Episode 69: Pre-professional Fields

Date of Publication/发布日期

March 5, 2022

Author/发布者

Curtis Westbay

Language/语言

English

Files & media

Volume

Volume 2 2021-2022

What should I major in if I want to be a [lawyer, doctor, businessperson]?

• Straightaway, understand this: students get a JD (Juris Doctor, i.e. the terminal law degree) or an MBA (Master of Business Administration, typically the terminal business degree) from all kinds of different undergraduate majors. In fact, I could go to law school with a degree in Latin, just as could someone with a degree in math. I’m not sure there’s a major that couldn’t lead to law school— they’re looking for things other than technical knowledge. The same goes for an MBA, more or less. Plenty of people have an undergraduate degree entirely unrelated to business, but they still go on to get an MBA.
• The medical fields are a little different. For application to these programs, it’s more about the classes you’ve taken than the major you earned your degree in. For example, you don’t have to major in specifically biology to become a doctor— in fact, many doctors majored in chemistry as undergraduate students. While it’s not required to major in a specific subject to apply to medical school, usually, successful applicants will have majored in something in the life sciences: biology, chemistry, biochemistry, health sciences, nursing, exercise science (also known as kinesiology), etc. Even fields adjacent to these scientific majors— things like public health— can lead to entry at a med school.

Shouldn’t I have a pre-[medicine, law, veterinary, etc.] major?

• Many American colleges don’t have a full, dedicated major called a pre-professional major, like pre-law, for example. Instead, these curricular programs are more like an advisory addendum to a major. By this I mean, you don’t major in pre-law in most cases; instead, you major in something else (e.g. history, political science, environmental science, or whatever else you can think of) and then you take coursework within the pre-law pathway. You might take some classes about law, history, government, etc. A pre-professional track at an American college is designed to ensure that students have the prerequisite coursework to be successful in achieving the goal of entry into a professional school without the restriction of a rigid major requirement.
• So, as to the question of how important it is to participate in a pre-professional undergraduate program, I would argue that it’s still important. If you’re a pre-professional student, it implies that you’ve held this goal to attend a professional school after undergraduate education for several years, and being in a pre-professional program gives you the academic resume that you’ll need to apply. Oftentimes, these programs have trained academic advisers who themselves have attended a professional school, and provide application support, interview preparation, and tutoring for entry exams.

About those entry exams... should I be worried about them now?

• Definitely not. The LSAT (test for law school application) and MCAT (test for med schools) are probably something you’ve heard of before. But for now, students need to focus on building a foundation for college. If your student is an aspiring lawyer, that means a foundation of skill in logic, rhetoric, and argumentation. If your student is an aspiring doctor, that means a foundation of skill in biology and chemistry. These tests can wait until the latter half of undergrad.
• Then, there’s the GRE, a general quantitative and qualitative reasoning test that is broadly used for admission into academic and professional graduate programs. Many MBA programs have the GRE as a required component of the application. Still, it’s just a test of vocabulary, reading comprehension, and mathematical reasoning. This far away from the test, it’s not something to worry about. In fact, most students don’t go directly from undergrad to an MBA program anyway— they first work in some sort of business industry for five or more years before applying. Then, the MBA program is based in that experience that they’ve already had.

Do I need to find activities in high school that align with my eventual goal?

• Not necessarily. In fact, I usually advise students against the mention of future goals for professional degrees, especially in medicine, because it adds an additional lens of scrutiny for undergraduate admission. Students should do activities that inspire them, so if that means volunteering at an animal shelter when the ultimate goal is a veterinary degree, I support that. But a student doesn’t need to create a business startup now just because they want to be an MBA one day. The first goal is undergraduate admission, about which we have spoken a lot in this blog. Once in college, students will have an entirely new set of considerations in the lead up to professional school applications, but first things first: let’s get into an undergraduate program.

Which colleges should I apply to if I want to go to a professional school?

• Students should first understand that admission into an undergraduate program is by no means a guarantee of future admission into admission by a professional school at the same university. That is, getting into the University of Iowa doesn’t mean you’ll be a shoo-in for their veterinary science school.
• Second, the undergraduate school you attend is hardly the foremost consideration for professional schools. Going to an Ivy doesn’t mean that Wharton will take you into their MBA program later on, necessarily.
• All of that said, here are ten schools for law, medicine, and business that have a track record of success in placing students into professional schools. There are many more, so this is just a short list of schools from across the spectrum of selectivity.