Major for Pre-med student

Applying to College
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Hello all,
My son is senior in high school and is in the process of applying to colleges (TX resident). Applying primarily to in-state schools (UT Austin, TAMU, UTD, Baylor) and few out of state (Reach/Safety).
He ultimately wants to go to med school, so we understand that undergrad major doesn’t matter. But he is trying to decide among Biology, Chemistry, and Neuroscience. All these majors help him complete his pre-med course requirements.
Within these, does one major has any advantage over the other? Few factors that come to my mind are:

  1. What is the undergrad course workload difficulty among these majors, so that he can get time to do research/volunteer/shadowing
  2. Do any of these majors have an advantage over other in preparation for MCAT? I read somewhere that 70% of MCAT is chemistry based
  3. If he takes Chemistry and goes into Med school, would he be able to catchup on the Biology coursework in med school?
  4. Would a research in Biology lab have an advantage over other labs for med schools?
  5. How is the curriculum for Neuroscience? Is it heavy on psychology?
  6. What if he changes his mind during undergrad, which major would lead him to good job prospects after undergrad?

Can someone please advise?

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Biology is the major that has the most complete overlap with the pre-med requirements. So traditionally, Biology has been the most common undergrad major of entering medical students. (In college I was not pre-med but I was a bio major. A few years after graduation, when I decided to apply to med school after all, I was happy to find that I didn’t need to take any additional classes and that I was already well prepared for the MCAT.) That said, I don’t think that med schools themselves actually prefer biology majors. I think they don’t much care what you majored in as long as you did all the required classes, scored well on the MCAT, got good grades and did all the volunteering and shadowing.

A biology bachelors degree, by itself, doesn’t qualify you for many jobs. So if you don’t end up going to med school, you often need to go back to school for some other credential (e.g. teaching certification, masters in genetic counseling, minimum of masters to work in industry, PhD to work in academia etc.) Either that, or just go in a different direction entirely, starting from the bottom. Neuroscience is the same way. Not sure about chemistry; suspect perhaps the same. In contrast, some of the engineering majors have a fair amount of overlap with the pre-med requirements while also leading to a very employable degree with just a bachelors. But none of this matters if your kid dislikes the subject matter!

In the end, what will be “easiest” may depend on what your own kid likes the best. I found biology pretty easy, but then again I was very interested in it, so it was no struggle to get myself to pay attention.

The neuroscience major does have a fair amount of psychology. It can vary from college to college. May be worth it for your kid to drill down into the curriculum requirements at the various colleges being considered.

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My two cents is your #6, and by extension #5 to the extent it is relevant to #6, is by far the most important question. Because I am pretty confident that if you do any of those majors along with any pre-reqs not required for the major, you will get pretty much equal value in terms of MCAT prep and preparation for med school in terms of undergrad coursework.

I don’t know about those programs specifically, but when I was looking at Neuroscience for my S24, different programs could have pretty different curriculums. Some were more focused on just the biological stuff, some also did more psychology stuff, some had different options that might be called different majors or concentrations or such . . . lots of variety to consider.

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Thank you for detailed post. Do you know which engineering majors have overlap with pre-med requirements? My son said biomedical engineering is a lot of hard work and very competitive to get into.

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Let’s stop with this sentence. As long as your student takes the required courses for medical school applicants, they are good to go regardless of their major in undergrad school.

I’m not sure I understand your question. IIRC, a biology course is one of the required courses for medical school admissions, and needs to be taken. There is a LOT of information given to medical school students. Not sure “catching up” is a good plan.

Research as an undergrad can be a consideration at some medical schools. But it’s not nearly as important as GPA, sGPA, MCAT score, volunteering with needy populations, working in patient facing medical work, shadowing.

Every medical student should have a Plan B. What is this student interested in doing? That should help drive this decision.

If your student wants to major in engineering of any kind, they should look at the course of study for that field. The premed requirements can be taken either as electives, or during a gap year after undergrad is completed. Many students do this.

