I’ve always been a fairly smart kid, honors and AP classes, 4.0 GPA, that whole thing. My whole life I’ve been interested in pre-Med, that’s what I’ve always wanted to do and now my parents basically expect me to take that route. However, through high school(I’m going into senior year now) I have arranged my classes to prepare me for a medical career such as taking AP biology, AP chemistry, AP Physics, classes like that. Recently I’ve fallen out of love with classes like this and it’s worrying me that medicine may not be for me. While looking through other major options at certain schools in interested in nothing has jumped out at me. I’m worried as college draws near for me that I may not find a career path that I will enjoy. I look through lists of majors often but still fail to find anything that interests me. If anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it, thank you.
Note that pre-med does not require any specific major, although a set of pre-med courses needs to be taken in college.
What kind of career paths would interest you? Some career paths are associated with specific majors, while others are not, or are only associated generalized areas of study encompassing many majors.
You might want to start off by looking at what careers would interest you or looking at a course catalog. From there you can build upon a potential major that may interest you based on those classes. At some schools you can even design your own major
I wouldn’t judge a career in medicine, or even being pre-med in college, by the content of your AP science classes. S found AP Bio excruciatingly boring. Once he got to college, he ‘rediscovered’ bio and ended up as a biochem major (although others are correct - you can major in anything you like as long as you complete the pre-med requirements).
As for finding a major, you aren’t expected to know what you want to major in (let alone what career you will pursue right out of college) until the end of your second year, by which time you will have taken a number of classes, talked to lots of profs and other students, perhaps paid a visit to the career center, talked to the pre-med advisor, etc…So no rush to ‘declare’ any major at all. Most students are ‘undecided’ when they apply to college in any case and the schools know that more than half will change their minds at least once after they arrive.
You will also be expected to spend some time doing medical volunteering, research and shadowing physicians before you apply to medical school, so you will have ample opportunity to see if that really is a good fit for you and if not, to discover many other paths that might work better. We know former pre-meds who end up with careers in business, international economic development, psychology, neuroscience, public health, epidemiology, statistics…
You can tackle the med school requirements through most majors. You don’t need to get fixated on biol/chem.
As the posters above have suggested, looking exclusively at majors/subjects might not be the best way to approach this because there are many more careers than majors. I’d suggest taking your best/favorite subjects into account, then branching out to see what careers rely on those subjects. Find inspiration in the career, not the major. The major is a means to an end. It’s true, in some careers the work will be more related to the academic major itself, but many careers are quite far removed from the academic program needed to get you there.
What are your best subjects (easiest A’s)? What are your current favorite subjects? Let’s get that straight first.
You don’t have to declare a major until the end of your sophomore year of college. Take classes in different subjects and see what excites you. If you want to keep the pre-med option open you can always do that by fulfilling the pre-med requirements no matter what you major turns out to be.
Shadow some doctors and see if the career appeals to you.
many doctors don’t particularly love their science classes. They “get thru them” with top grades as the means to get the career they want. Bio classes can be particularly BORING because of the memorization. I think many premeds do themselves in by choosing Bio as a major. Choose a major that you like/love and include the premed prereqs.
My son is sooooo happy to be done with the first 2 years of med school which is all science…and he likes science, but it’s not what he wants his career to be. He’s looking forward to the starting rotations in a few weeks…he’s a “work with his hands” type, has oodles of energy, and looks forward to being out of the classroom.
What are your favorite subjects in high school? math? history? English? Chemistry? what? You can certainly be an English major or Music major and be premed. There are Classics majors who are premed (and they have an amazingly high acceptance rate to med school.)
Perhaps consider a LAC then to explore several possible majors while still having a clear optional path towards med school.