What is the med school like?

I want to get into med school. What should I change my major to? (incoming freshman)?

• Hi, so I'm going to be graduating high school this year, and at the moment, my goal after college is to go to med school and then find some career around that. I do know that I want to work in a hospital as a physician or surgeon or something like that.. I just don't know what yet at the moment, but I still got a few years to decide on that lol. I do know I don't want to be a nurse. I want to go beyond that. As for extra-curricular activities, I am a huge person of the arts. I have been in music, since 6th grade. I mainly play the saxophone, and I plan on starting out jazz band in college for the first time, while at the same time doing marching band and concert band (although chances are I will have to take away one of these classes when I register). I also play flute and clarinet. While being active in music, I also want to get into acting classes if my schedule can make room for it. I talked about my future goals with the music professors at the college, and they said that my schedule sounds more like a music major's than a med- school major's. They're probably right, so whatever happens, I'm willing to sacrifice my extra-curriculars and give my core med school classes top priority. I want my extra-curriculars to help make me stand out from other med school applicants. ...Anyways back to the question. So I haven't registered for classes yet, but when I do I'm going to switch my major. When I applied, I couldn't decide what to major in, because there just seems to be too many decisions. I mean, I could major in chemistry, biology, pre-med, etc. and Idk what I should pick. Can someone help me decide what would be a good major that med schools will recommend or prefer? Or if anyone has any other majors they want to suggest, that would be great. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

• Answer:

  Med school will train you to be a doctor. That's all it will train you to be. (After med school, in residency, you'll learn how to be a specific kind of doctor, like a surgeon or a pediatrician or a neurologist.) If you don't know yet whether you want to be a doctor, then you don't know yet whether you want to go to med school. If you do want to go to med school, you can major in anything you like. Med schools encourage you to major in what interests you. You will need to take a set of classes known as "pre-med" classes because med schools require you to have completed them before you enroll, but you can take those as electives if you choose to major in History or Economics or something that doesn't require a lot of hard science. If you don't know yet whether or not you want to be a doctor, then you may end up wanting to major in something like physical therapy that will get you into a medical-type setting. Either way, you're the one who has to pick your major and be responsible for the choice. Don't try pushing the choice off onto medical schools by picking what you think they want. Incidentally, there's no such thing as "going beyond" nursing. There are certainly other things you can do besides nursing, and some of them require a lot of training. But nursing is a profession of its own, and it has a body of knowledge and set of skills that are not duplicated anywhere else. If you don't want to be a nurse, fine. Most people are not cut out to be nurses. I'm certainly not. But if you think you're going to be a "nurse-plus" or that you are too good for nursing -- now or after you receive whatever training you are going to get -- then you are very mistaken as to what nursing is, and if you plan to work in a setting where nurses also work, you are setting yourself up for unnecessary conflict with your colleagues that is likely to harm the interests of patients.