Creating a Unique Academic Experience

As a student in the College of Arts & Sciences, I have a plethora of majors and minors to decide from. While this was one of the reasons I was drawn to the College when applying to Penn, it’s honestly overwhelming in practice. Throughout my first year, I remained undecided, taking a variety of classes from Spanish Literature to Calculus II. However, after taking Introduction to Biology I in my sophomore fall, I knew that I wanted to study biology more in-depth. I was drawn to the real-life applications of biology, and the logic puzzles that we unraveled during lectures. While there are a number of concentrations within the Biology major, I decided to pursue the General Biology track so that I would be exposed to many different areas like evolutionary biology and immunology. As someone who hopes to apply to medical school in the future, I also liked how heavily intertwined the Biology major was with the medical school course requirements.

Beyond biology, I’ve always been interested in the more humanistic side of medicine, including access to health care and inequities in the healthcare system. While this could not be satiated by the Biology major, I had the option to take Healthcare Management courses in the Wharton School. This semester, I’m taking a Health Care Systems course, HCMG 1010. We started off learning about the basic structure of the U.S. healthcare system in this course, then went in-depth into hospitals, doctors, and nurses. We have had a number of esteemed speakers from the Penn health system and beyond, who supplement the content we are learning in class. While I could not major in Healthcare Management, as it is a concentration offered at the Wharton School, I’m planning to complete the Neuroscience & Healthcare Management minor. This is an interschool minor between the College and the Wharton School that I am taking full advantage of it. This minor allows me to explore the humanistic side of medicine, and explore a complex area of biology: neurobiology. The diversity of this minor is just one example of how the College has allowed me to create a unique academic experience that I am grateful for.

- Aleena B.