Wisdom of a "Health Sciences" degree?

[BioBeaver]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I've been looking into majoring in Health Sciences with a Pre-med cncentration at Purdue, and I'm wondering your guys' opinion on whether this is a good idea versus majoring in an actual field (biology, physics, etc).

The Health Sciences major is basically all of the med school pre-reqs, with upper level bio and other courses to prepare you for the MCAT. I'm leaning towards this because I have pretty diverse interests and it leaves a lot of room for electives outside of the sciences. However, I'm worried that health sciences is a bit too broad if I can't get into med school, and I'm not sure I'd have enough exposure to any one field for graduate work. Advice?

Here is the link to the curriculum: http://www.purdue.edu/hhs/codo/documents/degree_requirements/HSPP_PMED.pdf

 

[13132]

Don't do it because if things go south you will not have a marketable major. Basically, it will be all or nothing. Med school or bust.

Don't take that risk.

 

[Sardinia]

Don't do it because if things go south you will not have a marketable major. Basically, it will be all or nothing. Med school or bust. Don't take that risk.

This. Life science majors are fairly useless given current market saturation and your earning potential only really kicks in after pursuing the equivalent of a master's degree or above. Untrained graduates with no notable internship experience are raped due to aggressive staffing companies supplying labs with cheap pipette hands. If you want to prepare for the MCAT, then take a course or just buy the books people recommend on site.

If you are looking for a solid Plan B with medical school pre-req courses then I suggest pursuing a chemical/biomedical engineering major. Outside of being aligned with medical pre-req courses, I find that computer programming and business majors have pretty good job opportunities post-graduation. However, the skills obtained from these sciences don't have much of a direction correlation with medicine.

 

[BioBeaver]

If I wasn't going to do the Health Sciences major, I was leaning more towards Applied Exercise Science, while still on a Pre-med or Pre-PT concentration. Although I'm not sure which has worse job prospects: Health Sciences or Exercise Science! 🙄

 

[NYCNative]

If I wasn't going to do the Health Sciences major, I was leaning more towards Applied Exercise Science, while still on a Pre-med or Pre-PT concentration. Although I'm not sure which has worse job prospects: Health Sciences or Exercise Science! 🙄

Don't waste a good degree from Purdue on "Applied Exercise Science" unless you are secretly gunning for a position at 24 Hour Fitness when you graduate. Besides, that sounds like a terrible major for medical school.... though a great one for PT school (nothing wrong about that...if you are also considering going down that road). In any case, though, I'm sure you could use a Health Sciences degree towards that end as well. With the new MCAT and medical school requirements, I actually think we are going to see more variously named dedicated Premed majors pop up--- whether or not they will be embraced by adcoms remains to be seen.

 

[kmp0410]

It's a fine major if your sure you want to go to med school or some professional school. Just be aware that your job prospects with it as a stand alone are the same as without a degree.