By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI Founder
We don't have a lot of pre-med readers, but we do have a few. I try to write posts aimed at pre-meds from time to time in hopes of introducing WCI to those who find it a few years before they actually need it. This is one of those posts. So, if you're an undergraduate who's getting closer to graduation (or you're the parent of one), let's talk about the best majors that will get you into medical school.
Best Major for Medical School?
Almost every pre-med has this question at some point. Once pre-meds find out how competitive it is to get into medical school (slightly better than one out of three applicants but more like 60% of serious applicants), they start trying to optimize everything in their lives to increase their own personal chances. Naturally, they apply that approach to their field of study. Thus, the need to answer this question.
However, the honest answer is, “It doesn't matter.” There, I said it. If you want the TL/DR version, that's it. While that is true, there are generally two reasonable approaches to this. The pre-med curriculum is weighty. It generally consists of a year of biology (with lab), two years of chemistry (with lab), a year of physics (with lab), and maybe a calculus course and a writing class. Add all that up and you'll come up with something like 48 hours of coursework. That's more than a lot of majors. So, pre-meds who don't want to spend forever in school usually choose one of two approaches.
- Pick a major with a lot of overlap with the pre-med courses or
- Choose a relatively easy major (i.e. few required hours) to allow room for the pre-med coursework.
Also, in case it needs to be said, there is no “pre-med major.” You may be pre-med, but you aren't majoring in it. But if you major in mechanical engineering as a pre-med, you'll probably spend six years in college—certainly at least five. That will cost you another year of your life, another year of tuition, and a year of lost earnings as a physician. Maybe you'll impress a medical school admissions committee with your work ethic, but they might also question your wisdom.
Considerations When Thinking About Applying to Medical School
Aside from the need to also complete the pre-med courses, there are a few other considerations to this decision including:
- Interest
- Aptitude
- Backup plans
- Uniqueness
#1 Interest
Just like you should choose the specialty that most interests you because it will allow you to practice longer and be happier while you do, you should choose a major that actually interests you. Four years is a decent chunk of your life. Why would you want to spend it doing something you hate? However, it is possible to check that box with a minor and just choose a major that overlaps well with the pre-med requirements.
#2 Aptitude
None of us are good at everything. There's no point in beating your head against the wall trying to excel in something at which you stink. I tried wrestling in high school. That was a mistake. Not because I didn't enjoy it but because I was terrible at it. (My final record was 0-5-1, and I was very proud of that tie.) I was a much better asset on the ice hockey team and, in fact, once scored the most important goal of the season (although admittedly hardly any others).
#3 Backup Plans
Even if you are serious about going to medical school and you do everything right, there's still a decent chance you won't get in, even if you apply two or three times. Your major also needs to provide a backup plan for an alternative career. This was a big problem for me and my Molecular Biology major. By the time I arrived at my senior year, it became really important that I get into medical school because I had discovered I hated pipetting stuff and doing Western Blots.
#4 Uniqueness
The general approach to getting into medical school is 1) show that you can be a competent medical student and doctor who isn't going to give anyone any problems and 2) be interesting so that people actually want to work with you. Having a unique major can be one of the ways to show that you are interesting. Which major is more interesting to a medical school admissions committee: biology or French history? Which is more unique? Which is more likely to be discussed in your interview? Exactly.
More information here:
Cheapest Medical Schools in the US
The Data on Which Undergraduate Majors Get into Medical School
Still don't believe me that it really doesn't matter all that much? OK, check out the data.
Click on the image to make it larger, but let's talk about what we can learn from this table.
Which Undergraduate Majors Are Most Likely to Get into Medical School?
- Forty-one percent of applicants to medical school got in. The odds are against you. Applying willy-nilly is unlikely to be successful. You probably actually do need to take a few practice MCAT tests, try to get an A in organic chemistry, and do a little research.
- People get in with all kinds of majors. If you want to do physical education or history or engineering or German or whatever, go ahead and do it.
- Smart people who work hard tend to do hard majors. The highest overall MCAT scores were from the math and statistics majors. They beat the biology students in the biology section and the physical science students in the physical science section. They also had the highest science and total GPAs.
- Most applicants and matriculants major in biology. That means it's OK to major in biology if you're interested in that. It also means you'll look unique if you do something else. You don't have to do biology, but you also don't have to try to avoid it.
