Programs Biochemistry major I need advise on picking a minor

[daviddee305]

Biochemistry major... I need advise on picking a minor...

I'm a sophomore majoring in 'Biochemistry & Molecular Biology'. My plan is to pursue a PHD in the bio-sciences (biochemistry, biophysics, bio-engineering) or maybe Nanotechnology.

Between Philosophy, Physics, Math, and Computer Science, which minor would be most beneficial in terms of knowledge, and would look best on my grad school application?

Personally, I would like to minor in Philosophy, but I'm afraid it will look useless on my grad school app, especially if I go the direction of bio/nano-tech.


Any recommendations or comments are appreciated. Thanks...

 

[BoundByAxioms]

You can never take too much math.

 

[naele]

Fellow biochemistry major here. I myself am minoring in mathematics for much the same reason as what BoundByAxioms said. I also think that the logic learned through more advanced mathematics will help no matter what field you enter.

A computer science minor would, of course, have quite a bit of practical value in a general sense.

 

[whybother]

I'd vote for applied math, if that's an option. Lots of biochemists, and chemists in general, are lacking a strong applied mathematics background. Plus, math always helps getting into grad school because it's a great tool to have, regardless of what your research will be in eventually.

 

[bubbles]

I would also vote for math. Computer science if you are interested in computational biology or bioinformatics.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

As an undergrad, I majored in biochemistry and minored in math. I'm now a PhD student in biophysics, and I think that the math courses I took as part of my minor were some of the most useful and interesting courses I took in my undergrad. I definitely wish I took more applied math courses (I took mostly pure math courses) as I now am trying to learn some of the applied math that I skipped over in order to do my research. The pure math courses, however, were still extremely useful as they made some of the advanced p-chem courses (quantum mechanics, stat mech) much easier and made certain concepts in biochemistry/biophysics (for example, x-ray crystallography) much easier to understand.

It probably would have been useful for me to take more computer science and programming classes as an undergrad, but given a limit on the number of classes you can take as an undergrad, it's definitely easier to take the math classes and pick up the programming on your own than the other way around.

 

[daviddee305]

thanks for the feedback everybody, looks like it'll be math...

 

[BoundByAxioms]

I think you made the right choice. I'd recommend you take differential equations and linear algebra at the very least. I'm a math and biology major, who is also taking a lot of chemistry, and math has made all of my science classes much easier. Also, as more of a side note, taking a lot of math classes seems to impress people, too.

 

[Delong]

For now I am a biochemistry major and planning to minor in both math and philosophy.