I just got off the plane from Hong Kong and my sister said to me, "School starts in about a week, what do you want to major in?"
2 years prior, I had already expressed interest in doing something in the medical field, but honestly I hadn't really thought it through nor did I know why I would want to do something like that. After living in Hong Kong for a couple of years, I thought the techniques and philosophy of Chinese medicine were fascinating and had some interest to learn more about that.
"Hmmm, can you give me some of the options I can major in if I'm considering healthcare?" I replied.
"There's exercise science, nutrition, neuroscience, genetics..."
Thinking that neuroscience and genetics sounded cool, I promptly decided I would major in neuroscience (this was with little to no thought and barely any research into what that meant).
The first semester was nothing short of awful because I remembered basically nothing about chemistry or biology, but still managed to trudge through my classes. And being the stubborn person that I am, I never switched my major and recently graduated from BYU in Neuroscience. I have absolutely no plans to go into the medical field, so why did I never change my major?
Basically, I never changed my major because for one I felt like the major isn't as important as the type of skills that you learn to develop. I had time out of school to learn and do things that helped bolster my chances of finding a job and a lot of graduate programs would still potentially take me as long as I took a standardized exam. But what I would essentially say is that regardless of your major make sure you're learning/developing one of the following skills:
- Writing
- Coding
- Math
With an effort to develop any of these skills, you'll likely find it much easier to be placed in internships and future jobs. Going into a little more depth, here's a brief snapshot of why I didn't change my major and what could be some possible fields you could go into:
About a year into my studies, I started delving into political discussions and this really got me thinking about law. As I looked into the requirements to become a lawyer, I saw that it absolutely did not matter what major you had, as long as you had a decent LSAT score and GPA you could easily be accepted. So one thought was that a Neuroscience major would help me stand out and a second thought was I could possibly go into Patent Law. This seemed to be my plan for a couple of years, but then in my last 2 years of school I wasn't very sure. I wanted to really look at the options that I could possibly go into. I got a variety of internship experiences during this time by working in a research lab, cryptocurrency startup, think-tank, etc.
Over the summer, I started teaching myself basic programming skills and applied to a lot of internships. I knew that the software field was booming, and thought that perhaps getting experience at a software company could help me really decide what I wanted to do. I finally got an internship at a tech company doing technical documentation and analytics-it ended up being a great mix of experiences to help me learn more about the software field.
At this point I felt like I had a good feel for a variety of different things that I was interested in, but I still wasn't certain with what I wanted to do. I thought about all the experiences I've had, what I enjoyed doing, what I was pretty good at doing, and what would present the best job opportunities. I ended up applying to 2 law schools: The University of Utah and the University of New Hampshire. I was going to apply to more, but I promptly got a reply from both schools that I was accepted. I still have around a 9 months before I actually go, and in the mean time I got hired full time to work as a technical communicator at the company I was doing my internship.
So that's a brief snapshot of why I didn't change my major, but now onto what you could possibly do with a pre-med major.
Pre-med classes teach you to do a lot of abstract thinking, interpret scientific research, critically think, pay great attention to small details, design research projects, and many other things. Some of the top things that come to mind are:
Medical School (of course)
P.A. School
Physical therapy
Chiropractic
Occupational therapy
Clinical Psychologist (Need a PhD)
Computational Biology (Math/Coding background)
Research (Masters/PhD)
Lab technician
Those would be the most obvious ones that come to minds. In my case, jobs that needed good verbal and written communication, needed a slight background in software, and the ability to learn difficult concepts quickly were positions that I was looking for. This ranged from basic technical support, content writing, front-end integration and many other things.
So seriously, don't fret if you chose a pre-med major and have decided you don't want to go to med school but feel like it is too late to switch.
Do your best to develop writing, coding, or math skills and you won't have to worry about what will happen if you don't end up going to medical school.
