undergraduate for medicine

[CaribPirate]

Is there any major advantage to taking an undergraduate degree in biology or medical sciences for applying to med school?

Because they say they want all-rounded students but would taking a medical related undergraduate help for the MCAT?

Thanks!

[zxcccxz]

There's no particular requirement to do any type of undergrad degree at most schools (I know some of the Quebec schools are different though). I would say that having a strong university background in biology/biochem/chem does help when studying for the MCAT. For me, it significantly reduced my study time I think because I was already familiar with a lot of the material and didn't have to learn it from scratch. That said, the material on the MCAT is very broad in scope, but it isn't very in-depth. It is certainly possible to self-learn all of the material and do very well without being in a life/medical science degree.

[CaribPirate]

Thanks for the answer!

I am very interested in biology and chemistry and I wish to take an undergraduate relating to that. In your opinion, are the biochem courses, in general, difficult (high workload, tough assessments, etc)? Like would it be somewhat challenging to attain a high GPA even though I am interested in biochem?

[TheFlyGuy]

My experience is that program to program and school to school variation is pretty high, so answering this kind of question specifically without people from the school and program you’re interested in weighing in will be tough. In short though, it is definitely possible to obtain a competitive gpa in either of those fields with some hard work. I came from a closely related program to biochem at UofT, and while I found it challenging for sure, if you work intelligently and keep focused it’s far from impossible to do well.

My 2 cents is that generally it’s best to follow your passion. You’ll learn more about yourself, what kind of work you love, and where you’d like to land in the future by following your interests rather than pursuing a degree for a purely predetermined purpose regardless of your enthusiasm. So I say, if you’re interested in biochem then go for it!