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[Ohlawdy]

Ever since I took Biology in my first year of high school I have loved the biological sciences and wanted to go to medical school. It is now my first year of college and now that I am living on my own I have started getting a better idea of how much money I need to live in my ideal circumstances (though I still have no idea). I am also starting to seriously look at the job market and I always want to plan for the worst just in case.
I realize my faults and I have come to terms that I am not a very good student. I either do really good in a class or fail miserably. I have never been competitive academically. I realize that realistically speaking I may end up not being competitive enough to get into any medical school. I also know for a fact that I would be walking into medical school with no financial assistance, nor any savings and would have to take out 100% of my living costs and tuition in loans or if I am lucky enough, scholarships. I am "blessed" with my families low income that I get a free ride with college from the government. I could get my bachelors for practically free.

I've been looking and keeping an eye out for jobs (that seem somewhat interesting to me) as if I had a BS in Biology just to see what the job market is like now for someone that didn't get in medical school. From what I see, until I get Anywhere from 3-5 years of experience I'm working temporary jobs (usually lasts a year) for about $10-$16 an hour, some of which are less than 30 hours a week. After I get that experience I can get salaried positions which appears to cap out at around > $50,000 a year unless I get lucky. I'm not too interested in getting a Ph.D. I believe I would get pretty damn picky with my jobs in biology. I love the lab setting and microscopes and all that cool shit.

My other choice is Computer Science. I grew up with computers, I have family in at least IT (but I also have a bunch of doctors and nurses). Everything, from hardware to software has interested me and I have dabbled in a few programming language (I personally prefer C++). Network stuff is pretty interesting but not my first choice. I live in Washington so Seattle would probably always be a good place to get a job after getting my degree. Other than tech support I don't believe I would be too picky with my job, unlike biology.

I could technically do Computer Science Pre-Med but it would be very awkward schedule wise and it would mean only taking the bare essentials that medical schools require. How I would do on the MCAT with just the bare essentials is a scary thought. I could always get do an extra year of college if I am willing to take out loans (apparently my state grants would disappear after a quarter or two in 5th year). A small price to pay for still having a shot at your dreams.

Everything and everyone says that internships are a big deal in computer science and that programming projects will take up a good amount of your time. This presents the problem that I would have to try to balance that along with my volunteering, shadowing, and job if I wanted to be able to do anymore than pay rent and buy ramen. I also don't know how I will handle taking computer science courses while taking biochem and physics. It could possibly kill my GPA. Double majoring is in no way an option. I would be doing 7 (6 if I took tons of classes in the summers) years of college with how my school is set up. I would run out of financial aid and have tons of debt by then.

To me it looks like the problem is dreams vs. security and how much of a risk I am willing to take. I guess all I can ask is what are people's experience with computer science or pre-med. Am I seeing the job market for people with BS's in Biology through thorny and broken glasses? What about BS in Chemistry? Is the job market in computer science really as good as people say it is, especially if you aren't picky? I'm talking to my adviser and career services to see what my options are and to get more information but sometimes it is nice to talk to people whose job isn't to give advice.


EDIT: No, my university does not have any kind of major that fuses computer science with any other field. Apparently some schools have I believe bioinformatic majors, but I could be wrong.

[Muz]

There's a very highly paid field for people who do programming for medical tools. I believe it's under electrical engineering, though, and requires good knowledge and passion for both. Might be your niche.

Or heck, maybe just take elec engineering, and keep an eye open for biomedical machinery jobs (and freelance on programming jobs in the meantime).

Medical school is hell. I know a lot of friends who get through the first 4 years or so ok, then decide to quit once they start working. Or some very smart ones drop out near the end of their studies. I mean, to be frank, you do need a parachute if you plan to go there. Retention rate, even for incredibly smart people is poor. I'm not a doctor, but have plenty of friends who did it, and half dropped out or went insane. Maybe someone with medical experience could give a better perspective. Most of the people who do well are actually children of doctors, and I doubt you have that kind of head start.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Also, if you don't do well enough in med school exams you can be banned from the field permanently for it. Given what you've told us of your financial situation, you don't have the money to recover from not succeeding in med school. Long story short, unless you are willing to take a high risk bet and put it all on the line, I would not go down that path. On the other hand, you'll only ever have one chance to define your career.

So if you're going to do it, then do it and don't look back.

[GlyphGryph]

Though "from the field" is from the medical profession specifically - I believe you can still do medical research work.

But seriously becoming a medical doctor is like the most of the biological science application fields. Go do some SCIENCE! instead!

[martinuzz]

I did both. Well, I did 3 years of biology at university, and 2 months of applied informatics. I quit the latter because IMO it was utterly boring. I'm not a person to be staring at logical formulae and find more efficient ways to formulate code all day.

Biology is a *very* broad study. It is true, that about 85% of biology students (at least in Holland), end up specializing in FBMS (fundamental biomedic sciences), in other words, they get to develop new medicine, breed mice that glow in the dark, and develop software that can show you how a complex protein folds in a 3d watery environment (hey! computer science as well as biology, all in the same class, maybe that's something for you), but there's a wide range of other fields within the study, which I personally found more interesting than 'mainstream' FBMS. I am still fascinated for example by the magnificent complexity of a single living cell, that is explored by the field of Cellular Biology. Or the evolution over time of neural networks, and it's correlation with behaviour, studied by Neurobiology and Ethology respectively.

Writing this, I still feel some spite for not being able to complete that study. So if you ask me, I'd recommend biology. You'll learn enough computer science there as well nowadays.

[ChairmanPoo]

If you like biology I think medical school is a good choice. Plus afterwards the specializations offer you a broad range of options, from the very hands-on to more people oriented specialities, or more lab and/or r&d oriented.

It's hard of course, but it's doable. If you *really* want it go for it, I say.

[Djohaal]

I picked the medical school path, and now I'm considering doing computer sciences after I graduate. Medicine is a huge commitment, and often isn't exactly fulfilling. Plus the pressure and whole culture that involves medical education, which pretty much... sucks. I'd rather have chosen a more carefree career.

[Terra_Inc]

Well, classical computer science is a bit different from the applied stuff many folks are doing today. My uni has a very balanced CS bachelor, but still we had waaay more theory courses than actual software development courses. And with theory I don't just mean 'learning how to write efficient code', but hardcore mathematics: group theory, coding theory, combinatorics, basic logic (including predicate logic up to 2nd order) etc. Later on you'll also do the foundations of programming, such as automata theory, formal languages and grammar, computability theory and complexity theory.

That said, once you have these basics done, you can do a ton of stuff, depending on how much your uni offers. Ranging from purely theoretical CS over networks and databases to awesome stuff like software engineering and robotics.

Currently, I'm doing a bit of bio on the side, since I'm required to take some courses from another dept., and I'm really surprised at how different it is. It's all very chemical, and a lot more memorization than I'm used to.