Franklin & Marshall College

There is no prescribed curriculum or academic track for students pursuing the health professions program at F&M as well as no "pre-med" major. Students with an interest in the health professions need to complete the graduation requirements for F&M in addition to certain courses required for admission to professional schools.  

The primary requirements to graduate from F&M

Foundations: All students during their first-two years, must pass two regularly-graded Foundation courses.

Traditional Areas of Liberal Arts: All students must pass, with a regular grade, at least one course credit in the following categories:

1. Arts
2. Humanities
3. the Social Sciences
4. 2 Natural Sciences with a laboratory

In addition to the above courses, students must fulfill requirements in the following categories:

1. Non-Western Cultures
2. Language Studies
3. Writing
4. Selected Major (and minor if applicable)

There are a variety of ways to complete graduation requirements as well as flexibility within various majors.

Prerequisites for the Health Professions

In general, health professions schools (e.g., medical, dental, veterinary, optometry) require students to take one year each of biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry and physics. Some schools also require such coursework as math (calculus and/or statistics), English (literature and writing-intensive courses), psychology, advanced biology (e.g., genetics, biochemistry, microbiology), and other miscellaneous requirements (e.g., statistics). Most incoming students are advised to ease into health professions requirements by taking General Chemistry, Calculus, a First-Year Seminar, and a fourth course. In general, only students with very strong high school preparations in mathematics and chemistry are successful in pursuing two laboratory courses during the first semester.

What about a major?

There is no one academic major that health professions schools prefer over another. You should choose a major in an area of great interest and intellectual curiosity. If you major in chemistry, physics, or biology, you presumably do so because you are extremely interested in science as well as medicine. It should be noted that, when compared to national statistics of medical school students, F&M graduates stand out for the percentage of non-science majors pursuing medical careers. The diversity, scope, and relevance of F&M majors is reflected in this sampling of the majors among applicants from recent classes:

• American Studies and minor in Religious Studies
• Biological Foundations of Behavior (with a concentration in Neuroscience)
• Biology and minor in Government
• Biology and minor in Music
• Biology with a minor in Sociology
• Chemistry and minor in Classic Archaeology and Ancient History
• Chemistry and minor in Italian
• Classics and minor in Greek
• Joint major in Biology and Government
• Special Studies major in Cross-Cultural Studies of Medicine
• Special Studies major in Hispanic World Cultures

Health professions students who are science majors extend from the more traditional study of chemistry to combining psychology and biology in the major "Biological Foundations of Behavior." Many of our science students have joint-majors or minors with the humanities and social sciences. For example, current applicants to medical school have combined their biology interests in such areas as government, music, sociology, and psychology. Recent chemistry majors have pursued minors in areas such as Italian, classical archaeology, and ancient history.