Im currently a freshman in the College of Business and thinking about transferring to Engineering, but I also want to do pre med. What are my best engineering major options for this?
To get into medical school, you need to complete certain math, physics, chemistry, and biology courses, and humanties and writing courses.You can take those no matter what major you have, engineering or otherwise (the humanities and writing courses can easily be picked up as Gen Ed hours that count toward degree completion in any major at UIUC). However, if your question is which majors usually include most of those math, physics, chemistry, and biology courses and thus allow you to complete those course requirements as part of your pursued major rather than having to pick them up as electives outside of your major, then the two engineering majors most conducive to that would be bioengineering in the engineering college, and chemical and biomolecur engineering, which is actiually in LAS. With any engineering program you would complete the math, physics, and beginning chemistry requirements to get into med school but BioE and Chem/Biomed E provide the opportunity to take the upper level chemistry and bio courses needed for admisison to med school as part of the major.
Being able to transfer into those majors is not a simple process. BioE has only recently started taking transfers from other colleges and majors at UIUC. You can transfer into it only for beginning of sophomore year. To do so, you need to have completed by end of freshman year, the same freshman math, chemistry and physics courses that would normally be completed by BioE majors. You also likely need a very high college GPA by end of first year to get in (it makes the decisons after the second semester) when you consider that the typical BioE student who comes in as freshman usually is in the top 5% of his high school graduating class and has an ACT of 34 or higher.
Chem/biomed E requires a minimum 3.1 GPA to apply for a transfer, higher may be needed to get admitted, and, like BioE you need to complete as a freshman (and sophomore if seeking entry into third year) those math and science courses typicall completed by Chem/Biomed engioneering majors.
Med school requires three things to get in: completion of the required courses, a high college GPA, and a high MCAT. Though you can complete the required courses in engineering, you should be aware that GPA’s for those who graduate in engineering at UIUC are on average lower than GPA’s in most non-engineering programs. That does not necessarily mean you should avoid engineering, including because its course rigor is a plus and many do get high GPAs, but it is a factor to consider.
Finally, since you are currently a freshman, you should be gathering all the information you need to possibly switch from business to something else starting now, including doing online searches since the UIUC site has an adundance of information for what is needed for med school, its pre-med advisory program, and what is needed to do an inter-college transfer, and you should consider meeting with an= counselor.
Chemical/Biomedical engineering have the most overlap courses, but you could make any major work.
My ophthalmologist graduated with an undergrad from UIUC in business and went on to med school at Tufts, interned at U of Chicago, residency at Northwestern and Fellowship at Washington University at St. Louis.