@WayOutWestMom

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Thank you.

What I meant is, by taking Chemistry major, if he doesn’t do advanced Biology courses (vs. a biology major), would that result in him having tough time in medical school with learning advanced Biology concepts? I do not know much about medical school curriculum.

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It would suggest that your student have a conversation with a younger doctor about the curriculum at medical schools, and how much work is involved, etc.

There are plenty of med school students who were never biology majors.

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This is a big issue. The large majority of students who start off intending to be premed end up doing something else. Some cannot keep up the required grades in tough premed classes. Some have great grades in tough premed classes but decide that they would rather do research in a lab (perhaps they like cell cultures better than sick humans). Some just decide they want to do something else. There are a lot of other options.

With this in mind, perhaps the choice of major might depend upon what “plan B” is.

I have consistently heard that it is tough to get a decent job with just a bachelor’s degree in biology. My youngest had pretty much the opposite result. However she had the opposite result for a reason. Due to a change in major, for her sophomore year of university she had to take 4 lab courses at once. She discovered that she loved lab work and was good at it. She spent about as much time in the lab as was possible for her last three years of university, and after graduating with a degree in biology very quickly got a good job in a biology lab (which to me sounded the same as what she had already been doing for three years).

However, a big issue here is that she decided quickly that she did not want to be premed, and therefore in all of those long hours while her premed friends were getting medical experience, my daughter was in a lab instead (for example growing human cancer cells, then finding ways to inhibit or kill them). If you stick with premed all the way through getting a bachelor’s degree, then I do not know how a student could find the hours to volunteer in a medical environment and also be in a lab for hours on end.

I am pretty sure that the need for graduate degree is needed with a degree in neuroscience. I doubt that chemistry would be much different compared to biology (but might share the feature that if a student decides to spend much of their undergraduate hours in a lab, then lab jobs may be possible with a bachelor’s degree).

Perhaps it makes sense to figure that regardless of whether your son majors in biology, or neuroscience, or chemistry, a graduate degree is likely. Of course the money that you saved for medical school (eg, by choosing an affordable in-state university) could instead be used to pay for a master’s degree. A PhD, if your son goes that route, is typically fully paid. Getting into a good PhD program might not be any easier than getting into medical school.

I think that this is correct.

What to major in might be an issue that a student can decide after a year in university. Certainly both of my daughters changed their major at the end of their freshman year, and this is pretty common in the US.

I think that there are only so many hours in a day, and each of us has some limit on our ability to put in effort and time. If we are volunteering in a medical environment, then we are not at the same time doing engineering problem sets or working in a lab. We start university uncertain which path we are going to take, but figure it out over time. The sooner we figure out our path, the sooner we start putting long hours into the one thing that is right for us. However, life is not a race and picking the right path eventually might be more important than picking some path quickly.

I think that this is exactly right. We are each good at different things. We each need to pick our own path.

In most cases I do not think that a high school student has been exposed to enough to make this choice. One thing about university is that you get exposed to more detail in several areas. Then you figure out which area you want to focus on.

I think that this is a very difficult question, and your son just needs to figure it out over time, probably after getting part way through university.

Which does bring up another issue: If a student changes their major late in university, sometimes this can add another year. If a student went to an in-state university, then they will still be in-state for a fifth year. If a student went to a private university that is only affordable due to financial aid, this financial aid might end after four years.

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[quote=“MomHeretoHelp, post:6, topic:3673034”]
What I meant is, by taking Chemistry major, if he doesn’t do advanced Biology courses (vs. a biology major), would that result in him having tough time in medical school with learning advanced Biology concepts? I do not know much about medical school curriculum.

The simple answer is no. My daughter was a humanities major and didn’t take any higher level bio courses, or any other higher level med school pre reqs for that matter. She did fine in med school.

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You may find this primer helpful (I sure did):

As explained there, you should expect at least a couple years of medical science training. But my understanding is they plan to teach you all the “advanced” medical science you will need to know, having already required you to get a basic foundational science education in college.

