I posted this question in the med student forum but thought I would inquire here as well. I just got accepted to a BSN program and would graduate in May 2012. I can, however, get a bachelor’s in English or Philosophy (previous majors) and have my science prereq’s done by May 2011. My question is do you think it is possible to get accepted to med school with an English or Philosophy degree as long as the science classes are completed? I currently have a 3.8 gpa (last 50 or so credits are 4.0) and I enjoy studying and school…I know med school is where I want to be I am just trying to find the best path to get there. I am 39 years old so the sooner I can get to med school the better as I see it.
Oh, yea. Plenty of people with English and Philosophy majors have gotten into medical school. I remember a few years ago reading a survey that said that English and Philosophy majors have the highest medical school acceptance rates among all the majors survey. Conversely, Biology and Chemistry majors had the lowest acceptance rates.
I certainly realize that a bio or chem degree is what most premed students go for…but I can graduate one year sooner in another field and still have 2 semesters of inorganic, organic and biochemistry, 2 semesters of physics and 2 semesters of bio, one semester of micro, 2 semesters of A&P…as far as I can tell this will cover the science requirements to admission at the med schools I have looked at…I was just kind of wondering if anyone knew of someone personally who had gotten into med school from a different field.
It doesn’t matter what your major is as long as you have completed the pre-reqs and done well in them. I know many people who were non-science majors (including myself) who are in medical school. You can see the profile of this year’s entering class at Ohio State at http://medicine.osu.edu/students/admissions/D ocuments/2009%20Profile%2 0Sheet.pdf. They didn’t list the absolute numbers of majors this year, but they have in the past. As you can see, there are quite a few non-science majors.
The only caution I would have is to make sure that the science courses you are taking are the ones that pre-med majors would take - most of the science courses for nursing majors are not the same as the pre-med ones. Many schools will allow you to substitute the more difficult pre-med science courses for the nursing ones.
I find this comment interesting in that I graduated from nursing quite some time ago, and even then the General Bio I w/ lab and Gen. Bio II w/ lab, and the Gen Chems w/ labs were the same.
I think there was a chem course that they allowed as acceptable, but that seems silly in light of other courses you may want to take in nursing such as pathophysiology, Microbiology, biochem and pharmacology.
I think it depends on the school.
that pdf showing the rollup of admitted students to OSU is really awesome. I don’t think I’ve seen a program ever give so much information. I’m definitely glad you put that up there.
I agree with Chris, I have not seen another breakdown like that one… AWESOME. It was very interesting to see.