<p>Hey guys, I am currently and engineering major, but due to AP/transfer credits I have enough space to do a double major (my schedule will be full, but it’s possible). However, I was debating whether to do a double major (in a non-science area), or whether to do a minor in that area and then become a TA at my university. I reallly wanted to show interest in this area outside my major, but do med schools distinguish that much between double majors and minors? If I did a double major, I would probably not be able to TA. Thanks!</p>
<p>Medical schools do not care about either, so (I suppose) they don’t distinguish between the two of them.</p>
<p>That is to say:
They matter equally, but only because neither of them matters at all.</p>
<p>Really? I thought it was good to show some sort of diversity, to show that you are not just a stereotypical science/engineering student.</p>
<p>There are other interesting ways of doing that other than double/triple majoring/minoring.</p>
<p>so double majoring is not a way of standing out as unique? lets say immunology and computer science at UCB…those as double majors will not be unique? med schools will turn a blind eye to them?</p>
<p>I’m going to be honest here: med schools have a pretty narrow view of diversity. When they say diversity, they mean racial diversity. Things like major diversity, geographical diversity, age diversity are very very secondary. </p>
<p>The tradeoff of a second major is that you’ll have less time for EC’s and possibly a lower GPA. In the end, med schools would prefer more/better EC’s and a higher GPA over a computer science double major. Computer science isn’t a major that’s likely to help you become a better physician. The reason med schools like humanities majors is that they often improve your oral and written communication skills and you get practice in critically analyzing what you read.</p>
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<p>Computer science relies on critical thinking skills and logic and can even develop these skills while a humanities major can’t or won’t as much. This comes in handy for the MCAT. Don’t get me wrong, having a humanities major certainly helps one become a doctor only in the sense that med-schools prefer humanities majors over science majors and that its easier to get A’s.</p>
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<p>Yes, because history or econ majors throw all their critical thinking skills and logic out the window when they declare a major. Good grief.</p>
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<p>It can help with board scores. I don’t know if it helps with admissions.</p>
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<p>Is it really a clear-cut preference?</p>
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<p>Wrong.</p>
<p>Un, well I got an A+ in my first humanities class and I didn’t even try. Everyone passed. I don’t think anyone got below a B. Maybe one person, but he rarely showed up. Now when I took a harder(by my definition) subject, there was almost always higher failure rates. For instance, my physics mechanics class failed up to 70%(of 100 students) of the class. In the end, about 5 people received A’s. But this just isn’t my school, it occurs in just about every school across the nation. </p>
<p>To quote sakky from a previous thread, </p>
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<p>santa banta, I think you will find helpful info about medical school on studentdoctor.net</p>
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<p>Strawman fallacy. You lose. </p>
<p>read my sentence again. I said that computer science can develop critical thinking skills and logic MORE(note the more) than humanities majors. Now if someone already has great logical reasoning skills, then it doesn’t matter what he/she majors in.</p>
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<p>Strawman, fair enough. Then I modify my question: where is the evidence that computer science requires MORE development of critical thinking skills and logic?</p>
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<p>I don’t have enough time to research this, but here’s what I’ve found by searching Google.</p>
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<p>Source: [In</a> a Change of Policy, and Heart, Colleges Join Fight Against Inflated Grades - New York Times](<a href=“http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2DC1231F937A35754C0A963958260]In”>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2DC1231F937A35754C0A963958260)</p>
<p>The implication is that science classes have lower average grades because of teaching styles, not because of difficulty. Unless not getting as much teacher attention and one-shot exams are the true measures of difficulty.</p>
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<p>Source: [Down-grading</a> | Columbia Spectator](<a href=“http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/28497]Down-grading”>http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/28497)</p>
<p>And I guess this is saying that more top grades are handed out in science classes as opposed to humanities classes.</p>
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<p>Ok, lets make the assumption that theres no difference in inherent difficulty( hence logic development) between the hard sciences and social sciences. Even then, my logic still holds. That is, its harder to major in a hard science than a soft one. This is due to all the factors that you have mentioned. Majoring in the humanities means getting more personal teacher attention as humanities classes are almost always smaller. And because there are more room for assignments, the student can get a sense of the teacher expectation early on. By the time a science student gets the teachers’ standard, it may be too late as that last midterm could have been worth 35% of his grade. Take all of this in addition to bell curving in science, and what we have to the salient fact that it is more difficult to earn good grades in science than it is in humanities. This is relevant because med schools care about grades. </p>
<p>Moreover, that initial assumption that theres no difference in inherent difficulty is wrong. There is a difference. Science majors are more intellectually challeging than non science majors. According to (The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray), the top echelon of cognition(ie IQ of 120 and higher) correlates to these careers, chemist, physists, mathematicians, doctors and top CEOs. Almost all of these careers have something to do with science, except the CEO. Not only that, look at all the geniuses out there. Most of them are in science, Newton, Einstine, Feynman, Euler. Granted, there are some nonscientists, i.e Mozart. </p>
