Education major and Med School?

mcat2
Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:31:19 +0000

At many schools, some students from most majors/departments may be graduated with Latin honors like Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, etc. There are some other non-EC related academic awards that are granted well before the graduation. If a student got one of these, (s)he may know (s)he is likely among the “better” students in the major (s)he is in. This is because only a fraction of the students within this major may get it.

Don’t get me started on the rumor that, at a certain school, about half of the graduating class are graduated with honors every year. If this is the case, you need to rely on some academic honors that are awarded to fewer students.

Actually, I believe in many majors (unless it is a very small major), after the second year, students would likely know who excel academically in their major.

But another point is that your GPA needs to be above some threshold which is considered to be good enough for med schools. After the grade (ditto for MCAT) is above this “good enough” threshold, I think a few points here and there may, generally speaking, not add much to your application (unless you shoot for a particular kind of school or program.) After the objective numbers are good enough, I think the med school will start to look at some other “quality” criteria (e.g., how committed you are to medicine, how much you love this med school, and what you can bring to the class, etc.) that is difficult to be quantified by just numbers.

My main point is that the statement “the major does not matter” is true only to a certain extent. You still need to be in a major with a certain level of academic rigor.