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<username>Ian Wong</username>
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<pagetext>Hi Bran,
I've outlined some of my thoughts here:
premed101.com/undergrad.html#major (http://premed101.com/undergrad.html#major)
A couple of points. The first is that if you take a variety of courses in your first year of university, you still have a fair amount of flexibility in which majors you can still access. As a person who took the "standard" set of science courses in first year, I could have gone into Chemistry or Physics in second year university fairly easily, instead of the Biology degree that I ended up working towards. The exception to this are some of the more "professional" undergrad degrees, such as Engineering or Pharmacy, where your schedules are much more tightly controlled and inflexible.
The second point is that you need to consider what happens after university. Most university graduates then look for jobs. If you are still decided on applying to medical school, that's great, but many people who finish undergrad who originally wanted to become doctors have found other jobs that interest them more. If you are one of those people who decide after university that medicine is not the career for you, then it's much more reassuring to know that your university degree has prepared you to find a job that you love.
Finally, don't pick a major based on what you think the medical school is looking for. If you do well at your major, whatever it happens to be, you'll be in the running for medical school. Four years of university is a long time to spend in a program if you aren't too keen on it, and only chose it to "stand out" from the crowd.
Ian
UBC, Med 3