Health Sciences or Biology?

Emily2007
Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:10:09 +0000

Depends on what your interests are, it really won’t make a difference as far as preparing you for the MCAT or for application to medical school.

Health Science is much more focused on… well, health science. You take a lot of classes about public health, health care systems, and policy, whereas a bio takes a lot of classes in harder science (hard in the sense of “hard science” vs. “soft science”).

I don’t see the point in being a health science major unless you’re really interested in the Public Health aspect of science and medicine. Those classes sound excruciatingly boring to me (but I’m a neuroscience major, so I’m biased). Again, med school wise, they’re probably the same… I have friends from both who have successfully gotten into med or grad school.

The bulk of the curriculum is the same for both majors until you get the basic sciences out of the way, both will get you into General Bio, Gen Chem, Organic, Genetics, Calculus… I believe physics is also required for both. Outside of that, you’ll be taking more major-based electives. If your interests are more science related (cell bio, neuroscience, chemistry, ecology, evolution, etc.,) then go for bio. If you’re more interested in policy and health care systems, then go for health sciences.