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<p>Thats not germane to the discussion because Med schools don’t care much for A+s. Not only that, but that still doesn’t address the fact that theres more students failing out of science programs than nonscience. Hence, science is still more risky.</p>
<p>Ohh midwestmom, trying to get people addicted to ANOTHER forum? SDN is the reason I don’t do homework! :D</p>
<p>Here a quote from a poster on the site you mentioned</p>
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<p>source:[Down-grading</a> | Columbia Spectator](<a href=“http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/28497]Down-grading”>http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/28497)</p>
<p>His source is:[Why</a> Economics?](<a href=“http://www.shsu.edu/~eco_www/program/whyeconomics.htm]Why”>http://www.shsu.edu/~eco_www/program/whyeconomics.htm)</p>
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<p>It’s more difficult due to the way the course is set up, not due to the difficulty of the material or the skills required. Put all science majors in small class sizes and I bet the test scores would rise.</p>
<p>Regarding [Why</a> Economics?](<a href=“http://www.shsu.edu/~eco_www/program/whyeconomics.htm]Why”>http://www.shsu.edu/~eco_www/program/whyeconomics.htm)…</p>
<p>If you’ve spent four years as a science major, you’re accustomed to being graded on a test format. Then, it’s not at all surprising to expect to get higher scores on graduate school exams. If the GMAT, the GRE, and the LSAT required test-takers to write a 30-page analytical paper in 1 month, I suspect you’d see that table turned upside-down. </p>
<p>I think the MCAT is a better test to look at. After all, everyone who takes the MCAT has at least some science background and therefore some recent familiarity with being scored based on an exam. This is opposed to a test like the LSAT, which presumably you could take without being accustomed to test-taking during your college career. Unfortunately, the most recent data where MCAT scores are broken down by major is 1999, but that’s no older than the data provided in [Why</a> Economics?](<a href=“http://www.shsu.edu/~eco_www/program/whyeconomics.htm]Why”>http://www.shsu.edu/~eco_www/program/whyeconomics.htm). What’s interesting is that “humanities” majors do as well as or even better than their “biological sciences,” “mathematics/statistics,” and “physical sciences” major counterparts. This suggests that, at least for the MCAT, it’s familiarity with being graded based on an exam that’s the issue, not the lesser “critical thinking skills and logic” of humanities majors.</p>
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<p>I doubt it. As I said before, science courses are set up in such a way as to be more difficult. The material is not harder.</p>
<p>Science majors place more emphasis on testing, not intellectual challenge. I think that convincing arguments could be made for humanities majors being more intellectually demanding than science majors. As I see it, humanities majors are looking at questions with no clear-cut answers while science majors are trying to prove that they understand how to solve a certain equation discovered and understood 100 years ago. For a midterm paper, a humanities major might write a paper describing subtle references to life and death in the plants described in Homer’s “Odyssey.” For a midterm exam in Physical Chemistry, I’d have to use the wave function to come up with an equation for momentum or use another equation to show that protons were bosons and not fermions - it was a lot of “figure out which equation to use and plug stuff in.” I’d say the paper-writing required a lot more thought, research, and logic than memorizing equations and how to use them.</p>
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<p>Using that book to argue with me is unfair. Since I have no access to this book, I can’t refute this statement. Not because I’m inherently too illogical to do so, but because the Internet is not set up in such a way that I can read this book and find that quote for myself. :D</p>
<p>I must say that I expect that there are lots of articles written to refute that book, since a quick glance at Amazon seems to indicate that it’s quite controversial.</p>
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<p>You’ve only named the famous science geniuses. To your genius list, I add Beethoven, Orson Welles, Raphael, James Joyce, Homer, Jimmy Hendrix, and Marilyn vos Savant. There, now the list of non-science geniuses is now longer as the list of science geniuses. So there are more non-science geniuses than science ones!</p>
<p>You’d have to find all the geniuses in history and examine their contributions to society before declaring that most geniuses are in science. Just naming the best-known science ones doesn’t count.</p>
<p>Back to the original question. My son has debated this same issue and so far, this is what he has decided–which may be right or wrong–for him. He is double majoring in biology and psychology with minors in chemistry and cognitive science. Rationale was he likes and is interested in bio, psych, and cognitive science. Chem he has done well in and after meeting requirements for bio, only needs one more course to pick up the minor. He is still debating medical school, but is not absolutely sure that will ultimately be his “calling”. He wants to experience these different areas to see if any lead him down another path. Good plan? Who knows. My advice to him is to (as BDM as said over and over on these boards), study what interests you, the rest will come whether it be med school or some other avenue.</p>
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<p>I think you are confusing the issue. The main point of my argument are that technical majors are more difficult and helps prepare for standardized tests better than other majors. Even, if what you said was true(i.e, format differences result in lower class averages in one major compared to another), it doesn’t matter. What matters is that science majors are harder. For any reason, even poor teaching format. </p>
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<p>There has been evidence that standardized tests correlates with g( aka. general intelligence factor [General</a> intelligence factor) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“g factor (psychometrics) - Wikipedia)%5DGeneral”>g factor (psychometrics) - Wikipedia)). Wikipedia: “One study found a correlation of .82 between g and SAT scores.[4] Another correlation of .81 between g and GCSE scores.” This is not surprising. Smart people have an easier time on tests. </p>
