What's the point of taking a 'difficult' major?

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Is a BS in a hard science a good idea?

  • Good idea to do a BS in a hard science

    Votes: 23 38.3%

  • Bad Idea to do a BS in a hard science

    Votes: 37 61.7%
  • Total voters
    60
Lucca said:
i don’t really have anything to add but seeing people make major life decisions based on getting into med school makes me sad. I get it, but it just seems such a bleak and boorish attitude to have.

My education was for me and nobody else and I don’t regret that.
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I majored in biology because i liked medicine. Simple
 
leonardoson said:
Is that why Biology majors have lower composite mcat scores than Physics, BME, EE, Math, English etc?
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I can only speak for myself as a biology major and a psychology minor, but taking classes in genetics, biochemistry, physiology, cell biology, immunology, microbiology, neurobiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and etc. has helped me tremendously on the MCAT.

Most of the information presented in MCAT passages (across all 3 content sections) are on topics that I've already learned in my classes, which makes comprehending them much easier and faster.

I can't see how an engineering or math degree could give that kind of advantage on the MCAT.
 
puahate said:
I majored in biology because i liked medicine. Simple
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Yah that’s fine. I just don’t think ppl should organize their entire lives around Medicine. Similarly, I’m very happy to encourage people to major in engineering if that’s what they actually want out of their undergrad degree. If they just want a “backup” plan I tell them that they should decide if they want to try for medicine or engineering.

My default recommendation for premeds is to major in the humanities.
 
THEBACKANDFORTH said:
Yes, but humanities majors have the highest acceptance rate. Soft skills
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The acceptance rate between humanities majors and math/stats majors are very similar (less than 2% difference). I think that actually supports your argument though, as math is definitely requires more soft skills than physics and chem.
 
TheDappGoesWild said:
I can only speak for myself as a biology major and a psychology minor, but taking classes in genetics, biochemistry, physiology, cell biology, immunology, microbiology, neurobiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and etc. has helped me tremendously on the MCAT.

Most of the information presented in MCAT passages (across all 3 content sections) are on topics that I've already learned in my classes, which makes comprehending them much easier and faster.

I can't see how an engineering or math degree could give that kind of advantage on the MCAT.
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Math and stats majors score higher than bio majors on every subsection and total score (by 2 points for matriculants and by 4 points for applicants).

As someone who majored in math and minored in English and just took the MCAT, my math and humanities courses did way more for me than my bio courses. Yes, the bio courses give you content, which you need, but the soft skills I learned in my major and minor courses did way more for me than the content I learned in my bio courses. I was scoring quite high on my FLs without even completing my prereqs.

But we'll see how I did on the real thing in a week lol.

Major in bio if you want to major in bio. I don't really get what's so hard to understand about people wanting to study what interests them during college, even if medicine is the goal.
 
TheDappGoesWild said:
I can only speak for myself as a biology major and a psychology minor, but taking classes in genetics, biochemistry, physiology, cell biology, immunology, microbiology, neurobiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and etc. has helped me tremendously on the MCAT.

Most of the information presented in MCAT passages (across all 3 content sections) are on topics that I've already learned in my classes, which makes comprehending them much easier and faster.

I can't see how an engineering or math degree could give that kind of advantage on the MCAT.
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Then you don't understand the underlying principles of engineering or math.
 
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Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Math and stats majors score higher than bio majors on every subsection and total score (by 2 points for matriculants and by 4 points for applicants).

As someone who majored in math and minored in English and just took the MCAT, my math and humanities courses did way more for me than my bio courses. Yes, the bio courses give you content, which you need, but the soft skills I learned in my major and minor courses did way more for me than the content I learned in my bio courses. I was scoring quite high on my FLs without even completing my prereqs.

But we'll see how I did on the real thing in a week lol.

Major in bio if you want to major in bio. I don't really get what's so hard to understand about people wanting to study what interests them during college, even if medicine is the goal.
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Correlation does not imply causation.
 
What is the point of this thread? If you become a physician, very few degrees (or masters) help you as a practicing clinician. Some business or accounting classes will, especially if you open your own practice.

Not everyone gets into medical school though, even qualified applicants.

EDIT: the comment about "everyone is competent to become a physician if they believe enough" comment is the funniest thing I've heart in a while.
 
