Switching degrees.. ideas?

[vin5cent0]

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So I'm a Junior right now majoring in Cell/Molec Biology.

I started out my first year undecided. Soph year I switched to Business, then I got persuaded to move to Biology so that I wasn't taking so many extra classes to satisfy the med school requirements.

Biology isn't bad, but it's more or less a worthless degree outside of applying to medical schools. Sorry if that offends anyone, but I couldn't imagine going to college for 4 years, working my ass off for a science degree an then struggling to make more than 30k/year afterward. Not to mention I could never see myself just working in a lab doing menial work that I'd most likely wind up doing.

So, last shot for me switching. Right now I'm just starting to take O-chem classes as well as some mid-level (300ish) biology classes. Any degrees anyone can think of off the top of their head that wouldnt' waste all of those credits? I'm not going to start over again and be in undergrad for 6 years. I was looking into something like bio/chemical engineering, but I have a feeling that might drop my GPA a bit. Any other ideas? I just want to get out of biology/chemistry as I don't feel like they offer many choices outside of applying to medical school.

 

[Compass]

How do you fancy computers or math? Bioinformatics/Computational Biology. Shameless self-major promotion. I am not familiar with engineering, being a tech guy, but depending on where you go to school, your BINF/CB major may very well be only computer-light and statistics-heavy, which will make it easier for you.

My U, being masochistic as it was, had me competing in a gateway with Comp Sci, Comp E, and EE majors, learn a multitude of computer languages (I'm one of the "lucky" people who learned C++ and then learned Java)




Let me know if it interests you, and I'll go into more details.

 

[vin5cent0]

I'd like to hear more about that if you don't mind. Always liked computers.

 

[Compass]

😀

Depending on your U, you may or may not have this major. This major is quite interesting in terms of what it covers. As you know, biology is about the science of life. If it's not available, the closest would probably be a custom major or a BS in Bio and a minor in CS. CS should be at least past the core intro classes, probably up to a database-level or at least an object-oriented algorithms level.

Let's look at some discoveries in biology and medicine.

DNA
Medical Records

The thing with all these, is that they are information that need to be stored. In the olden days before computers were invented, imagine sequencing a piece of DNA on paper. That would be horrid.

BINF is basically taking biological data of any sort, and organizing it. The major also covers biology and chemistry so you understand the processes. Your major will almost overlap a Bio major's except for things like developmental/plant/etc. In addition to all the jobs Bio majors have, we also have the advantage of being prepared for specific computer-based fields such as genome mapping and processing, data storage, and other stuff pertaining specifically to the dry computer labs that BINF is usually associated with.

As my old prof used to say, BINF is simply the application of statistics, advanced math, and computers to biology, whether it be designing software to use, or simply using the available software. I've programmed stuff to comb an ENORMOUS genome from E Coli. 4 million bases is a LOT of stuff. Imagine the billions humans have. Sure, we've got it sequenced, but sequencing individual people's DNA is still pretty tough. Whether or not DNA fingerprinting will be developed, I have no idea, but that would be a pioneering step if BINF were to map out a way to carefully sort and map the data onto a small computer chip.

I've also worked with non-biological data. Imagine storing medical records. Paper is great and all, but medical records at the place I currently work at is huge. Sorting it is difficult. Imagine this crisis: a vaccine you recently used on several patients has turned out to be mixed wrong. Now, a normal clinic would probably have records on who was given the vaccine, but if that record were damaged or incomplete, it would be almost impossible to manage. Digitizing medical records could easily make it possible to pull up anyone who had say, "ATTRIBUTE: TOOK VACCINE C."

If you've used BLAST or any of NCBI's that's all BINF. NCBI is a combination of computer programmers and bioinformaticians (I used to work there)

They prefer you have a master's before working at NCBI, and you need to be practical about the computer side.



Assuming you finish your core computer programming courses, you can design your own DNA -> RNA converter, DNA complement converter, DNA -> Protein converter. What's more, all the stuff you DO program can be implemented into increasingly advanced systems, such as converting a DNA sequence into a 2D spatial representation.


More about it can be found at wiki. This was mostly my personal experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics

 

[GTV]

CS is probably the hardest major out there. CS majors at my school have twice the workload of any engineering major. They don't sleep. I'd go BME or ChemE if I were you.

 

[Compass]

Yes, CS majors are the stressed-out type. I APed out of 2 of the 3 gateway classes, and my classmates for the final gateway class were always lined up for office hours, to the point that our professor literally asked as one of the bonus questions on the final exam "name something UNIQUE in my office." (I did not get that question correct, for the record.) It takes a special type of talent for computer science. If you have a background, go for it. I wouldn't recommend it as a major if you haven't taken CS at all yet. CS classes can be major killers if you're placed in with a hard-core CS program.

 

[vin5cent0]

That CS/Biology major sounds ridiculously interesting, actually. I'm going to have to wind up switching universities as mine only offers very generic majors (Biology, Chemistry, nursing, etc). We don't have engineering classes, or any specific subsections of the sciences.