 So what are the most common and best majors for you as a pre-med to increase your chances of getting into medical school? Let's get into it. Alright guys, welcome to the MD journey here all about helping people just like you succeed on their medical journey with less stress. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine resident, makes videos just like this to help people just like you. So if you're new to this channel, go ahead and consider subscribing as well as liking this video to support this video on YouTube. But today I wanted to talk about what you should major in as a pre-med trying to go into medical school. So when you stay tuned till the end, I will also give you my top four majors that you should consider applying for. So before we hit on the best majors for pre-meds, I do think it's important to look at individuals who's gotten accepted to medical school and see what majors they graduated. And during my research, I found a nice breakdown of a medical school class of about 500 individuals. And when they looked at the different majors for each specific student, they found that the split between the whole class of 500 was about half half. So about 49% of them had majored in something related to biology, no surprise. And then about 50% of them had majored in something else. And if you look further into the class and you realize that of the whole class of 500, about 24% of them had a biology major. About 36 individuals or 7% had a biochemistry major. Similarly about 7% for individuals with a neurobiology or a neuroscience degree. That's what I had. And then finally about 4% of individuals with similar degrees such as molecular biology. So the biology related degrees definitely count for a majority of these degree plans, which is not a surprise. But if we look at some of the other breakdowns, we realize about 10% are in other forms of science is things like chemistry or physics. 13% are in some form of a liberal arts. 9% are in a health kind of tracks, which is a pre-nursing track. 7% in about engineering. And finally 13% in a category considered to be other, which includes things like business psychology as well as education. And so by looking at that chart, it may initially seem like you have to do something biology related, but you can also see the other half is doing a variety of different things and still getting into medical school. And so that brings us to the point of asking what are the best majors for a pre-med. Now here is my asterisk or my disclaimer and simply something that you've heard before is that there is no such thing as a best major. There is a best major for you and we'll go into that in a second, but I'll give you some examples to potentially consider as well as different factors to consider to help you make your final decision. Now on my personal list of the top four majors for pre-meds, I've considered a few things once I consider something that may be helpful further on when you're actually a physician or a doctor in training, as well as something that can be both practical and applied to both medicine as well as other things that you may use as a physician one day. So number one on my list, and this is completely by as I admit it, is the degree in neurobiology or neuroscience. Now, as I mentioned, I myself graduated with a degree in neuroscience, but specifically the reason I love it so much for pre-meds is that there is a good mixture of science and that pressure to do biology with the nice kind of mixture of actual learning about the human brain, the nervous system, and these are concepts that you may actually be able to apply as a physician later on. And unfortunately, that may not always be the case of other various degrees in biology where it may be more applicable for a PhD or somebody who wants to go into research, but if that isn't your ultimate destination, your degree plan may only help you within your four years of college. But personally, I think getting a degree in training in neuroscience has made it easier to learn the neuroscience material in medical school as well as just kind of be able to pick up on other related topics, things like anatomy and physiology that are also very heavy in a degree in neuroscience. So if you're interested in the brain, you're interested in neurology, you want to know how the brain works, how it learns so many things I could geek out about, consider a degree in neuroscience or neurobiology. And getting into major number two, like I mentioned, I specifically picked these majors based off of how they may help you in the future, as well as the short term, if you choose medicine is not for you. And that's why number two on my list is public health. Public health is obviously very intertwined in medicine. There's a lot of options that you can choose to do when you're a doctor, but there's also a lot of options if you choose medicine or becoming a physician are not your goals. And in addition, I find that the individuals who have majored in public health just think about problems differently. Where I on one end may think about helping one patient at a time, they instead could find a problem and ask how they can use the solution to help not only that individual, but also a whole community, a whole population, help literally hundreds of thousands of individuals through public policies and quality improvement. Now, getting into my third recommended pre-med major business. Now, I know initially when I may say that it may catch you a little bit of a guard because it doesn't seem at all related to medicine. And honestly, that's