- If you're choosing a major purely to maximize your chances of getting into medical school (which I don't recommend), you should choose humanities, not neuroscience. Seriously, the chance of getting in by major varies from 38% (“Specialized Health Sciences”) to 51% (“Humanities”). Here's what the numbers look like:
- Biological Sciences: 41%
- Humanities: 51%
- Math and Statistics: 45%
- Other: 39%
- Physical Sciences: 46%
- Social Sciences: 40%
- Specialized Health Sciences: 38%
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As you can see, there's no one path (or one major) that will automatically get you into medical school. Regardless of your major coursework, it's going to be hard. Getting good grades in whatever you're studying, being as unique as you want to be, and remembering to have a solid backup plan are going to give you as good a chance as any in taking the next big step to become a doctor.
What do you think? What did you major in? Would you do it again? What major would you recommend to a pre-med? Comment below!
A useful piece of advice would be to find a school and a major that offers grade inflation. Many of the “fancy” schools do this. I guess it is part of the price you pay for high tuition. Many, but not all, engineering schools do the opposite of this and grade on a strict bell curve during your first 2 years. This means about 68% of the class get C’s, and only about 2% get A’s. It would be nice to have more data on this.
Brought back memories…that are seared into my brain. I picked Chemistry. My First two years GPA at a “junior college” was 3.5. My Junior year GPA at the “real school”: 3.83. When I got to the 4th year as an accepted student, I had to keep my 4th year GPA at 3.3 or higher or risk losing the spot. My senior year, the classes were very hard and I barely got the 3.3 that year, dropping my overall a bit.
MCAT back then was in 10 point sections and the average accepted candidate had a “60”. Mine was 55, which was disappointing.
There were two candidates for each spot back in 1990, so you only had to be in the upper half. I applied to ten schools and was accepted by three, and picked the cheapest.
My incoming class of about 98 had quite a few geniuses in it and an average age of 20! Several had graduated High School a year early. I was definitely middle of the pack. Apparently, I peaked in Med School in the clinical years as I graduated in the top 10% and was AOA, much to my surprise, having left high school with a 2.25 GPA. I still think of that that as one of the proudest moments in life. The certificate is in a box in the garage now.
Being broke and on Pell grants, I had to work the first two years of undergraduate, knocking those grades down a bit. I had a 540 customer paper route that was 45 miles long from 0330 to 0700 every day. My Junior and senior year of undergrad and all of med school, I didn’t work, making good grades much easier.
Back then, it seemed the formula was Biology or similar major with a 3.5-3.8 GPA, especially in the sciences, 60 on the MCAT, a good essay, some volunteering, and a personable interview.
I still think of it as fairly lucky to have gone to a community college, spanked mostly the junior year (32 hours, all science/labs) and then getting in with a barely average MCAT score. My high school teachers would have been surprised. Turns out that in my high school class of over 400, there were only four eventual doctors (about 1%) and one was a veterinarian.
Best wishes to the current crop of hopefuls.
Dr. Dahle touched on this in the post, but majoring in something other than biology certainly helps make you more unique and interesting in the eyes of admissions. However, you should only major in that field if you truly enjoy it. I was an economics major before deciding to become a pre-med. Due to genuine interest in the field, I decided to remain an economics major and took most of my electives in health economics, which nearly all of my interviewers took an interest in.
My school was also notorious for grading harder in the sciences with grade inflation in the B-school. Another benefit of non-science classes is that they generally require less work, so you can devote more time to acing your science classes.
I think it may be more important to be cautious of which majors NOT to do. While I had an aptitude for engineering, it severely limited my chances of getting into medical school. My GPA was pretty low because we were graded on a curve. If I could do it all over again I would have studied something easier
You should absolutely major in what you are interested in. You are (hopefully) going to study medicine for the next +/- 40 years, so college should be about self enrichment, exploration and learning about the rest of the world. And if you don’t get accepted, or change your mind along the way, you will not have to figure out what to do with your biology/chemistry degree, unless that is your true passion.
Econ major, class of ’84.
My experience is kind of stale for todays’ premeds, but I majored in civil engineering. I remember fitting all of the prerequisites into the degree with the exception of physics lab, which engineering physics did not have, and introductory biology. I took biology at a local community college at night because that is how it best fit in my schedule, and just took the intro physics lab without the concomitant class. It surely didn’t take me six years. I remember I was the first CE student in the history of the University to go to medical school, and I’m pretty sure nobody has since. I distinctly remember my engineering advisor telling me I should transfer into biology rather than continuing in engineering. I ignored him, and it worked out fine. Seriously, just pick something you like. I got to blow things up in my college major, how cool is that?