TheDappGoesWild said:
Correlation does not imply causation.
Click to expand...

🙄

Never said it does. But when math/stats majors consistently score higher than bio majors on a test that heavily tests biology and biochemistry, there's probably something to it.

Now, the sample sizes are very different and the math/stats majors applying to med school are extremely self selected. But there is a larger number of humanities and physical science majors applying, and they perform higher on the MCAT than bio majors too. So...
 
leonardoson said:
Physics with a math minor, ill tell you the score in october
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ahh ok, just for reference im a Biology major and scored 515. I did feel that my major helped me significantly, as I had already covered everything on the MCAT in my classes. Good luck!
 
BlueComet said:
ahh ok, just for reference im a Biology major and scored 515. I did feel that my major helped me significantly, as I had already covered everything on the MCAT in my classes. Good luck!
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Let's not compare n=1 datum points. Thank you though, I need it.
 
Unfortunately, given the number of applications received schools are purely going by the stats.
 
This article elaborates on some of the points made in support of pursuing what interests you (which may be a hard science) rather than pursuing what's expected of premeds to do, written by a PhD student at Harvard:
why-i-became-a-computer-scientist-instead-of-a-doctor at Quartz (google this, I can't post links)

Namely:
In my opinion, this approach selects for the wrong type of doctor—a shallow and competitive one. A doctor who has not learned how to make mistakes and learn from them. A doctor who is never given the chance to challenge herself, take risks, discover her real strengths and weaknesses.
 
Sophist said:
This article elaborates on some of the points made in support of pursuing what interests you (which may be a hard science) rather than pursuing what's expected of premeds to do, written by a PhD student at Harvard:
why-i-became-a-computer-scientist-instead-of-a-doctor at Quartz (google this, I can't post links)

Namely:
In my opinion, this approach selects for the wrong type of doctor—a shallow and competitive one. A doctor who has not learned how to make mistakes and learn from them. A doctor who is never given the chance to challenge herself, take risks, discover her real strengths and weaknesses.
Click to expand...

I understand but this doesn't ssy anything about GPA. GPA gets you in. If you are a rockstar in physics then great do that and explore if not don't waste time on it. Switch to something easy. Medical schools don't care if you challenge yourself and have the subpar gpa to show for it. I'm jaded but it's the reality. GPA and MCAT is king.
 
Sophist said:
This article elaborates on some of the points made in support of pursuing what interests you (which may be a hard science) rather than pursuing what's expected of premeds to do, written by a PhD student at Harvard:
why-i-became-a-computer-scientist-instead-of-a-doctor at Quartz (google this, I can't post links)

Namely:
In my opinion, this approach selects for the wrong type of doctor—a shallow and competitive one. A doctor who has not learned how to make mistakes and learn from them. A doctor who is never given the chance to challenge herself, take risks, discover her real strengths and weaknesses.
Click to expand...

Or maybe this approach selects for the right type of doctor- one that is 100% committed and dedicated to medicine. Someone who wants it really bad and way more than a computer science major that can be seen as indecisive in terms of their interests and passions.
 
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Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
🙄

Never said it does. But when math/stats majors consistently score higher than bio majors on a test that heavily tests biology and biochemistry, there's probably something to it.

Now, the sample sizes are very different and the math/stats majors applying to med school are extremely self selected. But there is a larger number of humanities and physical science majors applying, and they perform higher on the MCAT than bio majors too. So...
Click to expand...

Math/Chemistry/Physics majors typically attract high caliber students to begin with because they're perceived as being challenging and prestigious.

Biology and social sciences are generally stigmatized as being "easier" majors and therefore attract weaker students to begin with (which are the ones that lower the MCAT scores in the data).

The student (not the curriculum) is the reason why math/physics majors have higher MCAT scores. The reality is more high caliber students tend to flock to engineering/physics/math majors than biology/psychology (which is often filled with lower caliber students)

*****

As for humanities majors, they're just really good at reading and analyzing text (which is a huge component of the MCAT)
 
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FreeRadicals said:
Hey guys,

Since all majors are 'viewed' equally in terms of the admission process to MD/DO schools - what is the point of doing a more 'difficult' major (Hard science B.S. degrees)?
Click to expand...

