recommended premed major ADVICE WANTED

[sanantone]

I think you should choose the major that will lead to a job you will enjoy just in case you don't go to med school. While biology makes up the largest group of applicants, they have about the same admissions rates as or slightly lower than other majors. Med schools like to have diversity in educational backgrounds. I once heard that 90% of FBI applicants have criminal justice degrees. CJ majors aren't seen as any more desirable by the FBI than English majors. However, the English major will have a better chance of getting hired. To simplify it, let's say that the FBI wants to hire 10 English majors and 10 CJ majors. 20 English majors apply, and 100 CJ majors apply. An English major has a 50% chance of being selected while a CJ major only has a 10% chance of being selected.

My sister majored in psychology and did the premed sequence. She ended up with a minor in biology. Her goal was to be a psychiatrist. When she graduated, she was burned out on school and neither wanted to go to med school nor complete a doctorate in psychology. She also had no desire to do social service jobs with her bachelor's in psychology. She eventually found a job in an insurance after a year, but she probably would have been better off if she had chosen a major based on an interest other than psychiatry.

Here's admissions data from 2005. As you can see, biological science, "other," and specialized health science majors had the lowest acceptance rates. Math/statistics and humanities majors had the highest acceptance rates.

http://www.oswego.edu/academics/colleges..._data.html