If your kid wants to go to med school, what are they doing as an undergraduate major?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In recent years, patients's main complaint is lack of empathy among physicians. Its not that worse humans are becoming physicians but its because people see it as a lucrative future and try to get in but they end up spending so much time, money and efforts to finally earn as an attending physician that afterwards their main focus is on return on that investment than anything else. Lots of physicians are there to support an extravagant lifestyle.

As AI/robotics cover more of the medical information, empathy and clinical judgment (e.g., reasoning about medical information in single contextualized cases) will continue to matter more.

AI will never replace human judgment.

I don't want a doctor who is "really caring", I want one who knows biology, anatomy, biochemistry, etc.

If you want empathy call a priest. If you want your ailment cured, call a doctor.

[Anonymous]

So I went to dental school and was a non science major. I think it worked in my favor because my GPA was higher than if I had been a bio major like most people I know. Worked out for me 😆

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS (current senior and public health major at a state university) was recently accepted to med school.
OP here is what we learned along the way
Grades matter. Science gpa and non-science gpa should be consistent
MCAT scores matter and having a solid foundation in biochemistry, biology and chemistry helps you do well
Letters of recommendation matter
You really need significant extracurriculars including many hundreds or a couple of thousand hours of clinical experience and research
Publications help
They expect to see volunteering

If your child truly enjoys history and is satisfied that they can simultaneously satisfy premed requirements and be competitive for research opportunities they should do it.
I don’t know about your financial situation but as several people have pointed out, med school is expensive and so you might want to consider spending less on the undergraduate degree. It doesn’t matter where you go for your undergraduate degree as long as your university can support/facilitate you accomplishing everything med schools now expect.
Finally, most med students now take at least one gap year before applying for med school
Good luck to your child.

+1. DD is a current MS2 and graduated from UMD. She found UMD's premed advising to be helpful along the way, and we are in-state so we are able to help her pay for medical school. GPA, MCAT score, and extracurriculars are extremely important so pick the major that will help maximize these. FWIW DD was a biology major at UMD but has friends who majored in public health and psychology who are also in medical school or about to matriculate.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So I went to dental school and was a non science major. I think it worked in my favor because my GPA was higher than if I had been a bio major like most people I know. Worked out for me 😆

Yeah well you don't need to know much science to put your knee on the patient's chest and put the pliers in their mouth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In recent years, patients's main complaint is lack of empathy among physicians. Its not that worse humans are becoming physicians but its because people see it as a lucrative future and try to get in but they end up spending so much time, money and efforts to finally earn as an attending physician that afterwards their main focus is on return on that investment than anything else. Lots of physicians are there to support an extravagant lifestyle.

As AI/robotics cover more of the medical information, empathy and clinical judgment (e.g., reasoning about medical information in single contextualized cases) will continue to matter more.

AI will never replace human judgment.

I don't want a doctor who is "really caring", I want one who knows biology, anatomy, biochemistry, etc.

If you want empathy call a priest. If you want your ailment cured, call a doctor.

If you noted I put "clinical judgment" along with empathy which involves knowing those things--but it's not the MD school of the past which was a lot of memorization and sometimes not the deepest scientific knowledge, to be honest. Fortunately this means MD can emphasize deeper scientific knowledge and reasoning with bio-chem-physics as applies to medical issues they encounter. Undergraduate science outside of the pre-med requirements (which are hefty and are often the hardest courses of the majors) is not that relevant to the MD--and it could be better spent laying the groundwork for the human side of medicine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In recent years, patients's main complaint is lack of empathy among physicians. Its not that worse humans are becoming physicians but its because people see it as a lucrative future and try to get in but they end up spending so much time, money and efforts to finally earn as an attending physician that afterwards their main focus is on return on that investment than anything else. Lots of physicians are there to support an extravagant lifestyle.

As AI/robotics cover more of the medical information, empathy and clinical judgment (e.g., reasoning about medical information in single contextualized cases) will continue to matter more.

AI will never replace human judgment.

I don't want a doctor who is "really caring", I want one who knows biology, anatomy, biochemistry, etc.

If you want empathy call a priest. If you want your ailment cured, call a doctor.

I would want a human and AI medical team.