Don’t do difficult majors
Do what is easy and what you love with the Pre reqs
End up with a 4.0 and you are in
 
TheDappGoesWild said:
I don't know why this is so complicated-

Medicine = Qualitative field (people oriented, memorization, soft science)

CS/Engineering = Quantitative field (numbers, logic, hard science)

If you want to do medicine, then pick a major (Biology, Social sciences etc.) that is relevant to medicine. These are the majors that allow you to obtain a high GPA and succeed on the MCAT (as well as help you become a better physician)

If you want to do CS/engineering, then do that and forget about medicine. There is near zero overlap between CS/engineering and being a physician.

***Yes, we know you want to do CS/engineering as a backup in case you don't get into medical school. Unfortunately that's not how the system works. Being a CS/engineering major will significantly reduce you're chances of being a successful premed.

It's either go into medicine 100% (with a biology/social sciences major) and have a better chance of getting into med school

OR

Do engineering/CS which will give you a good backup, but also significantly reduce your chance of getting into med school
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Oh boy I have to tell you something about how engineering/math overlaps with medicine.

There are many physicians who are doing research that is related to engineering/CS like machine learning and radiomics. As these fields are getting a lot of traction in recent years, I won't be surprised if physicians will need to understand some theories behind these techs in near future. A lot of radiologists also understand how imaging works and how image processing and image texture features work in terms of disease characterization and potential disease prediction.

If you think engineering/CS has nothing to do with being a physician, you are not looking deep enough.

And btw, biology and medicine ARE hard sciences.
 
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Trynottofeedthetroll said:
Oh boy I have to tell you something about how engineering/math overlaps with medicine.

There are many physicians who are doing research that is related to engineering/CS like machine learning and radiomics. As these fields are getting a lot of traction in recent years, I won't be surprised if physicians will need to understand some theories behind these techs in near future. A lot of radiologists also understand how imaging works and how image processing and image texture features work in terms of disease characterization and potential disease prediction.

If you think engineering/CS has nothing to do with being a physician, you are not looking deep enough.

And btw, biology and medicine ARE hard sciences.
Click to expand...

Physicians who do research in engineering/CS are generally MD-PhD’s. And those who do are more scientists than actual physicians.

Recognizing image patterns to diagnose a disease isn’t computer science. A radiologist doesn’t have to understand the physics and technical components of how an MRI works in order to perform his job.

A physician’s job (99% of the time) is to diagnose and treat a patient. You don’t need to know computer science or engineering principles to do that.

*************

Analogy: Just like I don’t have to know how a transistor works in order to use a computer, a physician doesn’t need to know how a MRI machine works in order to use it to diagnose patients.


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TheDappGoesWild said:
Physicians who do research in engineering/CS are generally MD-PhD’s. And those who do are more scientists than actual physicians.

Recognizing image patterns to diagnose a disease isn’t computer science. A radiologist doesn’t have to understand the physics and technical components of how an MRI works in order to perform his job.

A physician’s job (99% of the time) is to diagnose and treat a patient. You don’t need to know computer science or engineering principles to do that.

*************

Analogy: Just like I don’t have to know how a transistor works in order to use a computer, a physician doesn’t need to know how a MRI machine works in order to use it to diagnose patients.
Click to expand...
What you are saying is not necessarily true.

Firstly, there are many non-MD/PhD who do research in those machine learning research. There are even med students (non MD/PhD students) who do those now.

Secondly, to say those aren't engineering/CS is not true. Traditional machine learning and deep learning are being heavily researched in the medical field. They have add significant values to what we have now and I have no doubt they will be incorporated into clinical practice in the future. And those supervised and unsupervised classification tools are definitely part of engineering/CS.

Thirdly, radiologists do need to know some physics behind MRI. They know what coil strength, different sequences, echo time, repetition time etc. are and how these parameters affect results. They also know how hydrogen interacts with magnetic field. They might not know as much details as an engineer and physicist, but to to claim "near zero overlap between CS/engineering and being a physician" is absolutely not true. Even in med school you need to learn how PCR works and you will be tested on that as well. As a physician you NEED to know some principles behind the technologies you are using. You aren't blindly using tools just because you are told they work.
 
