How does one combine two completely different interests for a major?

aquapt
Fri, 03 Aug 2018 18:46:52 +0000

You don’t need to double-major. Go ahead and major in public health, public policy, or poli sci. Take the required premed courses. (Look at what constitutes a minor in biology at your college, and if that aligns reasonably well with the premed classes that you need to take anyway, then go for the minor.) There’s no need for a full degree in bio unless you would pursue an academic grad school or research path in that field as an alternative to med school.

The energy you’d have to put into upper-division bio classes, beyond the requirements for premed, to get a double major would be better spent adding quantitative chops to your social sciences degree. If you do get involved in policy work (whether as a physician or otherwise), the better your statistics and data analytics skill-set, the better.