What is your major/was your major?

[alphamine]

I just got accepted into three universities as a transfer for majors in Neuroscience, biophysics, and biomedical sciences.

The biophysics major is the most interesting thing to me, but what's deterring me from it is the fact that it's at a top 50 university and a very rigorous program. It might pull down my GPA for med school.

So, what was/is YOUR major and how do you think it helped/is helping you for medical school? And which major do you think may help me the most??

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[WedgeDawg]

All of these majors will be beneficial in their own way. I would pick your major based on 1) which you will do best in and 2) which you are most interested in. If you think you won't be able to perform will in biophysics, it might be a better idea to choose a different major and perhaps do a minor in biophysics if you're interested.

I personally studied neurobiology and really enjoyed it.

 

[Doudline]

I studied astrology and it really taught me about the universe.

 

[md-2020]

I studied finance. It was fun.

I probably wouldnt choose biophysics, being pre med is enough work already.

 

[eteshoe]

I always find it hard to give major choice since one hand you want to protect your GPA but on the other hand, picking a tougher major will better prepare you for the rigor of med school. I say try the biophysics (major or minor)

I personally went to a top 5 school and double majored in Chemical Engineering/Biochemistry -> worked -> MS Analytical Chemistry(biochem focus) -> MD/PhD. Sometimes the work really sucked but overall I enjoyed the challenge and learned quite a lot.

 

[dreamadream]

Criminal Justice can help with medical malpractice, patients with high amounts of medical bills especially if they were charged way more than reasonable or charged a high bill without knowledge(watch out for those for-profit hospitals), it helps with ethics in the medical work place, and that's about all I can think of right now.

 

[TallPreMed]

Communication Studies with minors in Health Comm and Psych!

+1 humanities

 

[whatever5]

Pick something with good job prospects with a bachelors in the probable event that med school does not work out right away.

 

[TallPreMed]

Pick something with good job prospects with a bachelors in the probable event that med school does not work out right away.

I did not do this. I failed miserably at this.

And still somehow managed to end up working in healthcare

Seriously. Find something you enjoy that you can make good money off of. Makes your life easier and you sleep at night.

 

[whatever5]

I did not do this. I failed miserably at this.

And still somehow managed to end up working in healthcare

Seriously. Find something you enjoy that you can make good money off of. Makes your life easier and you sleep at night.

Ditto. Luckily the for-profit medical system we have means there are super shady healthcare facilities out there to hire desperate pre-meds like myself who will give you clinical experience and a glowing LOR in exchange for a temporary suspension in ethical behavior.

 

[allantois]

I think pre-professional students are uniquely positioned to study whatever they want because we don't have to find employment based on our undergrad degrees.

I also found my Neuroscience classes easy as half of the students in them are psych majors who don't know a thing about biology.

 

[Lucca]

I think pre-professional students are uniquely positioned to study whatever they want because we don't have to find employment based on our undergrad degrees.

I also found my Neuroscience classes easy as half of the students in them are psych majors who don't know a thing about biology.

That's weird. Neuro classes here are restricted to neuro majors. I had to get the department to let me take a class and I'm a science major

 

[Turkishking]

Biology. It overlaps almost all of the requirements.

 

[hopefulERdoc251]

I'm biased for Neuro and if you asked me to redo college 100 times, I would pick Neuro every single time. Not only was it insanely interesting but it came up a lot during my interviews.

 

[Strudel19]

Biology major and I would do it all over again. I got intro exposure to nearly all of the med school basic sciences.

 

[Tvicl]

My major is chemistry atm, it's helping me by being more fun than biology.

 

[longleat11]

Do whatever you find particularly interesting; you'll take all of the prereqs regardless so try and find something you enjoy for your other coursework. I was a history major and loved it

 

[Govols22]

Exercise science. Learned a good bit about Anatomy and physiology, thought it had some interesting classes. If I would do it all over again, I may have possibly gone with chemistry. But no regrets. I'm a better man now. Exercise or die guys. Exercise or die.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

I was a neuro so im biased, but Id say choose neuro. Great mix of practically applied biology/biochem and some psych/anthro.

