What to Major in

Hello and happy Monday everyone!! I hope you all had wonderful weekends, the weather finally started to feel a bit like spring here so we spent lots of time outdoors. For today's Med School Monday post I wanted to quickly address a question I get from a lot of my readers who are in the early years of college or the college application process: what to major in (for medical school). So here's a little about that!
I'll say first off - I majored in Neuroscience and minored in the History of Science and Technology. I absolutely loved neuroscience and history has always been my passion, so I didn't do these for med school, I did it because I loved studying it. {Quick super nerdy fact about me? I have a tattoo of the first time the word brain was written in human history - it's hieroglyphics from the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus and dates back to around 1500 BC}. I share this because I truly think college is a time you should study what you love and what you're curious about. I was lucky enough to go to a liberal arts college so I really did explore lots before declaring my major sophomore year - taking courses in African American Women's History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Philosophy, I loved it all.

Now for medical school, there are courses that you have to take. At most colleges there's no "pre-med" major, and if there was you probably shouldn't major it in anyway. Just get through these pre-requisites (which are slightly different for each medical school, so make sure you check the website of schools you're interested in), but they are generally something like this: 2 semesters of biology, 2 semesters of physics, 2 semesters of inorganic chemistry, 2 semesters of organic chemistry, and 2 semesters of english.

These classes are all important to do well on the MCAT, which you will have to take for admission to medical school. The grades from these classes will of course also matter, but they're meant to prepare you for the test and be a foundation of what you will later learn in medical school. Did I have friends who were physics majors and did better on the physics portion of the exam because of that? Yes, but only by a couple of points if that. The same way I had friends who did better in bio because of being bio majors - the point is that these differences are minor, and I think you'll get a lot more from majoring in what you truly are interested in rather than physics just for a point or two on an exam.

Do keep in mind that GPA matters. If you love English but are horrible at writing papers and can't get good grades in those English classes, maybe English isn't the major for you. On the other hand, if you're just majoring in Bio because it comes easily to you and because it fulfills lots of the med school prereqs, you're sort of cheating yourself out of a great education. This could be your last time to study history or government or Italian - there will be plenty of time to study science in medical school.

Some examples of undergrad majors my from my classmates here at Harvard include Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Anthropology, Engineering (of all varieties), Neuroscience, and Economics.

I hope some of you can find this helpful, and as always, leave comments about your opinions or ideas for posts or anything! And if you've sent me a comment don't worry - I got it! I'm making my way through responding to those during the little "downtime" I have haha.