<p>ok so is it really that hard to major in engineering and do premed at the same time? i’m going to be starting college this fall as a mechanical engineering major (at UT-Austin). i know biomedical and chemical go much better with a premed path because both of those disciplines cover mostly all of the premed required subjects. however, i’m mainly majoring in mechanical because i really like physics and mechanical seems to be the most practical physics-intensive major. but i still want to go to medical school. </p>
<p>i read the posts from '04 on this thread in which sakky was arguing that it doesn’t really matter what your major is as long as you get a high gpa. does that still hold true now five years later? i figured that medical school adcoms, like undergraduate school adcoms, would reward a student for how rigorous his/her course load was, and usually any engineering discipline is thought to be very rigorous in its course load. also, would it look good to a medical school adcom if i did some internships at an engineering firm, even though the work might not be directly related to the medical field? </p>
<p>any suggestions/advice about this matter would be much appreciated :)</p>
<p>i dont think adcoms consider the difficulty of the courses you take when reviewing your application. or else everyone would ap out of the intro courses, right?</p>
<p>They do, but in a very limited fashion. The big thing is they’ll skim quickly to make sure that you had everything at least normal, and a few things that were especially hard. They are notoriously bad at this, and they tend to rely on unit number, number of science courses, and (believe it or not) independent study.</p>
<p>I think what you meant is that independent study = easier course = bad because adcome consider that you likely take an easy course just to pad your (science) GPA. Am I correct in interpreting what you wrote here?</p>
<p>I also heard from a student from another school that a student may take a series of individual music lessons in order to increase the non-science GPA if that student happens to be classical music trained since early childhood. There are quite many highly trained, close-to-convervatory-level musicians at many top schools.</p>
<p>Most colleges do not like this so they often set up a rule to limit the number of this kind of lessons that a student can take. I also heard that some students may take one language class after another in order to boost the non-science GPA, if s/he happens to be good at that particular language. Some are indeed passionate about learning languages, but the motivation of some students doing this is somewhat suspicious. (I can understand that Spanish is useful. But I can not understand the need of taking too many obscure language classes in which there are like less than 5 students and that is no demand in the medical field?)</p>
<p>M2: that would be reasonable behavior on the part of the adcom. Believe it or not, they tend to think of independent studies as being excellent proving ground, e.g. part of a tough semester.</p>
<p>It might be that they know it’s pretty much an easy A but value the skills learned there anyway. Or it might be that they just really don’t understand. Not sure.</p>
<p>Or it could be that the rigor of IS courses vary campus to campus. I know that back in the paleolithic era when I was in UG I had a history IS course that was a bear due to what I was convinced was un-realistic reading expectations.</p>
<p>^ It is so true. IS is a good course, until some students/professors at some schools abuse it.</p>
<p>My child will likely take one of these courses (called biology research) for his senior project. I heard that it is expected to be in the lab for 12 hours per week, and prepare and make presentations in a weekly group meeting, wrote proposals and research result summaries. I heard that the majority of students take it, as it is a better option than to write a paper without much handholding.</p>
<p>Curm: Hm, maybe that’s where it originates from: back in the day, independent studies might actually have been difficult. I haven’t heard of a campus nowadays where that’s true, though.</p>
<p>… or there could be a course at Berkeley called “Premeds who have no idea of the realities of medicine these days shoot their mouths off at perceived shortcomings of residents who must do more with less.” </p>
<p>If you’re going to blame people for the state of health care in this country, it sure shouldn’t be the people who are currently residents.</p>
<p>The post I was responding to apparently was deleted. <shakes fist=“” of=“” rage=“”> I should’ve quoted it.</shakes></p>
<p>The poster went on a tirade about how they’d have an course called “Pre-meds teach doctors” where pre-meds would go lecture residents about how to be good physicians. There was some other stuff, too. Suffice it to say that it was utterly ridiculous.</p>
<p>I take back what I said about it being “utterly ridiculous.” I’ve had some ridiculous dreams (Michael Jackson is my cousin! There are ants in my laptop keyboard! I need to find a fire ax!) but never any so condescending.</p>
<p>Very clever, babydragon. BDM was kind enough to share the original text of your post with me. I projected my own feelings into the issue and interpreted it quite negatively.</p>
BDM was kind enough to share the original text of your post with me. I projected my own feelings into the issue and interpreted it quite negatively.</p>