That said, of course there may be some topic-specific overlap. Like if you are doing a neurobiology sort of unit in med school, maybe it would be helpful for that unit if you studied neurobiology before in college. But they do not expect all their students to have done that, and in fact there are going to be so many different things they cover, it is unlikely you will have studied more than a fraction before no matter what your major.

So all the directly knowledgeable people I have seen talk about this (I’m just an interested parent) seem to think you really do not need to worry about doing more than the prereqs in college, and of course really learning that material. You will then be as prepared as med schools expect you to be, and any marginally better preparation some kids have for some units will not really be a significant issue overall.

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College typically have pre-health/pre-med advisors. Your son should utilize their services when he in college.

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  1. What is the undergrad course workload difficulty among these majors, so that he can get time to do research/volunteer/shadowing

All three majors will have required laboratory classes and require an equivalent amount time.

Chemistry is more math-intensive than the other two majors and may require Calc 3 and diff eq for majors

Do any of these majors have an advantage over other in preparation for MCAT? I read somewhere that 70% of MCAT is chemistry based

Chemistry and physics together make up 1/4 of the MCAT. Biology and biochem is another 1/4. Soc, psych and human behavior is another 1/4. The last 1/4 is analysis and critical reasoning.

Additionally beside the MCAT, most med schools (and some medical residencies) now require students to take situational judgement exam. A class in medical ethics is helpful for SJTs.

If he takes Chemistry and goes into Med school, would he be able to catchup on the Biology coursework in med school?

It helps a little bit if a student has seen the material before, but it’s not critical. Med school is extremely fast paced. An entire semester’s worth of material from, say, an undergrad class in genetics or immunology is covered in 2 or 3 lectures (or about 1-1.5 weeks) in med school.

Would a research in Biology lab have an advantage over other labs for med schools

The purpose of research experience in undergrad is not to teach specific lab techniques, but to learn about and understand the research process: how to do a literature review, how to develop a thesis, how to design a testing process, how to collect data, how to do data analysis, how to formulate conclusions, and how to understand the strengths and shortcomings of your experimental design/results.

My older D did research in medium energy particle physics in undergrad. She learned about the research process. (But not a single med school interviewer asked about her research, probably because they simply weren’t familiar with the field. It was different story with my younger D who did neuro/psychiatric research in brain cognition and later brainsimaging studies about addiction. She fielded a lot of questions about her work.)

Research is not the most important element in developing a strong med school application.

That said, if your child is looking to get involved in specific research fields or if they want to aim for certain specialties where research & publication is a expectation in applicants, then prior bio lab research may be useful.

How is the curriculum for Neuroscience? Is it heavy on psychology?

School/program dependent. My D was a neuroscience major and at her university, she took zero psychology classes for her major. It was all bio and cognitive science. Other programs are psychology heavy and lighter in the biology.

What if he changes his mind during undergrad, which major would lead him to good job prospects after undergrad?

Generally speaking undergrad bio degrees don’t have the best post -graduation employment options. Having said that, a plain vanilla bio degree is more employable than specialized bio degrees (including neuroscience). There are things a bio or neuroscience student can do to improve their employment options-- taking some extra higher level math classes (particularly in statistics and probability), learning coding skills (R, Python, MatLab), basic computer programming and doing industry internships during summers in college. Biotech firms will hire bio bachelor’s if they have the right mix of skills.

Generally speaking, chemistry is the most employable of the three, but jobs will likely be in an industrial setting–think QA labs in pharmaceutical, agriculture, energy/petroleum, food production, etc, and

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Thank you!

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My recommendation is NOT to make that decision out of high school. Of all the “premed” hopefuls coming out of high school, very few choose medical school. College is a maturation process where they find where their real passions lie. Just choose a good affordable school and go in with an open mind. There’s a good chance he’ll decide on something else. Flexibility is the key. Just keep in mind that if he decides to do something else, like business, for instance, it’s near impossible to change majors because the business schools at UT and A&M are ridiculously competitive and let very few internal transfers in. It’s the same with engineering, computers, or anything employable at those two schools. UTD, Houston, Texas Tech, or UTSA have far more flexible requirements for students.

