If you’re truly interested in medicine, see if you can find some volunteer activities that will get you some exposure to medicine as a career. This could be by doing a few informational interviews with doctors or other healthcare providers to find out what they like/dislike about their jobs. It could be shadowing a doctor for a day or volunteering in a health care setting. (hospital, doctor’s office, public healthcare clinic, nursing home)
Medicine as a career isn’t what most people expect it to be and knowing sooner that medicine isn’t the right path for you will save you time and frustration later on. The biggest reason why people drop off the pre-med path is that they discover they don’t like the day-to-day of being a doctor. It’s not glamorous or exciting. It’s a service job where your patients are often entitled, angry, upset, unhygienic, and non-compliant. Everyone with 2 thumbs and a smart phone thinks they know more than you do.
Also consider finding volunteer activities to work with disadvantaged groups. Not fund raising, but face-to-face service to others.
Having a service orientation is a core competence for those seeking to become physicians.
Study hall will be fine.
May you have a good sophomore year, one day at a time. You’ll have a chance during spring semester to re-evaluate your junior year schedule.
I definitely take this advice to heart. Sadly, my area doesn’t have many impactful face-to-face volunteering options. But I will look for opportunities in places like DC and other parts of Maryland.
I retract my statement; I have a ton of nursing homes around my area that I can volunteer at
Programmer here. CS and Premed are two VERY different things to study. Unless you’re planning on creating an army of cyborgs to take over the world, it’s probably best to save your sanity and choose one. Obviously I’m bias towards computers. It’s a ridiculously employable bachelors where you can have a very comfortable life without having to go through 15 years of school to achieve. Just pick classes that are interesting and apply to college when you’re ready. College admissions are usually not major specific.
I think that you are trying to do to much. Each of us has a limit on how much we can do at the same time, and we should not be in a rush to try to exceed this limit.
I also think that you are doing well. You just need to learn to pace yourself.
In math, what you are learning now depends upon what you learned last year, and what you will learn next year will depend upon what you are learning now and what you learned last year. You should try to learn each part very well before you jump ahead to the next part. Pay attention to the concepts. You particularly do not want to just learn how to manipulate formulae. Instead you want to understand why things work they way that they do, and build over time a good feeling for how it all fits together.
A full high school schedule, plus ECs, is a lot for one person to do. You do not need to also take any DE classes at the same time.
I also agree with @WayOutWestMom’s advice about not taking premed requirements at DE classes in high school. You will be in better shape to do very well in these classes when you get to university, and even when you are an upper year student in university.
Both daughters had majors that overlapped with premed classes. One is currently getting her DVM (Veterinary medicine – she is 3/4 of the way to being a large animal vet). She ran into trouble with one application that would not accept a required class that she had taken as an AP class in high school (with a 5 on the AP test). This was a class that was a prerequisite for several classes that she had taken in university and done well in, but the school still wanted her to retake the class in community college. Since this was her last choice school of the ones she was applying to, she just dropped the application (my wife and I agreed with her decision on this). However, this is an example of how taking a premed prerequisite (the pre-vet and premed required classes are generally the same) as an AP class can be a bad idea. We also sometimes hear on this web site from students who are taking organic chemistry too early and are not yet ready for it and are suffering. You have plenty of time and can wait for some of these tough classes.
UMCP is a very good university. It can prepare you very well for the MCAT and for medical school. It can also prepare you very well for a degree in computer science. When I was a graduate student at Stanford (in a sub-field of applied math) I had a good friend in the same program who was a UMCP graduate. However, it is not Harvard and you do not need a Nobel Prize to get accepted to UMCP. A lot of A’s in high school classes will take you a long way towards getting accepted to UMCP and to be ready to do very well there. Learn to pace yourself, leave yourself some time for ECs and for relaxing and for sleep, and you will do very well.
@DadTwoGirls@coolguy40
Thanks for your input! I know it will be hard during university if I’m going for CS + premed. So, while I’m in high school I’ll also be exploring the other fields that combine CS and medicine. That might make the journey easier. As of now, I love CS! I love coding a project from scratch; I love the endless possibilities that programming allows. I’m currently trying to program a trading algorithm. @coolguy40 As of I’ve only heard about bioinformatics and bio engineering, are there any other fields that combine the two?
Are you a Maryland resident? Regardless…you are only just starting your sophomore year of high school. Please find time to be a high school student…not just taking things aiming for college, or any particular major.
I’m not sure why any high school student needs to take any summer classes. Consider getting a job once you are old enough to do so. This is viewed well by most colleges.
I know you are aiming for UMD CP, but I would urge you to broaden your thinking between now and when you actually apply to college. IIRC, UMD BC has a lot of the health related things and probably should at least be looked at…I’m sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
And if you do end up applying to UMD CP, make sure you do so early action as they admit 90% or more in that round.
In the meantime, you really need to concentrate on doing the best you can do in high school (as you did your freshman year). Once you have your junior year grades, and an SAT and/or ACT score, you might view your college options differently.
Just for one example you might want to Google “da vinci robotic surgery”.
A few years ago I had surgery using this system (it went well). It has occurred to me that someone needed to program the system before it was used. I am guessing that this fits into “bio engineering”.
I suppose that someone also needed to program the PET scans and MRI machines (both of which might be used before having successful robotic assisted surgery). Given the little that I once knew about how MRI’s work, it sounds to me that there is probably also quite a bit of mathematics involved.
However, you are young. You have a long way to go. There are a lot of areas to explore and a lot of time to do it.
For now take it one day at a time. Have some fun (and some ice cream).
Then in Community Colleges classes are almost free or free for local HS students in public schools. In addition, there is a UMF database of transfer to see what GenEd classes from a prarticular CC will transfer to UMD.
Most likely any communication class will do it (UMD has communication requirement). I would look at English composition DE in senior year (if your HS will allow it). Also UMD CP takes some CLEP. If I remember ECON and American Government would transfer from CLEP exam. My son took CLEP American Government without AP and passed. He also self-studied for 4 different CLEPs. But there is limited CLEP that UMD takes.
I am not sure. My DD studies Biomedical Engineering at Gatech and there is 1 general CS class required for a degree. Also UMD Bio Engineering is not Biomedical Engineering. If I remember it focuses mostly on Bio aspect without medical part.
I would think CS, EE or ME most likely would program medical equipment.
Not to my knowledge. Even if they exist, there isn’t exactly exploding demand for something like that, otherwise schools would offer majors. For medical school, you can major in anything you want as long as you take the necessary prerequisites. CS is very employable if you decide against medical school, but it’s is very difficult to get straight As in it.
BUT…we’re kind of putting the cart before the horse at this point. My best advice is to take whatever classes that interest you and just focus on getting into an affordable school. You’ll have plenty of time to decide your major.
