What should I study in college if I want to become a doctor?

Whatever you love. I have classmates who majored in everything under the sun, including:

  • French
  • Biochemistry
  • Piano performance
  • Material science engineering
  • Math
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • English
  • Neuroscience

Take courses in whatever you’re interested in. I would push more for classes that teach you how to think rather than memorize copious quantities of information, but that’s a personal bias. At the end of the day, as long as you have the pre-med requirements fulfilled, it doesn’t matter all too much[1].

A few recommendations on stuff to consider taking:

  • biochemistry: It’s not required by a lot of schools, but I’d recommend it as an intro to the intricate meshwork that is organic chemistry and how the human body functions. This subject is often doled out in bits and pieces in med school, and in some ways it’s given short shrift, so a formal course can be rather valuable.
  • ethics: A very difficult course in terms of thought, but so, so valuable in real life. A 1-year-old baby comes into the ER from near drowning and the attending physician realizes the mother is mentally unsound due to untreated schizophrenia–no easy solutions there.
  • computer science: It’s amazing just how technologically incompetent the average medical student is. And by amazing I mean completely f***ing scary. Don’t be one of those people. Please?
  • immunology: It’s rapidly becoming a pretty hot field in terms of research, and the extent to which the immune system can mess up the body is just as much cause for concern as how to maintain the integrity with which it defends the body. Probably not super-high yield, but I feel like this is a rare exception to the rule below that’s worth having a formal introduction to.

Stuff to avoid (in my opinion):

  • physiology, anatomy, pathology…basically, stuff that you would take anyways in med school. It’s pointless to waste tuition to learn the same material twice. And no, the fact that you’re reviewing the material generally doesn’t make it any easier the second time around–med school will require you to learn so much more than the collegiate version of a course that the disparity makes it doubly useless.

[1] That said, there are schools that have requirements beyond the basics, so check with whatever schools you plan to apply to and make sure you can get those courses in.

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“Hey Jae” is a series that publicly answers questions from pre-med students. I get these from time to time through facebook, e-mail, etc., so I figured if one person’s wondering, more likely are too. Feel free to pose a question of your own through my contact page! As always, best of luck. :-)