 

[Doctoblast]

Nutrition. You don't learn very much nutriton in med school and it is something that is very interesting/practical in every day life. All the doctors that I work with had to learn a lot about nutrition on their own for their patients and all the pre-reqs for my nutrition classes overlapped the pre-med pre-reqs. Lastly, you can always find a job in dietetics if med school doesn't work out!

I'm very biased towards nutrition because I find it interesting, but it really is useful knowledge to have for yourself and for your future patients. At the end of the day just pick what you think you will enjoy studying the most.

 

[ivorypearls]

My major was Chemistry. It wasn't my passion and honestly I would never take a job in the field if med school didn't pan out. I would rather have majored in neuroscience, however chemistry classes were great GPA boosters for me. So I took a gamble and hoped for the best that I would get into med school. The ideal goal would be to pick a major that you are interested and can do well in, but if I were to decide between an interesting major that had difficult classes vs. a boring major with easy classes, I would go with the latter

 

[CowboyNiceguy]

Mechanical engineering. I think if it has helped, it's because I have a stronger math/physics background than most applicants and get a lot of experience working on teams. And I suppose I'll have a bit of a different perspective later on, though I'm not sure how useful that will be.

But I wouldn't really recommend it unless you really like engineering (I do not). And if you really like engineering then I would ask why you want to be a doctor.

 

[Smoove]

Biomedical Engineering. It's a love hate relationship to be honest lol. I loved loved loved learning how to make useful circuits and devices (CompE track) but sometimes I wonder if it was worth sacrificing the a few knotches on the GPA. Brought up a lot of interesting conversations during interviews, though.

I definitely agree, pick the best combination of what you like AND what you think you can keep a high GPA in. It may not always be the one you would love to learn the MOST but in the end you'll be more glad you didn't affect your dream of going to med school.

 

[Dr.TonySoprano]

I studied neuroscience. I think it's a great major for the new MCAT because you take the hard science classes as well as some psychology classes.

 

[TBV]

Exercise science. Got a 4.0 in the major classes only studying an hour before the tests and devoted all my studying to pre-reqs. GPA boosted out the wazoo

 

[frosted_flake]

BS Biology, chem and micro minors.
Good for med school/MCAT prep, useless for entry level jobs. A BS in bio will get you about $13/hour where I live. I make more as an EMT-B and it is way more exciting than checking water quality or running a gel for the millionth time.

 

[SorensenMD]

I did my bachelors in biophysics. It wasn't exactly easy but I really enjoyed the integration of everything (Math, chemistry, biology, and of course physics too)

 

[692019]

I'm a Philosophy major actually! Not the most obviously useful major but I have gotten a lot better in terms of critical thinking, argumentation, and writing which will be useful no matter what field you go into.

Plus I personally think that biomedical sciences is a good choice since it will give you good exposure to medicine (actually thought of minoring in biomed), but whatever major you choose wont hurt you in the long run in terms of med school.

 

[PB&Jam]

I'm Physiology and Neurobiology, and I feel like it will be very useful for medical school. (I'm still in undergrad). However, one of my friends is in biomedical engineering and is premed, and he seems to be doing fine. I think if you're passionate about what you're doing you'll want to put in the work, and if you want to put in the work you'll do well. Don't go for an "easier" major wondering if you would've liked something else better. Go do biophysics and kill it!

 

[GaStu1994]

I just got accepted into three universities as a transfer for majors in Neuroscience, biophysics, and biomedical sciences.

The biophysics major is the most interesting thing to me, but what's deterring me from it is the fact that it's at a top 50 university and a very rigorous program. It might pull down my GPA for med school.

So, what was/is YOUR major and how do you think it helped/is helping you for medical school? And which major do you think may help me the most??

Biology.