Excellent article, Jim. Well-researched, well-written (the wrestling record with the proud tie made me audibly laugh), and with advice that is spot-on, per usual.
I wholeheartedly endorse studying what you most enjoy (as long as you have a reasonable back-up plan). My wife, a dentist, got her degree in dental hygiene in undergrad while taking pre-reqs on the side. She has always been passionate about teeth, and got to spend 2 years in the dental chair learning hygiene (and to this day is a better dentist for it) while her future colleagues wrapped up 48+ hour biology degrees.
Meanwhile, I took the path of least resistance and majored in chemistry–which I had no interest in–because after pre-med reqs I only needed 10 more hours for the major. However, because I opted for the “small” chemistry major that required a minor, I was able to complete minor program in film studies. A life-long film buff (in high school I dreamt of going to film school before getting “realistic”), these are still my favorite set of courses I’ve ever taken at any level. My wife and I still reminisce about how much we enjoyed watching the weekly films that were assigned (classics, foreign, musicals, westerns, horror, you name it), many of which we never would have seen.
I learned a lot more about the human condition from those courses than I did zoology or physical chemistry. And I (fondly) remember exponentially more of what I learned in film theory & world cinema than the almost-nothing I remember about calculus and organic chemistry.
Excellent article, Jim. Well-researched, well-written (the wrestling record with the proud tie made me audibly laugh), and with advice that is spot-on, per usual.
I wholeheartedly endorse studying what you most enjoy (as long as you have a reasonable back-up plan). My wife, a dentist, got her degree in dental hygiene in undergrad while taking pre-reqs on the side. She has always been passionate about teeth, and got to spend 2 years in the dental chair learning hygiene (and to this day is a better dentist for it) while her future colleagues wrapped up 48+ hour biology degrees.
Meanwhile, I took the path of least resistance and majored in chemistry–which I had no interest in–because after pre-med reqs I only needed 10 more hours for the major. However, because I opted for the “small” chemistry major that required a minor, I was able to complete minor program in film studies. A life-long film buff (in high school I dreamt of going to film school before getting “realistic”), these are still my favorite set of courses I’ve ever taken at any level. My wife and I still reminisce about how much we enjoyed watching the weekly films that were assigned (classics, foreign, musicals, westerns, horror, you name it), many of which we never would have seen.
I learned a lot more about the human condition from those courses than I did zoology or physical chemistry. And I (fondly) remember exponentially more of what I learned in film theory & world cinema than the almost-nothing I remember about calculus and organic chemistry.
Although it is definitely true that one can go to med school without a science major, there is another advantage. I have found that people who took the minimum science in college may have had good grades and high MCATs they just do no know much about science. They never take science courses beyond the introductory level and many struggle to understand the science they need to learn as trainees and practitioners. The major need not matter but pursuing some science at least to the advanced undergrad level provides a better background.
Medicine is ever more scientific, no matter what your specialty. To be good at it, you need to be able to read the literature and understand the advances.
The same goes for at least a semester, preferably two, of introductory statistics. This is the language of the clinical literature. Someone unprepared to follow statistical data is behind thr 8 ball trying to practice.
Be cautious interpreting the MCAT scores by major data. Remember, these are the results for people who made the big investment in time and money to apply. Premeds who do poorly in their science courses or MCATs usually drop out of the program. Many never get as far as taking the MCAT. You will see nothing about them in data on applicants. Of those who do take the test, low scorers again rarely apply.
To get a good idea of the impact of major choice on odds of making it to med school, the population would have to be all those who started taking prerequisites, not just those who actually applied.
Yea, it’s beyond me why the required math class for med school is useless calculus instead of the incredibly useful statistics.
They need both. Without calculus, students cannot take courses in chemistry or physics above the high school level. And they cannot take a substantive course in statistics.
Using the pump/filter analogy: the calculus premed prerequisite is simply a random physical science filter. Had the filter been “probability”, I would have never made it into med school after almost flunking that class twice, even though I aced most of my other engineering classes.
I chose to be a chemistry major because in the 1980s, there were plenty of jobs available if I didn’t get into medical school or somehow chose not to apply, after graduation, for other reasons.
You need to list employability with the major somewhere in your list.