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FreeRadicals said:
Hey guys,

Since all majors are 'viewed' equally in terms of the admission process to MD/DO schools - what is the point of doing a more 'difficult' major (Hard science B.S. degrees)?
Click to expand...

If you like it I guess, or want to have something to fall back on if getting into/through med school doesn't work out.

I chose to stick with Computer $cience when I decided I want to go for medical school because I already had some coursework. If things don't work out, which is a realistic possibility given my GPA, I'm not relegated to eating Top Ramen and living out of my car if things don't go as planned. Also I just don't care about plants and I'm not smart enough to do physical chemistry.
 
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I dont regret majoring in bme, but I'm sure plenty of my bme friends (including the ones that switched majors after freshman year) and now need to do postbac or master's programs to raise their gpa regret it.

I knew I wanted to go to med school, but as a high schooler I wasn't confident that I'd make it. Bme was one of my backup plans as my major in case I had a change of heart.
 
I’m majoring in cell biology, which at my school is considered a hard major. My pre med advisor discouraged me from doing it because it might make my grades slip. I’m doing alright right now (3.68 sGPA, 3.8 cGPA), and I love every moment of it. Sure I could’ve majored in English and I could have had a higher GPA, but I really love cell biology.

For me, I want to pursue medicine because I have a love and immense curiosity for how biology works. It’s my fascination with cellular pathways and how organisms respond to drugs that made me interested in medicine in the first place. Of course there are other considerations (how can I use my knowledge and passion to help others? how can I give back to my community beyond publishing papers in a lab?). I think that you should major in whatever you’d like. Undergrad isn’t a stepping stone for medical school, but should be treated as an opportunity to explore soemthing you love. So, if you really love medicine and want to do it, but you equally love English literature, I say major in English. If you really love engineering but you’d rather spend a career in medicine, then major in engineering.
 
Self-fulfillment/ self-actualization
But really in regards to the people that mention easy majors not being employable. I would say attend a state school that doesn't require you to take $40k-$50k+ in student loans and pick a major you enjoy/ can maintain a high GPA while getting the pre-reqs done. If med school fails for 1-2 cycles then grab a second major in Computer Science or something applicable to the job market. In that scenario you should only be 40-50k in debt and have a employable job at $80k-$100k per year, WORST case scenario.
 
Trynottofeedthetroll said:
What you are saying is not necessarily true.

Firstly, there are many non-MD/PhD who do research in those machine learning research. There are even med students (non MD/PhD students) who do those now.

Secondly, to say those aren't engineering/CS is not true. Traditional machine learning and deep learning are being heavily researched in the medical field. They have add significant values to what we have now and I have no doubt they will be incorporated into clinical practice in the future. And those supervised and unsupervised classification tools are definitely part of engineering/CS.

Thirdly, radiologists do need to know some physics behind MRI. They know what coil strength, different sequences, echo time, repetition time etc. are and how these parameters affect results. They also know how hydrogen interacts with magnetic field. They might not know as much details as an engineer and physicist, but to to claim "near zero overlap between CS/engineering and being a physician" is absolutely not true. Even in med school you need to learn how PCR works and you will be tested on that as well. As a physician you NEED to know some principles behind the technologies you are using. You aren't blindly using tools just because you are told they work.
Click to expand...

Don’t you think it’s a sign when the vast majority of med students and physicians say that the physics and math they took as a premed is useless?

But let’s say those physicians are mistaken and you do need to know a bit of physics/math/chemistry. Those hard sciences are ALREADY in the premed curriculum. Biology majors are required to take 2 semesters physics and 4 semesters chemistry where they do learn the basics necessary to understand everything you just mentioned.

And all the radiology technicalities you mentioned can be learned just as well without a CS/engineering degree (just like how intro physics can be picked up by just about anyone).

And like I said, the VAST majority of physicians will never use physics/math in practice (apart from very basic stuff like Posieulle’s equation, Ohm’s law, gas laws- which are again covered in the premed coursework and don’t necessitate a physics/engineering degree)


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If courses in undergrad were so useless, why don't premeds take classes in content taught in medical school instead? /s

Premeds take 2 semesters of physics, calc, 2 of gen chem, 1 orgo, 1 biochem... these just scratch the surface of the subject. They're introductory courses and by no means are "the basics necessary to understand everything you just mentioned." If you look at the curricula of m1/2 of medical school, it's much more condensed and more difficult than these undergrad topics.