By the way, if he does choose medicine, UTSA is actually a good underrated choice. It’s affiliated with the UT-Health medical school in San Antonio, which is now officially merging with UTSA.

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Interesting that UTSA is merging with UT-Health medical school. That will create a variety of opportunities and experiences for pre-med students. Thanks for sharing that

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The most important thing by far when choosing a major for a premed is to choose something, anything, that the student loves, that they will be happy studying, that they can do extremely well in. The farther from the sciences, the better, because med schools get a ton of biology and chemistry majors applying - they all start to look alike.

That being said, if what he really wants is biology, he should do that. If he is very talented in math, too, and really wants engineering, biomedical engineering with a focus on medical device invention as his research passion is very attractive to med schools, but his GPA is likely to be lower.

He can major in folklore or archaeology or history or languages or anything, and still do premed. Years ago, music majors apparently had the highest chance at acceptance!

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These majors generally (not always) require a graduate degree. Without a graduate degree you could teach (might require a graduate degree eventually, appropriate licensure etc), work as a clinical research coordinator (recruit patients for studies) etc.

Students I know had time to volunteer, do research, join clubs etc (you need to be organized and use your time wisely). Shadowing can be done during breaks if it is not permitted at a hospital on campus (or in addition to). It is not always easy to shadow at school (depends on the school).

I recommend going in with an open mind. He may change his mind once he is exposed to other things…or, he may not.

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There is a glut of PhD’s in those majors so job prospects using their degree for most with just a BS can be poor. It’s a shame because they are tough majors, but that’s how life works sometimes.

It would be difficult with most engineering majors (except perhaps bioengineering) to satisfy the engineering requirements as well as the pre-med courses in 4 years. Furthermore colleges may have different tracks in Calculus and Physics for engineering majors. As an engineer he would have to take the engineering version while those in the majors you mentioned above would be taking the less rigorous Life Science version. I know they have this distinction at UCLA and wouldn’t be surprised to find it at other colleges.

The flip side, in case you’re thinking he can start out pre-med and if it isn’t for him switch into engineering, is also going to be challenging. He would not have been taking the engineering version of Math and Physics so he’d need to repeat them. And engineering majors are so structured due to ABET requirements it would probably take an extra year or two in college to complete an engineering major, assuming he is allowed to switch.

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My D is a college senior with premed intentions. When she started out, she had many of the same questions as your student. You don’t know what you don’t know, right? :smiley:

In hindsight, I suggest thinking less about major and more about your student’s interests. I’d also talk to the pre-health advisors at potential schools to get a firm understanding of the support available.

For example, my D almost ruled out her school due to its rural location and concerns about shadowing and volunteering opportunities. In reality, the opportunities have been numerous, during the school year and over summers, because her school makes it a priority. Those are the questions to ask.

And be open to making adjustments over the four years. My D decided semester study abroad was an important part of her college experience so she had to change her major to accommodate that. Her advisors and out-of-college mentor supported that decision and agreed the experience was more beneficial to her career goals.

I do agree with the comments about engineering fields… if these are in consideration have your student start there. Transferring out is much easier than transferring in. Also be aware of schedule for kids attempting engineering + pre-med.

In the end, my D will graduate with a major in chem, minor in poverty studies (and possibly minor in neuroscience). She’s sitting for the MCAT in December. If med school doesn’t work out, she’ll pursue a MPH… everyone needs a Plan B.

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Thank you everyone for your advice and wisdom on this topic. I will ask my son to choose the major he likes and go from there. He is good at math but given the workload + pre-med requirements, he is not considering Engineering major. He wants to use the time to build the profile in shadowing, volunteering, hobbies etc.

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