SELECTING A MAJOR

Selecting and enjoying the path to your medical career is important.  Although each path is different, it should provide you with experiences that will prepare you sufficiently for the rigors of medical school admission and the challenges of its curriculum, but also allow you to enjoy the journey.  Consequently, choosing a major should be a personal decision that balances your enjoyment and passion for certain elements of your career while shoring up weaknesses that may be exposed in an assessment of your skill sets or your mastery of important concepts.  In the best of all worlds, you should enjoy the subject matter of your courses while strengthening weak elements in your curriculum.  For example, choosing to take “medically-related” courses at the expense of Physics simply because you have an academic phobia of the subject may make for a more enjoyable curriculum, but also may detrimentally affect your MCAT scores.  In turn, this will ultimately affect your chances of being admitted into medical school or hinder your development as a physician. 

            Each major available at Truman offers different strengths and weaknesses.  The trick is to select a curriculum that will complement your needs and make you into a more marketable candidate for medical school and a better prepared physician.  Try to strike a balance between coursework and experiences that will train you in the core elements of medicine, but allow you to diversify and broaden the content of your knowledge base. 

            As a Liberal Arts institution, Truman strives to produce students that are broadly trained.  Consequently, this philosophy advocates diversification of the students’ curricular and extracurricular experiences and, more specifically, bets that this strategy will better prepare physicians to synergistically incorporate information in a wider context.   We are betting that the cumulative sum of these experiences will lead to physicians that assess problems and define solutions more efficiently. 

            Although most students major in Biology, Exercise Science, Health Science, Chemistry or Physics, it is not unheard of majors from other disciplines being accepted into medical school and becoming contributing members to the medical profession.  It is important you familiarize yourself with the different curricula and sequences available and ask your advisor how these fit within your interests and goals.  Most disciplines have advisors that are specifically selected to advise students interested in medicine and you should make a point to visit them regarding your decision or any questions you might have. 

Dana Delaware:    Chemistry

Roberta Donahue or Janice Young:  Health Sciences

Jose Herrera:     Biology

Jeremy Houser:  Health and Exercise Sciences

-J. Herrera