Students may elect to satisfy their breadth elective requirements by completing an Institute approved minor. A list of minors can be found at https://catalog.gatech.edu/programs/#minorstext. Minors are a minimum of 15 hours, although some minor courses have prerequisite courses that students will need to take as well. Guidelines and requirements for minors are found here: http://catalog.gatech.edu/academics/minors/#minorsofferedtext.

Students may elect to satisfy their breadth elective requirement by completing a certificate. A list of most certificates can be found here, although this list is subject to change, you may want to visit individual departmental websites as well. Certificates are a minimum of 12 hours, although some certificates have prerequisite courses that students will need to take as well. For certificates less than 15 hours, students can use any other course to satisfy the remaining needed credit hours to satisfy the required 15 hours of the breadth electives, including research.

There is no designation or track for pre-health at Georgia Tech, no pre-health minor or certificate. BME students who are pre-health, meaning they are seeking a career in the healthcare field (medical, dental, pharmacological, etc.), will take the same curriculum as all the other BME students, with the exception of their Chemistry courses. Students who are not pursuing a pre-health degree will take the following Chemistry classes:

• CHEM 1211K, General Chemistry (with lab), four credits
• CHEM 1315, Survey of Organic Chemistry, three credits

Students who are pursuing a pre-health degree will take the following Chemistry classes:

• CHEM 1211K, General Chemistry I (with lab), four credits
• CHEM 1212K, General Chemistry II, four credits
• CHEM 2311, Organic Chemistry I, three credits
• CHEM 2312, Organic Chemistry II, three credits
• CHEM 2380, Synthesis Lab, two credits
• CHEM 3511, Survey of Biochemistry, or CHEM 4511, Biochemistry I and CHEM 4512 Biochemistry II, three credits

Note: In addition to the Chemistry requirements, pre-health students also are required to have taken two semesters of English, two semesters of Calculus, two semesters of Physics with lab, and two semesters of Biology with lab prior to matriculating into a U.S. medical school. The two semester Biology requirement can be satisfied in the BME curriculum with BMED 3100/4853, Systems Physiology, BMED 3110, Quantitative Engineering Physiology Lab I, BMED 3600, Cellular and Molecular Physiology Systems, and BMED 3610, Quantitative Engineering Physiology Lab II.

Georgia Tech Pre-Health Advising
Students interested in pre-health should become familiar with the pre-health website and register for their Canvas page, listserve and Piazza page: http://www.prehealth.gatech.edu. Georgia Tech has two pre-health advisors who work with Tech students interested in health related careers. Here is information on making an appointment with the pre-health advisor: https://prehealth.gatech.edu/schedule-an-appointment/.

The Research Option provides students a substantial, in-depth research experience. To complete the Research Option, students must do at least nine hours of research for either credit or pay, six hours of which must be in the same lab. Students also take two thesis writing courses, LMC 4701 and LMC 4702, and will write a thesis. To complete the Research Option, the thesis must be approved and graded by the student’s faculty research mentor and one additional faculty member (“second reader”). If students are using the Research Option to fulfill their 15 required hours of breadth electives, they can do research anywhere at Georgia Tech, their research does not have to be in an engineering department, or in engineering at all. For more information on the Research Option, go here: http://undergradresearch.gatech.edu/research-option

If students complete the Research Option by doing less than the 15 hours of required breadth electives, they can use any fallthrough elective credit hours to substitute towards the 15 hours. For example, a student does six hours of research for credit, is awarded PURA for one semester and does three hours for pay, takes the two one credit LMC courses and writes the thesis. In this scenario, the student has satisfied the requirements for the Research Option with nine total hours of research (six for credit, three for pay), and has a total of eight hours of credit including the two thesis courses. The student will still need seven hours of credit in other courses to achieve the 15 required hours for breadth elective credit, and can satisfy this with any fallthrough courses.

Students cannot use research to satisfy the Research Option requirement for the breadth electives, and also to satisfy depth elective credit. Research must be used for one or the other. If students are using the Research Option to satisfy breadth elective credit, they will need to fulfill their 12 hours of depth electives by taking approved depth elective courses.