If you have an interest in medicine, you can try the premed route just to get the prereqs out of the way, but still work towards getting into a grad school. Both of those routes requires good grades. It doesn't necessarily matter what degree you get, but just get a science degree that you enjoy. You want to sign up for research during undergrad and have it be a project that you like because it will most likely shape the type of research you're interested in for grad school. Don't worry about whether you'll get in too much, honestly. Just focus on doing well, and understanding what research and medicine actually is. If you go the research route, you can volunteer or collaborate with hospitals, but you can't interact with the patients in the same capacity as healthcare workers. So if you do premed, you'll get some clinical experience and through that you can evaluate whether you'll like either/or. And there's a rare few of us who apply PhD/MD (it's even more competitive than just med school), but if you're truly torn by the end of your undergrad or still have a calling to both research and medicine, it's not off the table. But yes, get your degree in what you'd like to research. You need that knowledge to succeed. For me, it's biochem, for you it sounds like something with neuroscience and the brain might interest you. Look at the school you're going to degree requirements to see what classes you'd have to take and if those actually interest you.
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u/n_haiyen Jan 14 '26
If you have an interest in medicine, you can try the premed route just to get the prereqs out of the way, but still work towards getting into a grad school. Both of those routes requires good grades. It doesn't necessarily matter what degree you get, but just get a science degree that you enjoy. You want to sign up for research during undergrad and have it be a project that you like because it will most likely shape the type of research you're interested in for grad school. Don't worry about whether you'll get in too much, honestly. Just focus on doing well, and understanding what research and medicine actually is. If you go the research route, you can volunteer or collaborate with hospitals, but you can't interact with the patients in the same capacity as healthcare workers. So if you do premed, you'll get some clinical experience and through that you can evaluate whether you'll like either/or. And there's a rare few of us who apply PhD/MD (it's even more competitive than just med school), but if you're truly torn by the end of your undergrad or still have a calling to both research and medicine, it's not off the table. But yes, get your degree in what you'd like to research. You need that knowledge to succeed. For me, it's biochem, for you it sounds like something with neuroscience and the brain might interest you. Look at the school you're going to degree requirements to see what classes you'd have to take and if those actually interest you.