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Life Sciences or Health Sciences in undergrad for Med School


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Hi - like many of Grade 12 students, am having to make that choice.....am currently finishing my Grade 12 and want to pursue Med - so far, I've got offers from Western Health Sciences, UoOttawa Health Sciences, Queen's Life Sciences and McMaster Life Sciences. Read lots of posts on the need to balance between high GPA (easier to get in Health Sciences) vs. good academic foundation for MCAT (better in Life Sciences). Am bit confused which one to go for out of my available options as the acceptance deadline approaches at the end of May. Appreciate any advice based on your personal experience and/or otherwise having studies at any of these programs. Thanks in advance.

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Hey, I dont think I will be of much help because I am not in any of the programs you mentioned, but I am at uOttawa in the health science faculty (HK program), so I take a lot of similar courses to the health science students. You are correct in saying that health science is mostly "easier" than life science, mostly because you usually get to avoid notorious GPA killer such as organic chem, organism bio, physics, calculus etc. However, health science also has a lot of room for electives usually, especially in upper years, so you can easily fit the med school prerequisites into your schedule to help with your MCAT. 

Best bet is to choose the one that is more appealing to you, look through the university clubs/teams, the course sequences, campus environment etc. One thing to keep in mind is that health science is great if you are interested in the health policy, education, sociology of health, epidemiology etc. And life science is better if you like the "pure sciences" ex. bio, chem, physics etc. Pick what you like more. Also especially in upper years, health science has less labs and more essays/papers, whereas life sci is mostly just labs and minimal papers and essays. 

I was heavily considering life science and I am sooo glad that I didn't go through with this. Yes it would help prepare me for the MCAT, but I know that it also would have dropped my GPA and I wouldn't have enjoyed my undergrad as much. Med schools in Canada consider GPA the king of everything on your application, honestly the MCAT is often just used as a cut off or is weighed minimally anyways. So I found that it was better for me to take something that I liked, even if it had less science courses, and ensure I get a good GPA and enjoy myself. And I will just self study the science courses that I didn't take for my MCAT. No point in both my GPA and MCAT suffering if that makes sense. 

That being said, if you love the pure sciences and you think you will enjoy taking those courses as opposed to health science then go for it.

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Yeah I feel like if I had to choose between my GPA being high versus MCAT being high, I’d go for the one that would help me get a better GPA because the MCAT you can study for and retake as needed or wtv but if you mess up your GPA you’re in a much worse position. In my opinion anyways :) good luck!

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