Technical skills aren't valued for what people have memorized or "know" per se, but valued for people's ability to problem solve and think from acquiring these skills.

MRI is very similar to NMR and is quite involved. I can't really speak for radiologists... I'm basing my remarks on "MR Pulse Sequences: What Every Radiologist Wants to Know but Is Afraid to Ask" by Bitar et al. Having taken spectroscopy and sat in on stat mech, a lot of NMR principles, such as pi pulse, pi/2 pulse, Fourier transformation from k space, spin statistics etc are similar. How much of that is blackboxed, I can't say, but certainly undergrad material can help medicine.

Doctors may not necessarily use certain topics in practice, but advances in technology may cause this to change.

Topic of thread is "Is BS in a hard science a good idea?" I still rest by Yes, as long as they can maintain GPA near or above the averages of the medical schools they're applying to.
 
TheDappGoesWild said:
Don’t you think it’s a sign when the vast majority of med students and physicians say that the physics and math they took as a premed is useless?

But let’s say those physicians are mistaken and you do need to know a bit of physics/math/chemistry. Those hard sciences are ALREADY in the premed curriculum. Biology majors are required to take 2 semesters physics and 4 semesters chemistry where they do learn the basics necessary to understand everything you just mentioned.

And all the radiology technicalities you mentioned can be learned just as well without a CS/engineering degree (just like how intro physics can be picked up by just about anyone).

And like I said, the VAST majority of physicians will never use physics/math in practice (apart from very basic stuff like Posieulle’s equation, Ohm’s law, gas laws- which are again covered in the premed coursework and don’t necessitate a physics/engineering degree)


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Click to expand...
You are right, the physics and math you learn in intro classes are ultimately useless. What we are talking about are the logic building, problem-solving skills learning, non-memorization type classes that improve that way you think. Algebra based physics classes kind of help, but not really. Algebra and calculus classes are formulaic. O-chem is required because it makes you think, and not just memorize. Why do you think there are thousands of pre-meds freaking out about o-chem all the time? They have to utilize different thinking skills to solve problems.

If you think schooling is only about utilizing the information you memorize instead of building thinking skills, you are doing school wrong.

Edit: I didn't read the post above who summed this up as well.
 
Speaking from my own experiences. I have advanced training in biostatistics, a part of (hard) sciences, so I know the tricks people use in Pharm companies. In my last clinical observerships in a community health clinic, I saw many pharm reps coming to promote their products. As the doctor with whom I was working at that time knew that I had stats knowledge, he let me meet those reps. Yes, the presentations were phenomenal and, of course, free food and samples! How can't you love those reps?

But, I asked those reps to give me their publications that present the data.

As I read through the study designs, I spotted several errors that may have changed the conclusions - the conclusions that favored their products - yes, even in an article published in NEJM (gee, it was my second time spotting stats errors in that journal). I smiled, returned the copy, kept silent, and made a recommendation "don't trust the study" after the rep left.

Do you think that (hard) sciences (such as stats) have low value to medical practice?

You be the judge.
 
Cheenghee Koh said:
Speaking from my own experiences. I have advanced training in biostatistics, a part of (hard) sciences, so I know the tricks people use in Pharm companies. In my last clinical observerships in a community health clinic, I saw many pharm reps coming to promote their products. As the doctor with whom I was working at that time knew that I had stats knowledge, he let me meet those reps. Yes, the presentations were phenomenal and, of course, free food and samples! How can't you love those reps?

But, I asked those reps to give me their publications that present the data.

As I read through the study designs, I spotted several errors that may have changed the conclusions - the conclusions that favored their products - yes, even in an article published in NEJM (gee, it was my second time spotting stats errors in that journal). I smiled, returned the copy, kept silent, and made a recommendation "don't trust the study" after the rep left.

Do you think that (hard) sciences (such as stats) have low value to medical practice?