Biology is, of course, the most common pre-medicine major, though one I would still probably recommend. I was/am drawn more toward the biochemical/molecular biology side of Biology, so being required to take courses like Botany, Ecology, and Invertebrate Zoology was very frustrating and was definitely an overall waste of time, despite learning some useful/interesting information. Still, Biology is great because it really gives one perspective.

Majoring in biology will require you to understand systems at the levels of gross physiology, enzyme action, ecosystem interactions, and atomic physics. This, at least for me, was the best part about the major.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I eventually majored in mathematics. My only regret is that I didn't realize how awesome it is earlier. The reasoning and problem solving skills you learn in upper division math courses are great for life in general, but are very good for tests like the MCAT and for science courses. It also hones your scientific writing skills, especially how to take something dense and present it in interesting ways.

 

[enchantediris]

I majored in physics. I don't really regret it because I liked physics then and I still do now. I have a high GPA, which I would attribute mostly to hard work. If you want an A in upper level physics classes, you are going to have to work harder than you would for upper level classes in many other disciplines because there is not only a conceptual component, but also a computational component. I would note that I wouldn't necessarily consider myself natually good at math or logic, but it's something that I was able to learn.

The upside is that I do genuinely enjoy physics and everything seems doable after you take a class like quantum mechanics. The downside is that I had to put much more effort into maintaining my GPA than I would have had I majored in something else that I was interested in, like psychology or neuroscience (which play to my natural talent of memorization). That means I had less time to hang out with friends and enjoy life, and I was more stressed out during the school year. Also, because physics doesn't overlap with as many of the prereqs as other majors, I had less room to take classes that I was interested in (I would have loved to learn a new language, or take more psych classes). The bottom line is that you should do something that is both interesting to you and is worth the sacrifice. If you end up going the biophysics route, I recommend you learn some programming (C++/MATLAB/python) because should you need to find a job, programming ability makes you infinitely more hirable.

 

[Saifa]

Biology here. Do something that lets you have some fun beyond the pre-med courses. The biology faculty are my favorite on campus and they really make it a great time.

 

[HuskyMD Emeritus]

I was an electrical engineering major and many of the required courses do not overlap with med school prerequisites, so had to spend summers taking classes to finish in 4 years. If you need to graduate within the traditional 4 years, pick a major that satisfy the prerequisites.
I can say that after 25 years in practice, what you studied in college is not that relevant anymore other than the most basic concepts (for EE, here is actually a lot of similarities between the physiology of the lungs, ventilator circuit and an electrical circuit, such as RC time constants and these concepts do make it easier to understand the interaction of the lung with the ventilator).

 

[mistafab]

I went with psychology. I gotta say, I'm glad I did.

Psychology provoked a lot of reflection and self-awareness - really helped me grow. It probably changed my life.

 

[Turkishking]

History

 

[Lannister]

Spanish. It was easy and I got to study abroad. It is obviously not helping me in medical school.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Spanish. It was easy and I got to study abroad. It is obviously not helping me in medical school.

Depending on where you practice, it will be a huge help in residency and beyond.

Edit: my wife is a civilian nurse and she estimates a full 50% of her patients or their parents are Spanish-speaking only.

 

[Lannister]

Depending on where you practice, it will be a huge help in residency and beyond.

Edit: my wife is a civilian nurse and she estimates a full 50% of her patients or their parents are Spanish-speaking only.

Yeah, we'll see! Lol when I applied to med school I wrote so many essays about how I wanted to use my Spanish to help my future patients that I started to believe that was actually true. But to be honest, I don't really care. I'm not interested in global medicine at all and the cities I am interested in living in don't have huge Hispanic populations. But you never know where you'll end up, I suppose.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Yeah, we'll see! Lol when I applied to med school I wrote so many essays about how I wanted to use my Spanish to help my future patients that I started to believe that was actually true. But to be honest, I don't really care. I'm not interested in global medicine at all and the cities I am interested in living in don't have huge Hispanic populations. But you never know where you'll end up, I suppose.

You got that right. Never thought I'd live in Hawaii, but my youngest daughter was born there.