More about Premedical Studies

We are truly excited that you are interested in a career in health and look forward to meeting you in the fall!  There will be a session especially for students interested in health careers as part of Orientation, but in the meantime we offer the following guidelines to help you as you preregister for fall courses. 

We have based a set of guidelines (pdf) on the prerequisite courses for the study of human medicine (the degree of M.D.), because many incoming students have just that career in mind.  But this template is useful if your interests are in veterinary medicine, dentistry, nursing, or any other large number of health professions (genetic counselor, midwife, physician’s assistant, chiropractor, physical therapist).  Though the requirements for these careers may diverge as early as sophomore year, they all require a firm background in the sciences, so that’s a good place for you to begin.  Note that no health-related career, medicine included, requires a particular major.  Thus while it is wise to include up to two courses in your first semester that meet the requirements for a career in the health professions, try to balance your schedule and explore potential areas of interest by signing up for courses that really interest you.  There are at least two reasons to do so:  first, no postgraduate degree programs look for cookie-cutter applicants, and second, intellectual exploration and discovery is the basic joy of a liberal arts education.  The guidelines (pdf link above) covers every premedical course you would need in four years at Mount Holyoke, but you only have to concern yourself now with picking two introductory (100 level) courses.  Please note that we recommend against taking more than two lab sciences in the first semester, and we very strongly recommend against taking two lab sciences in combination with calculus.

Some students need not follow this premedical template of courses.  Students very interested in health policy, community health, international health or the intersection between culture and disease would be best served by looking into courses in the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics) and humanities (history, languages, literature, philosophy) in addition to the natural and physical sciences.  Interdisciplinary interests in health and society could lead to postgraduate study in Public Health, a very broad area spanning careers in international or community health, epidemiology and health policy, among many others.  Degree programs in public health accept students from a truly wide variety of undergraduate curricula.  If this catches your interest, you also might like to explore the Five College Culture Health and Science website at www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/chs.  CHS offers a certificate program which complements a traditional disciplinary major.