that is silly if you have no interest in working in that career, and you ultimate goal is medical school.

+129047758971589034593425 👍👍👍👍

 

[JESSFALLING]

I'll be starting college in a week! I'm very excited and I'm pretty much set on pre-med. I will be attending an Ivy (I don't know if this matters). I'm currently registered for Biomedical Engineering but I was considering Psychology because of all the horrible things I've head about BME on this forum 😕

I'm not THAT smart but I do well if I try really hard. I think that's my only shortcoming when it comes to engineering. I've heard there are just some concepts you get or don't get no matter how much you study. Things like psychology on the other hand, if you put your time into it, you do really well.

On the other hand, BME sounds extremely cool. It would be amazing to learn about engineering that affects things internally and externally in the human body. It's plain amazing. But honestly, I don't want to end up being a biomedical engineer - I definitely want to be a doctor. So what would be the better major for me? (I know major doesn't matter but what I mean is the sequence of classes). Thank you everyone!

I think psych is a pretty good pre-med major, really, A lot of the classes are applicable to many medical specialties. BME would help if you want to go into ortho or some other reconstructive surgical specialty....but not at the expense of a bad GPA. If you decide against med school, though, you'll have to go to grad school in psych if you want to work in the field.

 

[JESSFALLING]

+129047758971589034593425 👍👍👍👍

That's so random 😛

 

[deleted393595]

I'll be starting college in a week! I'm very excited and I'm pretty much set on pre-med. I will be attending an Ivy (I don't know if this matters). I'm currently registered for Biomedical Engineering but I was considering Psychology because of all the horrible things I've head about BME on this forum 😕

I'm not THAT smart but I do well if I try really hard. I think that's my only shortcoming when it comes to engineering. I've heard there are just some concepts you get or don't get no matter how much you study. Things like psychology on the other hand, if you put your time into it, you do really well.

On the other hand, BME sounds extremely cool. It would be amazing to learn about engineering that affects things internally and externally in the human body. It's plain amazing. But honestly, I don't want to end up being a biomedical engineer - I definitely want to be a doctor. So what would be the better major for me? (I know major doesn't matter but what I mean is the sequence of classes). Thank you everyone!

This: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=823539&nojs=1

And get your hiney in the Class of 2019 thread! Now!

 

[Ignatius M.D.]

Psych is great and easier, so I'd honestly do that. I chose my major based off of interest, and while I love it I would actually minor in it if I could do it again (and simply hand-pick the best courses) and major in something easy and interesting. It's a shame that intellectual curiosity is not always rewarded in this med school game, but this is how it is. Say you enjoy both, but are looking at a 3.7 psych vs 3.3 BME. One is not like the other no matter how unfair that might be.

 

[AllDay24]

Another Penn student here. Not in engineering, but considered switching to BME right before school. I'm telling you right now, unless you're one of those science/math geniuses, don't do BME for pre-med. Too many incredibly intelligent BMEs from Penn (or whatever Ivy you're going to) end up doing SMPs and post-bacc programs...not worth it.

SWITCH TO PSYCH ASAP!!!

 

[GomerPyle]

Dont be a *****. Go with biomedical engineering. You learn SO MUCH. My school even had a premed track, and we got to dissect cadavers in our functional anatomy course every week. We also did numerous animal dissections in physiology for engineers and in our research labs. The experience and learning opportunities are like NO OTHER. Yeah, its hard as hell, but med schools know that, and will take it into consideration. GET ON IT!

 

[Whatyousay]

Dont be a *****. Go with biomedical engineering. You learn SO MUCH. My school even had a premed track, and we got to dissect cadavers in our functional anatomy course every week. We also did numerous animal dissections in physiology for engineers and in our research labs. The experience and learning opportunities are like NO OTHER. Yeah, its hard as hell, but med schools know that, and will take it into consideration. GET ON IT!

Go psych.

Read up on engineering literature --> find BME labs doing interesting research --> ask to join. I know quite a few students at my school working in BME labs who don't happen to be majoring in BME.

Personally, I would be happy if I never did another Fourier transform ever again.

 

[JESSFALLING]

Dont be a *****. Go with biomedical engineering. You learn SO MUCH. My school even had a premed track, and we got to dissect cadavers in our functional anatomy course every week. We also did numerous animal dissections in physiology for engineers and in our research labs. The experience and learning opportunities are like NO OTHER. Yeah, its hard as hell, but med schools know that, and will take it into consideration. GET ON IT!

Gunners gonna gun 😎

 

[sarahss]

i think you also should think about if you are 100% sure you want to become a doctor. if you end up changing your mind, would you be okay with graduating with a psychology degree and not going to med school? or if you follow your interests and do BME you could follow a career path with that degree if you decide not to be pre-med later on. just my opinion

 

[BenzylAcetate]

You probably don't need to make any big decision quite yet, my advice would be to stick with it at least until you get into the very specific BME courses. Take a look at the flow chart of courses for your school. At Penn State most of the curriculum for all engineering majors is pretty rigid, but you essentially spend your first 2 years hitting all of the med school pre-reqs with 1 or 2 kind-of-engineering-esque classes thrown in. Worst case scenario you get your pre-reqs done and realize you don't like the engineering. At that point you wont be completely screwed if you switch over to a new major.

Also, programs can differ drastically from school to school. Try talking to an adviser in the BME department about people who have been successful/unsuccessful in your situation. I know the consensus is that advisers often do more harm than good, but people interested in engineering and medicine tend to favor BME, so they (advisers) usually have enough experience to be helpful.

 

[upchurch]

another Penn bioengineering major here. Don't do it! Major in something easy and take easy courses so that you can maintain a high GPA. If you are interested in BME, perhaps take some courses.

The problem with a engineering major is that a lot of classes are pushed together in the first two years. You take all the science prereqs and have engineering classes on top of it. It is very hard to do well unless you have a very strong work ethic or are naturally talented. If it is the former, you end up not having as much extracurriculars and not enough exploration. I think college is a time to broaden your horizons and engineering rarely allows you to do that.

One of the reasons I chose BME was so that I could have a backup if I didn't get into med school. The thing is because I went into BME, I now need the backup. My GPA is quite low so I don't know if I will get in this cycle--I maybe looking into an SMP next year because the damage is so bad.

So, major in something easy, get a strong GPA and end up at a great med school. Unless of course you are confident in your abilities and know that you can do well. Good luck!