Abandoned Majors.. and more.

Parents Forum
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<p>CELLOGUY
“What I said, or tried to say, was that the skill set most needed by a practicing physician involved dealing ethically and compassionately with sick people. Yes, keeping up with the literature, understanding new treatments, knowing when to call in the specialists, these are all needed competencies too – but it ain’t rocket science.”</p>

<p>IMHO you are living in the wrong century. If your physician is as described,
you’d better stay healthy. In medical school, during the first days, it was explained that what patients really desired was affability, availability and ability in that order. </p>

<p>The first person who evaluates you when you are ill is the most important.
How carefully she/he observes you, connects all the dots, can mean the difference between life and death. During the nineteenth century there was
only compassion; now the elegance of medicine is when to intervene and what appropriate steps to take. Excellent clinicians are not that common,
but certainly not rare; any after having seen one you will know it.</p>

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<p>My husband barely looks at GPAs when he does Md/Phd admissions. He looks at the grades in the science courses. For the Phd. program most applicants have to have majored in science though some have double majored and that is certainly a plus. (Last night he was reading one from someone who did Biology and Philosophy and a ton of drama.)</p>

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<p>^My H majored in Bio and Phil and a ton of English! He really liked both science and humanities–I think both went toward making him a better doc (and a better bio teacher, now, too.)</p>

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<p>I look at the doctors I know, and at least 90% of them were science or math majors in college. (No engineers, though, as far as I know.) The ones who weren’t were, as I said, pretty exceptional:</p>

<p>– A fine arts (painting) major. You think engineering is time-consuming, try visual arts. (And try doing well at that, and your science courses, and your research job, at the same time.) Harvard MS, runs a clinic in Alaska.</p>

<p>– Sociology major, Olympic rower, Peace Corps in Africa, did pre-med courses post-bac at Bryn Mawr. Stanford MS, now head of infectious diseases at a major university hospital. (Proving, of course, that non-science majors can cut the mustard in high-level medicine.)</p>

<p>– Chinese major (another really fluffy major – not!). Went to Taiwan for three years, wound up doing public health work in a rural village, took pre-med courses post-bac at Penn. Harvard MS. Runs a clinic for a low-income community in Roxbury (I think). One of the medical students profiled over 10 years in a series of PBS documentaries . . . the socially conscious one.</p>

<p>– B+ sorority-girl History major, spent a year in Italy studying art history, worked for 10 years in securities-industry trading jobs, quit, took premed courses post-bac at University of Buffalo and went to medical school there. Was told when she started the post-bac process that she would have to get 4.0 on all her courses and top-quartile MCATs to have any chance of getting into any medical school, given her mediocre college GPA (at a 3rd-tier college, by the way) and the fact that she hadn’t been in a science classroom since 10th grade. So she did. Then she graduated in the top 10% of her class at medical school. ER physician in Buffalo.</p>

<p>Note that (a) these are all women, and (b) only one of them planned to go to medical school when she was in college.</p>

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<p>–social studies major, wrote senior thesis on the politics of archaelogy, took premed courses as undergraduate. Worked for CDC for a couple of years, MD from JHU. Male.</p>

<p>–US History major. MD. from Harvard Med SChool. Male.</p>

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<p>scidoc, I’m not sure you actually read and comprehended my description. I listed: ethics, compassion, scholarship, and professional judgment. “Affability” is nice. “Availability” can be critical. “Ability” comprises the qualities I listed. I really don’t think we’re in disagreement here.</p>

<p>I’ve participated in some fairly gnarly medical situations (as patient and parent). I try to be a savvy consumer (e.g., keep up with the online med. journal articles in specialties that concern me). I make it a practice to research each new specialist’s background and reputation. Having been lied to, I place ethics high on my list. An ethical physician who finds himself/herself out of his/her depth will refer. An arrogant doc plows ahead with the wrong diagnosis/treatment without listening to dissent.</p>

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<p>Majors appear to be fairly unimportant, with the exception of engineering and the hard sciences, Andrew Abbott reports there is little correlation between college major and eventual occupation.</p>

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<p>??Back in the day, med school admissions looked at a separate science GPA - with either a formal calculation, or just eyeballing the grades. The non-science majors needed to have slightly “more stellar” science grades for simple statistical reasons - if a GPA is calculated separately, there is less room to make up for that one B.
The humanities majors discussed here are the exceptional people med school admissions committees are looking for. You don’t have to walk on water, but Bs across the board in a barebones pre-med sciences only transcript will not play well.
The real $64000 question I have never heard adequately addressed is do the med schools cut you any slack or look at you more stringently, based on the undergrad school you attend. Some answer yes, some answer no. I went to my state med school from a “not on the radar screen” 4th tier college, and I had a super GPA, but I also had solid MCATs, and I believe that both of those were necessary to make up for my not so great rep college and lack of med experience.</p>

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<p>I have talked with three people who I happen to know socially that serve or have served on admission coms for medical schools (one private, two state). Each one said that there are no “formal” points given to an applicant who comes from a more rigorous undergrad program (school), but all felt that it was taken into “consideration”. Still doesn’t answer the question does it?</p>