What are my chances? Even if I were to take the required med school classes and do well on them and score highly on the MCAT, will I be less attractive to admissions officers? Will I be overlooked in favor of people who earned science-related degrees?
When we took our daughter this summer to her freshman orientation, we were told that one of their students applied to medical school as a Religious Studies major. This student’s major made him stand out in the crowd and provided for a very interesting interview. He was accepted.
Major doesn’t matter aside from avoiding vocational majors. Advertising unfortunately sounds (to me) more vocational major than an academic discipline like religious studies is. What about advertising appeals to you? Is it the visual arts aspect? The psych aspect? Can you find a way to do an academic discipline major while focusing yourself on how that applies to advertising? Doing a non-science academic discipline is definitely not a disadvantage from an admissions standpoint.
You don’t need stand out from the crowd either though. Medical schools want future physicians, plain and simple. You do need to do well in school though and picking the right major for you can have a huge impact on that.
I think any doctor with his/her own practice could benefit from an advertising background – you’ll have to get clients after all, and advertising is one way to do it. I can’t imagine why that major would be a detriment to med school admissions assuming you meet other requirements such as science prerequisites, high grades and high test scores. You could explain the tie-in to how you plan to use what you learn once you become a doctor.
On the other hand, you might decide not to go to med school after all, and you’ll actually be employable compared to someone who just has, say, a bachelor’s in biology with nothing else. You could get a job in health care marketing and advertising if you’re still interested in the field but have second thoughts about being a doctor.