<p>For what it’s worth - we went to a college counseling session last night. When a senior graduates from high school, they have between 11 and 17 years left of “school/education” depending on their specialty. Our state school charges, today, $24K a year in state for tuition only. I really had no idea how many years these folks put in before really entering their field.</p>
<p>Sorry to resurrect this… child psychiatry (at six years after medical school for a total of 14 years after high school) takes longer than many medical specialties and doesn’t get paid accordingly, especially if you do therapy, and other time consuming “procedures”.</p>
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<p>But these categories aren’t mutually exclusive. As we hear over and over again on these boards, there is no such thing as a “pre-med” major. The OB/GYN who delivered my D was a history major. My father is a retired internist and he majored in economics.</p>
<p>My husband was a pediatrician and he majored in philosophy.</p>
<p>Not “exclusive” but highly predictive. The percentage of art or humanities majors who go to medical school is very low. The percentage of biology-type majors who do so is much higher. What’s the saying: “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras?”</p>
<p>That might be generally true. At my alma mater, the music department has boasted for years that they have a higher percentage of their majors going to med school than the biology department.</p>
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<p>Makes sense to me. The music majors are more disciplined and advanced theory is harder than the advanced biology courses.</p>
<p>IIRC, mini, you attended a top-tier LAC? With… how many students in each department? I suspect that for the great majority of colleges and universities, both in terms of numbers of institutions and numbers of students, that would not hold true.</p>
<p>Still thinking horses here.</p>
<p>According to their last Common data set, Williams had 53 biology majors graduating, and 56 in visual/performing arts. (There isn’t a music/art breakdown.) I expect there are probably 12-16 music majors.</p>
<p>And I bet they’re all pretty dam! smart, and most of them will not go into performing arts. Leaves room for a healthy percentage of med students… but not much of a factor in the 20,000 students who enter med school each year. Here you go - med school admittees by undergraduate major: <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/161692/data/table18.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/161692/data/table18.pdf</a> “Biological Science” majors account for just over 50%. Considering that 95% of college students don’t major in Biology, that’s a pretty telling statistic.</p>
<p>I imagine that a significantly higher percentage of Williams grads in various majors end up in the top 1% of income earners, for that matter.</p>
<p>Not generally the case at State U.</p>
<p>One benefit of majoring in biology is that the courses in medical school preclinical years are much like some upper-division courses offered by the molecular biology department. A biology student may know ahead of the time whether (s)he likes that kind of subject/learning. But I heard the clinical years could be quite different.</p>
<p>Some may argue that, since you are going to learn this kind of stuff in medical school anyway, why don’t you learn something else while you can in college?</p>
<p>When I was in college, most “pre-meds” majored in psychology. Much easier to get higher GPA.</p>
<p>Well, whatever they major in, they still have to take the pre-med requirements, which are no walk in the park. (H, the philosophy major I mentioned above, actually, full disclosure, double majored in bio, but most of his upper class bio classes were botany, just because he got interested in that–he had no intention of being a doctor at the time.)</p>