Hey Jim great post. If you didn’t become a doc, I know a lot of mol bio majors that ended up doing non-lab work/never pick up a P20 again by working for pharma doing consulting or being a medical science liason or even becoming drug reps (you are a handsome guy!)
what would be interesting to see is how these majors break down depending on what school you went to. I went to Rutgers for med school and it seemed in my med school class that most state school undergrad students, including those from Rutgers undergrad, were science majors whereas my classmates who went to more prestigious schools like Princeton, Penn, Cornell, Duke had more diversity in their majors. It’s as if Rutgers only trusted science majors that graduated with science degrees because they felt all things being equal, they thought non-science degrees at less pretigious schools might be easier and those students less worthy than a science major at the same school with the same GPA/MCAT score/had great interview. Whereas, at least for Rutgers Med, they seemed to take a Princeton student because of the academic difficulty of just entering that college “proves” you are worthy to enter medical school, no matter what your major.
So yes, the data would suggest that it doesn’t matter what you major in to get into med school, though there might be a caveat that only it only applies if you attend a more “pretigious” college, whatever that means. Would be good to know if you are in a large state school or one that doesn’t break the US News top 20, you should major in a science given the possible stigma that med school admission officers look at non-science course work at these less prestigious schools as “easy A’s.”
I went to a solid but not necessarily prestigious medical school (US News and World Report ranked it 40 for primary care and 35 for research) and we had people from all kinds of majors. I’ll bet there were more science than non-science ones though.
I was a music double major, performance and education. Luckily I had the foresight to care about my GPA during undergrad. My scholarship required that I play for every single ensemble the school offered so I ended up graduating with about 180 credit hours. A young man’s game for sure. Only downside I had to do a post bacc before applying to med school. Fell in love with chemistry during that and nuclear chemistry became my plan B if I did not get into med school. Took 4 years off between undergrad and med school during which I traveled and had a good job which allowed me to have some great life experiences. Whatever major you do, do it well.
I worked 7 years and got an MS in electrical engineering out of the military before I entered med school. That background made my application more interesting and balanced out my lackluster undergrad grades. I think any professional detour outside of medicine would make a more well rounded candidate to become a future doctor.
I understand the folks who may have chosen another major besides engineering to “get better grades”, but I personally am proud of my mechanical engineering undergrad degree and wouldn’t go back to change it even knowing that my grades were not beautifully high compared to other majors. My major and my educational path was something interesting to talk about during my med school interviews, and honestly it was engineering that led me to medicine. If I hadn’t taken a summertime shadowing position with an orthopod to get ideas for grad school biomed research applications, I would have never decided to switch my career path to medicine! Added benefit: I think my problem solving skills and solution development ended up being better than some of my classmates (who were better at memorization) due much in part to my engineering degree and how engineering teaches you to think. Now that I work in the ED, these problem solving skills and the ability to develop creative solutions to problems are much more useful for high quality, personalized, and efficient patient care. Bottom line, I agree you should choose a major you like and I would agree with choosing a major that will benefit you and lead to a career even if med school does not happen for you. Make sure that backup plan is in place in case you need it. But don’t shy away from an interesting and useful major just because it may not give you that 4.0 GPA.
I attended a big 10 University. I started with and finished with a degree in biology. In my junior year – I changed my major to education to teach high school biology. I do like teaching, so this was my back up plan in case I did not get into medical school. Also any elective courses now became my introductory courses in education. Once I got accepted into medical school, the following year, I switched back to a degree in biology because it was much shorter. This allowed me to graduate in four years.
In medical school, – also a big 10 school in the 1980s – virtually everyone had a science degree. There were a few students who had engineering or psychology or pharmacology degrees, but they were the exception. I believe the vast majority of students had also been excepted into other medical schools as well – as I had. But the lower cost of the state school even in that era made a lot of people choose the less expensive program.
One the best pieces of advice I received was from an allergist in Chicago while doing a rotation -“do what you love”. It was good advice then for choosing a specialty, but would apply just as well for undergrads.
The problem with “do what you love” advice are humanity majors who rack up $150K in student loans.
It is a gamble. I knew several humanities majors with whom I spent a lot of time in college. One went straight to law school. The others built careers in writing, art and the entertainment industry. They are all doing very well.
All have said that their undergraduate studies helped in subsequent success. They write better than most people in their fields and they are in jobs where that matters. They are better than most in analyzing new questions when there is not an established way of approaching them.
They are all great at generating text that tells a compelling story. None of them spent time working as baristas.
So it can work out.
But if you do not see a path to how your English or art history degree is going to lead to a career, maybe you are better off working for a while while you figure out what you are going to do with your life.