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Undergraduate degree dilemma


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Hi

I am 22 years old canadian resident and my goal is to be a physician. I went to college for for a technical diploma(odd reson to do this please don't ask why). I am planning to go to ubc for engineering degree this fall. I am aware this is not a good pathway to med school but i feel that if I am spending  so much money on an undergrad degree, I want it to be something I enjoy and also should be a bit more valuable than premed, in case I fail to get into med school. I know I shouldn't be thinking about failing but I am practical person and I am not financially that strong so weighing in my options. What do you guys suggest. Is it very difficult to get into med school with this type of major. Please suggest. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

What is your GPA? It's always wise to have a backup if med school doesn't work out. Engineering is a solid bet and it will strengthen your mathematics skills. Be advised, you'd have to take several pre-requisite courses for medical school while maintaining a full course load as Engineering will not include any med-school prerequisites.

Best of luck to you. I am a three-year diploma holder myself. I was working full time as a civil engineer but going back to uOttawa for BSc Psychology and an eventual entry into med-school.

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2 hours ago, brick_dandy said:

What is your GPA? It's always wise to have a backup if med school doesn't work out. Engineering is a solid bet and it will strengthen your mathematics skills. Be advised, you'd have to take several pre-requisite courses for medical school while maintaining a full course load as Engineering will not include any med-school prerequisites.

This is not strictly true. Many medical schools do not require science pre reqs any more (UBC is one such school). So you should look at the requirements for schools you actually think you might want to apply to across the country — applying broadly will increase your chances of getting into medical school, but it’s hard to meet the requirements for every school without doing a science degree. 

Engineering is not an uncommon path to medical school. If you focus on medical schools without science prereqs (like UBC), you will likely still need 6 credits of English. And you may still want to take some courses to help you prepare for the MCAT, which most Canadian med schools still require. Depending on the area of engineering you study you may get enough basic chemistry and physics for the MCAT, and you could take classes in other areas in the summer semesters.

GPA is a concern for med applications, so you should know that engineering at UBC can be a tough program to maintain a high GPA in. The workload can be very high, and I know a lot of people who went through the program and struggled. So I recommend being careful about taking on more than you can handle early on — get a semester or two under your belt and have a good idea of what you need to do to succeed and keep the GPA up before you start worrying about taking extra classes, etc

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22 hours ago, frenchpress said:

Depending on the area of engineering you study you may get enough basic chemistry and physics for the MCAT

This is a great point, the discipline OP choses could result in at least a semester worth of pre requisite courses that he wouldn't get in other disciplines.

IMO if you want to make the MCAT easier and hit some pre reqs you should consider: biomedical engineering (if your school has it), then chemical engineering, then everything else. Though this will vary from school to school (especially since biomedical engineering can be lumped in with a number of different disciplines)

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