Hey guys!
So I’m officially back from break!
Before I begin, I just wanna thank the great courses plus for sponsoring today’s video.
Stick around at the end of the video and I’ll talk more about them.
So without further ado here is the video a few days ago I filmed on the best pre-med
major.
Hi guys!
Welcome back to my channel!
There’s a question I want to finally address.I get this question all time either on Instagram,
Snapchat, the comment section here and via e-mail as well, and the question is what is
the best pre-med major?
I think really the question is “what is the best pre-med major that will increase
my chances of getting into med school.”
I think this is the perfect time to answer because for most of us school is starting
soon and you guys are probably starting to think about whether or not to be pre-med or
some of you are thinking about switching to pre-med.
So the short answer is, spoiler alert, you guys are gonna hate this because I’m pretty
sure you guys hear this all the time: it doesn’t matter, pick a major that you like.
But let’s explore what major has the highest acceptance rate for med school a little further.
So if you guys aren’t familiar, there are some similarities between the application
process to medical school and the application process to undergrad in that there is a centralized
service that you have to use to apply to schools.
For undergrad, that’s the Common Application and for medical school, that’s AMCAS, which
is the American Medical College Application Service.
AMCAS collects your MCAT scores, GPA, letters of recommendation and then they send it out
to school to make it more convenient to the applicant.
So each year they release some data about the applicants and matriculants and this information
is available online for everyone to look at.
So let’s quickly take a look at the data for 2016.
I’m gonna transfer this data to a spreadsheet so we can kind of play around with the data
and see if there is anything we can learn from this
So according to the AAMC, there were 21 thousand who were matriculated last year.
So that’s people who went through application process, got accepted and are starting med
school--or have started med school.
And of this 21,000 people who got accepted, more than half of them, about 53 percent,
majored in biological sciences, so these are majors like biology, molecular biology, cell
bio, or neuroscience and behaviour, which is what I majored in.
About 4.2 percent majored in humanities, which are majors like history, english, english
literature, creative writing, or a foreign language like Spanish.
Less that 1% majored in math or statistics.
About 10 % majored in Physical Sciences, so these are majors like chemistry, physics and
I’m guessing astronomy.
About 10 % majored in social sciences, so these are majors like econ, government and
anthropology, and about 2.5 percent majored in specialized health sciences so that’s
majors like nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy and public health.
So that’s a good range of majors, I think.
When looking at the graph an easy assumption to make is that the best major to pursue is
something in the biological sciences since more than half of the people who got accepted
in 2016 had majors in biological sciences.
That’s not necessarily true, it just means that proportionally, more people with majors
in biological sciences applied to med school.
If you look the applicant data--so these are all the people who applied, the breakdown
of the majors look pretty similar to matriculant data.
What is pretty interesting is that you can break down the acceptance rates by majors.
Actually, I can make a graph of acceptance rates by major.
And when you look it at like that, the group of people with the highest acceptance rate
at 46% are the ones who majored in humanities--these are majors, like I said before, are English
Literature, History, Creative Writing, Spanish, and the likes.
They are also the group that scored the highest in their MCAT.
There are probably several reasons of why this particular group scored higher on their
MCAT.
One reason I can think of at the top of my head is that the critical analysis and reasoning
skills section of MCAT, which is the most similar to like the critical reading section
of the SATs. so you’re required to read and answer questions about complex passages,
with sophisticated vocabulary and with intricate styles.
So people who majored in humanities may find it easier because they do a lot of that in
their major, like being able to approach literature from different perspective and develop their
writing skills.
I don’t have any hard proof of this , but I believe that of all the section of the MCAT
the hardest one to improve on in a short period of time is the Critical Analysis and Reasoning
Skills.
You can’t really improve your vocabulary and your grasp of the English Language when
you’re preparing for the MCAT, I think that just comes with years of practice and reading.
Which you would have under your belt if you were in majoring something in Humanities.
The group with the second highest acceptance rate at 44 percent are the ones who majored
in Physical Sciences and these are majors in physics, chemistry, etc. followed by people
who majored in Math and Statistics at 42%.
And not surprisingly, just like how people who majored in humanities did better in Critical
Analysis section, people who majored in Physical Sciences and Math & Statistics did better
in the Chemical and Physical Foundations section of the MCAT.
Another thing I find interesting is that the average person who majored in Biological Sciences
didn’t really do better in the Biological and Biochemical Foundations section of the
MCAT when compared to the other groups.
If I had to make an educated guess it’s because this group didn’t really get an
“unfair” advantage, because this section is heavily covered by the pre-med requirements,
like biology, bio-chem, orgo, which everyone is required to take.
But does that mean that you should major in humanities and physical sciences?
Only you guys can decide that for yourselves.
My advice is, I wouldn’t major in something I have no interests in because regardless
of the major, classes are gonna get harder and harder as you guys get to higher level
courses, so the best major to pick is something you have a baseline of interest in so you
wouldn’t mind putting in the hard work to get a good grade.
It’s so much harder to get a good grade if you’re studying for something you have
no interest in.
There is so many people from different disciplines in medicine so you don’t have to major in
anything specific.
Like most of you know already, medicine is more than just sciences.
So don’t be discouraged or worried if you wanna study something major in something that’s
not scientific.
If anything, that could work to your advantage when you’re getting ready to take the MCATs.
There are different factors medical schools take into account when it comes to admissions.
Your undergraduate GPA and your MCAT scores are something that is in your hands.
So best major for you is whatever major you can enjoy the most and get the best grades
in.
So we’ve come full circle.
So that’s all I have for you today about the best majors for med school.
I love looking at numbers and trying to find connections in them.
Let me know if I missed anything or let me know what your thoughts are as to why certain
groups had a higher acceptance rates than other.
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Thank you guys so much for watching.
I hope you guys are off to a great start in school.
And for those of you starting med school this summer, welcome to the journey and I wish
you guys the best of luck, you guys are gonna have so much fun.
Make sure to check out the thestrivetofit.com for a blog entry for this topic with all the
graphs discussed in this video.
Also there’s gonna be all new merchandize for the new school year like new pens and
apparel and so much more coming this fall, so stay tuned for that!
Please give this video a thumbs-up and I will see you guys in the next video.
BYE