You be the judge.
Click to expand...
I specifically took a theoretical probability and stats class just for this purpose! Thanks for sharing this.
 
we are talking about getting in med school. Everything else outside of getting a high GPA is extraneous
 
LizzyM said:
Acknowledge that most premeds never make it to medical school. Everyone needs to have to have a plan B and will need to think about the likelihood of needing to be employed in a profession other than medicine. Your college major may dictate the jobs you will be considered for coming out of college and the likelihood that you will be admissible to other programs in higher ed (graduate school, other professional programs, etc).
Click to expand...
Yep. My GPA was lower than I'd like it to be; I feared I wouldn't make it into medschool. So I switched to Math my senior year and aced it. There are reasons other than GPA to pick majors. Like backup plans.
 
Cheenghee Koh said:
Speaking from my own experiences. I have advanced training in biostatistics, a part of (hard) sciences, so I know the tricks people use in Pharm companies. In my last clinical observerships in a community health clinic, I saw many pharm reps coming to promote their products. As the doctor with whom I was working at that time knew that I had stats knowledge, he let me meet those reps. Yes, the presentations were phenomenal and, of course, free food and samples! How can't you love those reps?

But, I asked those reps to give me their publications that present the data.

As I read through the study designs, I spotted several errors that may have changed the conclusions - the conclusions that favored their products - yes, even in an article published in NEJM (gee, it was my second time spotting stats errors in that journal). I smiled, returned the copy, kept silent, and made a recommendation "don't trust the study" after the rep left.

Do you think that (hard) sciences (such as stats) have low value to medical practice?

You be the judge.
Click to expand...

We were talking about engineering/math not statistics. The type of math I was referring to was non-statistical.

I completely agree that statistics is very important to the medical field.

As for physics/engineering, sure the logic gained may be useful for a physician, but just because it is useful doesn’t mean they should be taught. I’d argue that having a deeper understanding of physiology and pathology is far more crucial to a physician than knowing how to code or think like a theoretical physicist.

You can only teach so much to a med student in 4 years, so you have to prioritize focusing on the more important things (physiology, pathology, ethics, statistics, communication skills) over the less important ones (physics, math, engineering)


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Goro said:
Stasts get you to the door; ECs get you through the door.
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GPA is the hardwork. ECs can always be gained. GPA is forever. Also this is obvious of course ECs matter.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
🙄

Never said it does. But when math/stats majors consistently score higher than bio majors on a test that heavily tests biology and biochemistry, there's probably something to it.

Now, the sample sizes are very different and the math/stats majors applying to med school are extremely self selected. But there is a larger number of humanities and physical science majors applying, and they perform higher on the MCAT than bio majors too. So...
Click to expand...

People always read way too much into this statistic. There's critical thinking involved in every major. It's college. You had it right when you brought up self selection. Biology is the only major that doesn't self select because it's the intuitive major of choice for people wanting to pursue medicine, including all of the people who have no business pursuing it because they don't have the work ethic or any realistic idea of what it takes.

The point is, it's the people choosing the major, not the major's ability to prepare you for the MCAT. It would be silly to think that high level math classes will somehow prepare someone for the MCAT better than biochemistry. People pursuing math degrees are just generally intelligent people, and if they're also pre-med, they have researched the process enough to know they can major in anything and just need to do the pre-reqs, and that degree of research is indicative of someone who will spend time researching how to do well on the MCAT. Whereas there are bio majors out there who have 2.5 GPAs and terrible work ethic but dreams of becoming a doctor. I've met many of them.
 
Typeracer said:
People always read way too much into this statistic. There's critical thinking involved in every major. It's college. You had it right when you brought up self selection. Biology is the only major that doesn't self select because it's the intuitive major of choice for people wanting to pursue medicine, including all of the people who have no business pursuing it because they don't have the work ethic or any realistic idea of what it takes.

The point is, it's the people choosing the major, not the major's ability to prepare you for the MCAT. It would be silly to think that high level math classes will somehow prepare someone for the MCAT better than biochemistry. People pursuing math degrees are just generally intelligent people, and if they're also pre-med, they have researched the process enough to know they can major in anything and just need to do the pre-reqs, and that degree of research is indicative of someone who will spend time researching how to do well on the MCAT. Whereas there are bio majors out there who have 2.5 GPAs and terrible work ethic but dreams of becoming a doctor. I've met many of them.
Click to expand...
So true. The whole point of UG is to teach you to learn how to learn.

When you get to med school, you put those skills into action.
 
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