ON CHOOSING A MAJOR

updated: 7 March 2008

In brief: You should pick a major that you like and pick a major that likes you back. Keep in mind that you need to take prehealth prerequisite classes and earn good grades in them--and you probably want to accomplish all of this in a reasonable amount of time. Read on for more details.

DO PREHEALTH STUDENTS NEED TO SELECT A MAJOR?

• At most colleges and universities, including Stony Brook, there is no "premedical major" or "prehealth major."  However, to be competitive for medical, dental, optometric, podiatric, or veterinary schools you need to finish up your bachelor's degree, and therefore you must have a major. Declaring and completing a major course of study is a degree requirement.
• Keep in mind, that if you are planning to get into a program that is a bachelors degree (nursing, respiratory care, social work, etc.), you may want or need to declare a different major in the meantime:
• You need to have a major declared to be eligible for some financial aid programs. You should speak to someone in the Office of Student Financial Aid Services to see if this applies to you.
• If you apply to the program of your choice but don't get in the first time around, you still need to make progress towards your degree.  Remember that you are not, for example, a "nursing major" until you formally apply and are accepted into a nursing program.
• You might change your mind about the profession you want to enter or decide that you will apply once you have a bachelor's degree.

SO, HOW DO I GO ABOUT PICKING A MAJOR?

An old snippet of information from the 2001-2002 MSAR (Medical School Admissions Requirements) will serve to illustrate that students from a wide range of academic backgrounds can enter rigorous schools of the health professions:

AAMC DATA FOR THE 1999-2000 ENTERING CLASS FOR U.S. MEDICAL SCHOOLS
major	# of applicants	# of accepted applicants	acceptance rate
Anthropology	329	182	55.3%
Biology	14,249	6,137	43.1%
Biochemistry	2,389	1,172	49.1%
Chemistry	2,110	1,020	48.3%
English	463	244	52.7%
History	414	244	58.9%
Mathematics	225	99	44.0%
Physics	188	88	46.8%
Psychology	1,802	769	42.7%

The Association of American Colleges does not publish data like this anymore. Now, data on majors is published in broad classes. Take a look at http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/mcatgpabymaj07.htm for instance.

When selecting a major you have to ask yourself a lot of questions. What topics are interesting? Does the course of study fit my style and my academic background? If you are not sure about many academic fields besides the old standby, biology, you might begin by writing down a list of things about biology, science, or health care that interest you. Then, think of the academic disciplines which could border on some of these issues and ideas. For example:

• scientific method (Biology, Biochemistry, Philosophy, Physics)
• ethics (Philosophy, History, and perhaps Anthropology)
• communities and health (Anthropology, Sociology, History)
• children: their growth, health and development (Psychology, Sociology)
• managed care--the economics of health care (Economics, Politics)
• world health, international health (Africana Studies, East Asian Studies, History, Anthropology)

You are encouraged to meet with departments of your interest and read about their curriculum in the undergraduate bulletin.

The Career Center has great information on How Majors and Careers are Related.

Is there any kind of major that you should steer away from?

• Avoid choosing a major which has a course of study which would make it difficult or impossible to complete your prehealth prerequisites at the level of quality or within the time frame you need.
• Don't prepare yourself for one career by getting ready to enter another one.  Students who have career-oriented bachelors' degrees often make very strong applicants to even the most competitive schools of the health professions, but the maturity and insight that they gained in putting their initial degree to work first is often a crucial component in their success.