 Math majors do the best. Biology majors fare slightly worse than the average kind of acceptance rate. You've heard of the numbers on kind of what pre-med majors and their acceptance rates and what who gets and where. Now let's talk about what to do with these numbers. Stick around. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is right here acceptance. Thank you for stopping by. I work with pre-medical and pre-dental students on the admissions process from A to Z personal statement to interview prep. I become your partner in applications. So if you're interested in learning how I work with students, definitely get a slot in my calendar. The link is in the description or comments below and we can start chatting. But let's dive into what to do when kind of choosing your major or why you would choose a specific major to kind of, you know, think about to maximize your kind of end goal. According to the AMC, more than half of students applying to medicine are some sort of biological sciences major, right? It doesn't only have to be biology. It could be neuro, physiology, medical science, microbiology, zoology, biotechnology. So it really kind of one depends on the course offerings and major offerings in your home institution, but also just kind of, you know, that umbrella is, is rough. These majors will most likely be the ones that mostly overlap with your pre-medical requirements. So now pre-med is not a major, right? You will declare pre-med in the sense of that you will take the required courses to a then applied medical school. But in many ways, it's not a major major, right? You kind of focus on, you pursue a different major. But biology, if you kind of major in that would have the most kind of overlap with the pre-med reps. So these tend to be biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, sociology, biochemistry, psychology, you know, statistics and research methods, especially the ones covered kind of as introductory courses or with labs and kind of, you know, with an introsociology course let's say. Because you want to make sure that you do your best in the MCAT of course, you want to kind of try and take your pre-medical reps, your heart sciences as close to not the date that you're going to take the MCAT necessarily, but as close to when you're going to start diligently studying for the MCAT, right? So that that content, you're not kind of only preparing, but you're not kind of dealing with content gaps as well. So that you are kind of the materials as fresh as possible and then you continue to prepare. So remember, the MCAT is testing on the following core knowledge areas, biological and biochemical foundations of living systems, psychological, social, biological foundations of behavior, chemical and physical foundations of biological systems. The MCAT also has cars and has that critical thinking aspect to the exam. And so there's a lot of critical reasoning. There's a lot of reading passages and kind of, you know, deducing and synthesizing information. And so in this case, there could be other majors as well that will help you kind of tangentially in this section of the exam. Despite the fact that most kind of biology major courses will be kind of overlapping with a pre-med that doesn't mean that you have to be a biology major to succeed. I've had stellar results with students that are sociology, philosophy majors, math and statistics, big data, public health, computer science, nutritional science. I've had just those majors to name a few very, very successful students who have gone on to medicine. I've had English majors, art history. So I've had students that have very kind of unique or kind of different humanities type inclinations and interests, and they will pursue that major and kind of then, you know, continue their pre-med recs and they're fine and they do very well. So definitely kind of biology is not the kind of, you know, catch-all major that you must kind of pigeonhole yourself to, especially if you have other interests that you kind of could potentially round out your why medicine in a way. So when I start talking to students that are kind of very early in the process, right, they are starting to pursue their major. They're starting to think about extracurricular activities. A lot of students' success will come from, you know, you could be a philosophy, a sociology, public health, nutritional science major, and you're taking your pre-med rec courses, but the research and extracurricular activities that they choose kind of brings them back to the kind of medical sphere, right? And a lot of very interesting kind of experiences I've had with students have been when students will bridge their major or their kind of research kind of from their major and bridge that into medicine. So kind of borrow their, you know, public health knowledge or their sociology knowledge to go into a research about hospice care in Michigan or a nutritional science major who then started a kind of grassroots research in their local community about the relationship between fast food and socioeconomic kind of disparities. And then they'll kind of bring that into kind of public health and medicine and how we kind of, you know, how primary care physicians should be kind of doing X, Y, Z, or like what they would want them to kind of like be looking at in their own future as a physician. So pursue academically and intellectually something that you find interesting, but then round that out with research and extracurriculars that really kind of bring you back to medicine so that you have very, yes, unique, but very kind of foundational and strong medical content for your application. Here are a couple other examples from students so that you can kind of get a sense. I had a student who pursued nutritional science and their research was on type two diabetes and immigrant adolescence. And so they kind of started looking at what they can do from like a pediatricians perspective on how to kind of help with, you know, diet knowledge and kind of, you know, what to shop for just kind of diet and lifestyle information for these kind of newly immigrated families to curb type two diabetes at such a young age. I had another student who pursued philosophy and after taking a medical ethics course did a research on right to diet measures and medical suicides. Are you thinking of pursuing a non-biology major and want to kind of think through how you would round out your extracurriculars? Comment below. I'd love to start chatting. Non-traditional students can also feel like they're stitching together their kind of life in academics kind of from the back or kind of in reverse, right? So you want to kind of think about how no matter what major you pursued or your first career, you want to think about how you can build your bridge back to medicine. I've worked with students who were teachers, lawyers, firefighters, EMTs. So, you know, my teachers and lawyers specifically, they started building their bridge back to medicine through volunteering and service. So, and this advice goes for everyone. You want to really think about how your activities, what you do within beyond the classroom really kind of feed each other and inform each other. But sometimes the kind of the trickier applications, the trickier students to work with are the ones that have like compartmentalized their experiences. I do this in this box, I do this volunteering here. And so then it doesn't really feel like it's connected and it feels very kind of like they're checking off what they need to do and not really making connections, not making those bridges to kind of synthesize and gain insight into broader aspects of medicine through zoomed in experiences. Hope this was helpful. And remember, my expertise is the writing, your messaging. When you sit down to start applying to medical school, make sure that you are kind of really showcasing all the strengths, all your assets on the page that you are presenting the most compelling application. If you are interested in knowing how I work with students, definitely get your free slot in my calendar. The link is in the description and we'll get started chatting and see you for a good bit. I will see you soon. Thanks so much for watching. Bye.