How Accelerating Premeds Should Actually Choose an Undergrad Major

A step-by-step guide for high achieving premed students who want their time to actually count.

One of the most common questions I get from students and parents is: What should I major in if I want to go to medical school?

Most people expect me to say something like biology, neuroscience, or biochemistry.

But the honest answer is this. Your major matters far less than how you design your timeline. The culture around premed advising often implies there is a correct major. There isn’t, but there can be an incorrect one, if the major causes friction in your timeline, tanks your GPA, or hinders your MCAT preparation.

At the end of this article, find the Fast Track checklist for choosing an efficient major to optimize your timeline and help you get into medical school sooner.

Medical schools in the United States do not require a specific undergraduate major. What they require is completion of prerequisite coursework and demonstration of competencies expected of future physicians. The AAMC explicitly states that students can pursue any major as long as required coursework is completed.

When you look at the data, you see something interesting.

According to the AAMC, students majoring in biological sciences make up the largest group of applicants, but they actually have similar acceptance rates to many other majors like mathematics, humanities, and physical sciences.

So if the major itself does not determine success, what actually matters?

From a Fast Track perspective, your major is a tool for timeline design.

The real goal of your major is simple. Your undergraduate major should allow you to complete medical school prerequisites as soon as possible, protect your GPA, and give you opportunities to build your CV through research, leadership, or meaningful projects, all the while giving you time to study for your MCAT on an accelerated timeline.

In other words, the major should serve your medical school strategy, not clash with it.

Many students choose a major that sounds impressive, only to realize later that the curriculum adds extra work, difficult courses, or conflicts with the medical school application timeline. Only too late do they realize their GPA is blown, they don’t have relevant CV entries and they never got time to study for their MCAT. Their solution? A gap year.

When choosing a major for the purposes of acceleration, efficiency matters.

When I was a student, I also initially thought I needed to choose the most “impressive” sounding science major possible.

But something became clear once I started planning my coursework. The major that allowed me to complete prerequisites, maintain a strong GPA, and still have time for research, clinical exposure, and MCAT studying was not the one that I thought sounded the most impressive.

That realization shaped how I planned and structured my undergraduate years.

Ultimately, that planning helped me accelerate my path and graduate medical school at 23 years old.

The key insight was choosing the major that fit my system.

So, how do you plan your own system?

Understand that medical schools care about specific prerequisite coursework, not your major title.

While requirements vary slightly between schools, most expect students to complete courses such as general biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, biochemistry, and English or writing coursework.

This means a student majoring in biology and a student majoring in economics may complete the exact same premed prerequisites while pursuing entirely different majors. The difference is that the econ major probably had to add on a few extra courses and some of those may have potentially been damaging to their timeline.

Another piece of cold data students need to understand is GPA expectations. According to national admissions data from the AAMC, the average GPA for accepted medical students is around 3.7. That means your major should never be selected purely just because it looks “good for medical school,” especially if the major’s curriculum is known for severe grade deflation or requires unnecessary coursework that threatens your GPA.

Your major can challenge you intellectually, but it should also be strategically manageable.

You are a limited resource. If you are giving your time and energy to extra work, you are taking away from the work that actually matters to your med school admission.

Instead of asking which major looks best for medical school, the more useful question is: Which major allows me to build the strongest medical school application while staying on my timeline?

Some majors are naturally compatible with this goal. Biology and biochemistry align closely with premed prerequisites so the overlap is not just convenient, it can be essential.

But other majors can work extremely well too.

Public health majors often include epidemiology, statistics, and health systems courses that strengthen a medical school application. Psychology majors align well with MCAT behavioral science content and patient centered competencies. Even humanities majors can produce compelling applicants if the student demonstrates strong science performance alongside meaningful clinical and research experiences and the major itself does not add tedious coursework in addition to the main pre-requisites.

The key is designing the academic plan intentionally. You may even need to sit down and plan your next 2-3 years of courses before choosing a major. This exercise can help you find potential pitfalls in specific majors that clash with your timeline.

Also, one of the most powerful strategies in the Fast Track system is choosing courses that accomplish multiple goals at once.

During your undergraduate years, the most valuable classes are those that simultaneously advance your major, fulfill premed prerequisites, and contribute to research or clinical experience.

Integrated research lab courses and “co-op” education programs are excellent examples. They give academic credit, build your CV, and provide mentorship from professors who can later write letters of recommendation. Sometimes they also give you space and time for MCAT studying. This type of efficiency is what gets you into medical school sooner.

Some universities are especially well structured for students pursuing a Fast Track strategy and, in future articles, I will explain the Fast Track strategy for selecting an undergraduate university. For now, the gist is that these kinds of environments allow students to build depth without sacrificing flexibility.

So, there is no one perfect premed major. What matters is alignment.

Your major should support your GPA, satisfy the premed prerequisites, create opportunities for meaningful work, and allow a clear timeline toward medical school.

Everything else is secondary.

In the Fast Track system, your undergraduate major is not an identity. It is part of a long term strategic plan. Students often spend months debating which major to choose. But the real focus should be on designing a system that keeps you moving forward.

The students who succeed in accelerating are rarely the ones who picked the most impressive major. They are the ones who understood the process early and built their undergraduate experience intentionally. And if the major sounds impressive by accident? Well, great!

Choose a major that allows you to graduate with a strong GPA, completed prerequisites, gives you time to study for your MCAT and allows you to build a powerful CV.

If your major helps you accomplish those things without extra work, it is the right one.

Use this checklist to help you:

Fast Trackers to MD Timeline (March):

Fast Track Intensive enrollment is open! Learn how to optimize your premed pathway from high school all the way to MD/DO! If BS/MD doesn’t work out, do you have your plan B? Or C, D, or E? Figure out how to build a robust optimized system so you don’t fall into gap years or wasted time in Fast Track Intensive!

UPDATE: The Complete Fast Track System: I’ve made an update to the Fast Track program structure. From now on, every Fast Track Intensive student will automatically receive Fast Track Foundations ($44.99) for free.

Fast Track Foundations teaches the core strategic mindset behind accelerated medical pathways, specifically how the traditional timeline is inefficient and how students can design multiple contingency plans toward medical school.

Fast Track Intensive then shows you exactly how to execute those plans, from AP optimization and program selection to building a compressed premed timeline and early application strategy.

So instead of separating them, they are now one full Fast Track Course. Enroll in Fast Track Intensive, and you’ll get the entire Fast Track curriculum.

No extra cost or additional purchase required. Just the full system.

For those of you who still want to purchase only the Fast Track Foundations workshop, you can still do so here.

See you there!

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BS/MD programs are one way to accelerate your premed journey, but they are not the only way. I got my MD at 23 and now I teach students how to leverage systems and pathways to help them accelerate.

Find my full course here where we discuss strategies to implement accelerated medical pathways including BS/MD, EAPs, 3-year undergrad curriculums, international acceleration, and 3-year medical schools.

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