faculty of science vs interfaculty of arts&science?

[Purple Dolphin]

I got accepted into both McGill's Faculty of Science as well as its interfaculty. I'm conflicted as to which would be most beneficial for getting in med-school; I heard they love students who took lots of liberal arts in undergrad. On one hand I'm very interested and decent in both Arts and Science, but i know i'm mainly pursuing mostly a med-school path, and A&Sc doesn't provide very much depth into science does it? I also heard it's harder to get a higher GPA in A&Sc which i don't really understand.

 

I could major in a science with minors in arts for the interfaculty, or for Faculty of science, I could do the liberal program in science which has core in science but also requires courses in arts.

 

Any thoughts? Thanks.

[nervousnellie]

am doing the Arts and Sci program at Mac.It is difficult to do REALLy well. You need to be able to write extremely well as be very strong in science/math. Look at your own strengths. don't fool yourself. Are you strong enough at both to maintain a high enough GPA. their is no doubt that the subjectivity of arts courses kill some people. If I had to choose again, I would do it. I love the diversity in my program.

[future_doc]

The answer is simple, take the program you feel you will enjoy the most and you are likely to do better. Adcoms don't care what program you take.

[ellorie]

I ended up making this decision myself - I knew I wanted to study some sort of biomedical science as well as English literature, so I naturally applied to BASC and stayed in it for my first year.

 

Once I started it, I realized that, like you say, it just didn't offer the depth of science that I wanted. The BASC arts major is a full arts major just like a BA, but the science concentrations are significantly condensed.

 

The other difference is that the BASC has some distributive requirements outside your major which eat up your other time.

 

I ended up transferring to BSc and doing a liberal degree. I still did the full English major like I would have in BASC but I also did a much more complete physiology major, and to me that was the best option.

 

In a lot of ways, BSc liberal is what BASc should be. If what you want is to study both arts and science in depth, IMO the BSc liberal is your best bet.

 

If you are just looking into it because of the medical school angle - do what you love and think you can do well in. Most medical schools (except the few that look at your academic record holistically) couldn't give a hoot what you major in.

 

Either way, if you are choosing between similar programs, you do have some time to choose provided that you plan well. I didn't officially transfer into BSc until the beginning of my third year, though I intended to basically from my first year.

 

Feel free to ask any other questions you might have about BSc or BASc at McGill and I will try to answer them.

 

Frankly, as the above poster said, my GPA did suffer from the subjectivity/difficulty of English at McGill. My science GPA is around a 3.96 while my overall was more like a 3.83. The only thing I regret about it was that it closed the McGill OOP door for me (hard 3.9 cutoff last year), but I still got accepted a few places and I am glad that I had that diversity in my undergrad. Also I think that it helped me at a couple of schools, particularly U of T. The hit to my GPA was worth it to be able to study both of my passions and really explore other avenues before I committed to a career in science.

[Purple Dolphin]

Thanks a lot for the quick responses guys! They were very helpful.

 

I'm now quite sold on the Liberal Program in Science faculty. Not sure I understood it completely though. So if you have a Core Science Component in, say, Anatomy and Cell Biology, and also pick Anthropology as a major concentration of arts for your breadth component, would you be considered to be double majoring? Is that wise?

 

Also, I've heard of transferring from inter-faculty to science, but is it possible to transfer from science to inter, since there's a lot less space in the latter?

 

Thanks everyone.

[ellorie]

Yes, that would be considered double majoring. That's what I did. I enjoyed it, but you have to be REALLY careful with your course planning because you won't have a lot of wiggle room. I had some AP credits and I took Orgo 1 in the summer and with that together I managed to fit everything in. You also won't have much room for electives especially in the early years. I had one elective in my third year and a couple in my 4th but not the way that the single major people had.

 

I never tried to transfer from science to interfaculty but I'd bet that you're right, it's probably harder due to limited space.

[dy727]

The liberal program at McGill is actually pretty nice, it allows you take the core science needed for some background but additional coursework in other areas, which is pretty nice.

 

 

It really depends on what you want. Med school won't care about what you did as long as you're good at what you did.

 

If you're like me, who likes to learn a lot about something I would go the BSc route and do the honours in whatever i'm interested in (whether it be biochem, physio, immuno, anatomy etc).

 

Even if you just end up doing a major, you still have some flexibility to do a minor concentration in the faculty of arts or management