kind of why I picked it in the first place. As I mentioned, it doesn't really matter what major you pick to ultimately become a physician. As long as you do the prerequisites that you're required to do as a pre-med anyways, you know, you can pick whatever major you want. And I find that one of the biggest weaknesses of anyone going into medical school, anyone who graduates and becomes a physician is literally their lack of understanding of how business works. And if you choose to one day open up your own clinic or open up your own business or practice, then these are skills that you may benefit from. In addition, like I said, it's always nice to have a major that you both enjoy can help you get into medical school because it is interesting and it's different not everyone majors in business in the first place. But it can also give you other opportunities if you choose to not pursue medicine later on in college. And honestly, if I had to go through college again, I'd probably make myself take some basic accounting, personal finance, management courses that you experience through a business degree. And finally, getting into a degree plan number four, computer science. Again, another shocker that seemed to be related at all with the science that we think required to become a physician. But again, I'm thinking of something a little practical that can help you have a nice interesting twist and angle to your pre-med application. If you're somebody who loves tech, who loves coding, wants to develop things and potentially wants to be involved in technology and the growth of medicine one day as a physician, then this is a great field to get, you know, your degree and get that experience in with some very basic coding languages that you can one day use to create apps, websites and, you know, whatever else you may do through coding. I don't know. But the degree of computer science is something that always seems a little bit too far right field for somebody who is a pre-med. But I promise you, again, you have a very interesting angle. And if it's something that lines up with your goals, then it may be perfect for you. Now, to end this video off, I want to give a few tips to kind of help you understand how to know what to major in. Now, we kind of hit on a few of these. One include kind of your future goals as well as your interests. Ask yourself, like, what are the things that you're interested in? What are the things that you enjoy reading about, things that you can honestly enjoy in partake in a conversation and never get bored of, you know, if somebody who is in computer science may love talking about coding language or for me, that just like literally going over my head. While on the other hand, somebody who is in computer science and have no interest in talking to me about neuroplasticity or maybe you will. Now, I recommend you actually list these out because if you go ahead and do so, then you can find out multiple degree plans that may work, but you can find one that seems to work the best and ask yourself what your future goals are. One, consider if medicine, unfortunately, wasn't a route. It's always nice to have a plan B that fits in line with something you want to do. You don't want to be a biology major and realize, well, if you can't go to medical school, you don't really want to do anything else in biology that's a little disappointing and disheartening. So if you instead ask these important questions, you'll set yourself up with maybe a plan B job that actually is well suited for you while still having an interesting angle to get into medical school. And that is the last thing you should consider when thinking about what major to use as a pre-med is how can you make an angle for you? Now, the angle is something that I teach in both my courses and books for individuals that are pre-meds and I'll link them down below if you're interested, but basically the angle is how can you make yourself stand out on the application? Now, if you're a biology major and you're doing the same clubs and organizations and volunteer experiences as everyone else, it's really hard to do that. But if your major can be a little bit of a, oh, that's cool. You're a computer science major. Tell me why you want to go into medicine. They start to pay attention to more. So if you ask yourself what your angle is, what are the things you enjoy? Maybe you enjoy public policy or helping people that are homeless. Maybe you can major in public health and use that degree to potentially do something in your desired field. And one of the best ways to go ahead and stand out on your application may be through a degree plan that both lines up with your interests and your future goals, but also it's a little bit different. But that guys is it for this video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it and it can help you make a better decision on what to major in. If you want more help on your pre-med journey, I will link a playlist here that you guys can check out with all the different videos I made to help you on your journey and succeed. And if you want even more help, go ahead and check out the hundreds of blog posts that we have on MDTRAIN.com, including tips and advice for individuals who are pre-meds. But thank you guys so much for watching. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Make sure before you leave, you go ahead and smash that like button and consider subscribing if you want videos just like this coming at you twice a week. But thank you guys so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.