<p>Of course, going back to your assertion that science majors score higher due habitual test taking, I have to say this. Of course if one has more practice with something, they are bound to become better at it. The real question is whether practice overcomes a difference in IQ. There is evidence that test scores in math is more directly correlated to IQ than scores in verbal reasoning. "Correlations between IQ scores (general cognitive ability) and achievement test scores are reported to be .81 by Deary and colleagues, with the percentage of variance accounted for by general cognitive ability ranging “from 58.6% in Mathematics and 48% in English to 18.1% in Art and Design” [Intelligence</a> quotient - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ]Intelligence”>Intelligence quotient - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I say that this due to fact that english is a subject that relies on cultural conditioning than reasoning skills. For example, it doesn’t take that much intelligence to read a book. But if a child reads 100 books a year and is surrounded by adults with perfect diction, by the time he takes the SAT, he’ll get a high score, regardless of intelligence. And hence the lower correlation. But, math on the other hand relies less on cultural factors( you can’t gain math skills by conversing with someone but you sure can gain verbal skills) and more on logic( something that is IQ based) and understanding of the relationships between different concepts. With all else being equal, we expect a higher correlation in math scores than english scores with regards to IQ. </p>
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<p>But your stance was that science majors score higher on logic tests due to familiarity with tests and you change your position when it comes to the MCAT? In light of what I said regarding IQ and discipline, this could be one of two possibilities. Non-science majors are statistically less intelligent so they have to study much more to close the gap. Honestly who would take the MCAT if they don’t make high scores on the practice tests? Second, the pool of premed students is so intelligent, it doesn’t matter what they major in. They’ll get high scores regardless. </p>
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<p>knowing the equation is not enough. One has to look at the problem and determine which equations to use and in which order is the most time efficent. But in order to do that one has to understand all the physical principals at play and utilize great spacial reasoning( a component of intelligence testing). This in itself is very daunting, not to mention the flawless half page long algebra that they have to utilize to arrive at an number correct to the third sig fig. Just think, one misunderstanding on the physics problem or even the spacial geometry would render a 1-2 page solution useless. Or even worse, you understand all the physics, but you made an error halfway through the problem( wrong trig substituion, didn’t cancel a term etc) and you get the whole thing wrong. And this is just one problem. An typical midterm is rife with these problems. </p>
<p>moreover, the very fact that humanities majors have less clear cut answers gives the professor less justification to fail a student. If a student makes a good case for his/her reasoning, then said person gets a good grade regardless. Plus, one of the good things about having a term paper instead of an exam is that a student can constantly revise it to fit an A paper. </p>
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<p>Unfair? I’ll grant that. For the most part, I myself do not like the book because of its very pessimistic implications, such as IQ being the be all and end all of a human being. Don’t even get me started on race. But it is well researched and provides correlations. With some of them very intuitive. </p>
<p>Its controversial among the public but not among most psychometricians. Take, g( something this book is confident about) for example. Most people don’t believe in it in spite of the fact that most cognitive scientist are in consensus about its existence. </p>
<p>Wikipedia:
[General</a> intelligence factor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor]General”>g factor (psychometrics) - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>And of all the geniuses you mentioned, who is more influential than Einstien or Newton? Who revolutionized human thought?</p>
<p>Back to the original question of why med schools like non-science majors: they do equally well as science majors in med school and they often have awesome non-academic skills. If you are looking for someone to do ground breaking Nobel-Prize winning phD work, pick the science major. Medicine, however, is not intellectual or creative. It is a very conservative profession that requires a lot of memorization, regurgitation, and adherence to protocols. It also requires solid communication skills and many soft touchy-feely factors (emotional intelligence, compassion, reading and analyzing people, etc.) that science majors are often deficient in. This is why grad schools care about the bare bones work (your research achievements, rec letters, and little weight is given to volunteering or hobbies) while med schools look at the whole person. You can argue all day about whether science courses are harder, whether science majors are smarter, and whether science majors are intellectual. It doesn’t matter. Medicine isn’t a profession that rewards creativity and intellectual genius.</p>
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<p>Wheres the evidence that science majors are deficient these skills? While, very smartest, ie geniuses, tend to be socially idiosyncratic, Wikipedia: “Socio-emotional problems are more prevalent in geniuses with an IQ above 145 (on the Wechsler Scale). Asynchronous development is the primary cause of this. As most children do not share gifted children’s interests, vocabulary, or desire to organize activities, the genius child may withdraw from society”, most successful science premeds are not geniuses. Generally doctors’ IQs are located within the 120+ range. With a modicum located in the 145+ range.</p>
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<p>Maybe this is the reason that non-science majors tend to do perform at the same level as science majors. This may work for traditional med-schools. But more and more med schools are utilizing a problem based curriculum. Why? Maybe because formulating intellectual and creative solutions actually matter. I like to see the performance non-science majors in this avenue</p>