How to balance a humanities major with pre-med opportunities-wise?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>As you all know, medical schools accept people with majors in the humanities as long as they show a strong interest in medicine through extracurricular activities, but how, exactly, can you balance opportunities for a humanities major while being on the pre-med track?</p>

<p>For example, I am interested in majoring in communications, journalism, or another humanities course, but how would I coordinate internships and study-abroad opportunities? Is it possible to do summer internships in both areas, or is that not efficient? And how would you choose a study-abroad program when many are designated towards a certain non-pre-med major yet others are designated towards pre-med?</p>

<p>Or should I just concentrate on pre-med for formal internships instead, and just read about communications in my own time but not commit to anything time-intensive?</p>

<p>Does anyone have or know of any experiences?</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

2

<p>First of all, there are very few or no formal interships for pre-meds. (There are science research summer programs. There are also some special summer medical opportunity programs for individuals from under-represented social and ethnic groups. But for the rest—summer is strictly do-it-on-your-own type activities.)</p>

<p>It’s usually not possible to do internships in two different areas at the same time because most internships are 40 hours/week–and there’s just not enough hours in the day to do two at the same time.</p>

<p>However, if you are enterprising and ambitious and don’t mind giving up your weekends, you may be able to do a communications internship and do medical volunteering/shadowing on the weekend, providing you can find a physician or hospital willing to have you.</p>

<p>If you want to do a year abroad (typically done during junior year), you are going to have to plan your schedule very carefully. </p>

<p>If you plan to start medical school immediately after graduation, you may have to postpone or forego junior year abroad unless you really load up with sciences/math during your first 2 years of college since many (most?) abroad programs do not offer lab science classes. Junior year abroad may also interfere with your ability to take the MCAT in a timely fashion. (If you plan to apply after junior year, you will need to take the MCAT usually no later than mid-May or your score will come back very later in the application cycle, putting you at a disadvantage compared to your peers.)</p>

<p>If you plan to just do a summer abroad or take a glide year and apply after you’ve graduated from college then the above issues are moot. </p>

<p>One thing to consider is the science and non-science requirements for med school are increasing. There will be new MCAT exam in 2015 which adds biochemistry and human behavior (psych and sociology) to the current topics tested.</p>

3

<p>Have you heard of narrative medicine? Check this out:</p>

<p><a href=“Learning to Listen - The New York Times”>Learning to Listen - The New York Times;

<p>D1 was an English major and worked on a project interviewing patients with long term medical problems and writing short biographies that were shared with the staff in addition to medical histories. There’s an increasing awareness of how personal stories can help physicians better understand and treat patients.</p>

<p>In addition to this project which blended medicine and writing, D1 did a range of medically oriented volunteering & ECs, writing related activities and some things that weren’t connected to either field.</p>

<p>She is also taking a 2 year break to gain some full time experience in medically related jobs.</p>

4

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<p>fwiw: the first two are not considered humanities disciplines. (They are generally considered ‘vocational’ majors by professional schools.)</p>

5

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<p>This caused my D to go “ugh,” because she also is interested in humanities and now will have a hard time fulfilling all the 2015 requirements if she does so.</p>

<p>It would be ironic if these new requirements, intended to make med school applicants more well-rounded, will just end up driving them all to undergraduate science majors for the sake of convenience. I do not understand why taking, say, economics and literature courses will not give a student insight into human nature. What privileges psych and sociology? Why not political science or history?</p>

6

<p>OP,
You could use summers for either. As far as I know, if you do enough during school year, summers could be pretty free for any opportunities your heart desires. Many pre-emds gradute with combo major(s)/minor(s) anyway, and many of them have them in completely un-related areas, like Bio/Music/ Neuroscience or Bio/Foreigh language or Bio/Art - I would not recommend this one as Art is extremely time consuming.</p>