What Can You Do with a Health Science Degree? Tips for Graduate School Success

By Dr. Rick Roberts

As a health science professor at Grace College, I know that my students want a strong degree that prepares them for the future. For most undergraduates, the next step is graduate school. Most advanced health careers will require at least two years of graduate study to be a trained and proficient healthcare provider. Our health science degree at Grace College prepares you for this transition and a variety of medical jobs, and 90% of our health science grads have been accepted to graduate programs. If you are asking, What can you do with a health science degree?, look no further than Grace. 

In order to adequately prepare our students, we have looked at what each health area requires for getting into graduate programs. We also have multiple concentrations that allow students to focus on what healthcare area they want to pursue, ranging from pre medicine and pre chiropractic to pre dental and pre physical therapy. And how do you prepare for graduate school? Let me share some of my best advice with you. 

Minor Outside the Natural Sciences

When you are applying to graduate schools, you want to show that you are more than just another science major. You bring special talents and perspectives to the table. I advise that minoring in something outside of the typical sciences will demonstrate your range of skills and set you apart from other applicants. Grace’s health science program is streamlined compared to our biology and exercise science programs, allowing you to dedicate time in your schedule to a unique minor. Instead of simply choosing chemistry or biology as your minor, look at options in other academic departments, like arts and humanities. Choose something that you enjoy or that you’re interested in, whether that’s Spanish or photography, to strengthen and diversify your application to graduate school.

Prepare for Challenging Classes

It’s not a secret that medical school is challenging. However, health science students know it’s necessary to complete difficult coursework to prepare for a job in the medical field. While you’re an undergraduate, one of your first tasks is to find your academic strengths and weaknesses. You want to develop solid study skills, because future graduate school courses have a much faster pace than a typical undergraduate class.

Our accelerated class sessions help prepare you for higher-level classes as an undergraduate. After communicating with our alumni, many of them have actually said having classes in a more condensed format of seven and a half weeks helped them discover how to rapidly learn new information efficiently and built strong studying habits that benefited them down the road. 

At Grace, I tell prospective students our goal is not to get you into a graduate program, whether it’s a medical school, dental school, or veterinary school. Our goal is that when you get there, you’ll be equipped to be successful. 

Develop a Clear Career Vision

Whether you are studying pre chiropractic or pre physical therapy, setting a clear academic path is important to success. The earlier you explore the question, What can you do with a health science degree?, the better. In my experience, students who choose this major already have a sense that God is calling them into an area of healthcare, and they typically have the academic abilities to see themselves being successful in grad school. 

For those unsure of their calling in healthcare, we purposely plan the first year of health science courses at Grace to provide you with a flexible entry into the field. You’ll get a taste of the basic sciences critical to each concentration through a mix of classes to help you choose which concentration you would like. In the second-year Health Sciences Seminar class, you’ll also have the opportunity to explore the different health professions represented by our variety of concentrations. 

No matter what concentration you enter with, each starts with the same classes during the first year, from pre medicine to pre veterinary, and even our biology and environmental biology degrees. This gives you more freedom to see which concentration matches your interests without worrying about commitments to a specific academic pathway. 

So, what can you do with a health science degree? There are many options, and our Grace faculty are here to help you feel confident in your choice. Through diversifying your graduate school application to our accelerated class experience, you’ll be well prepared for wherever your degree takes you. 

If you’re considering what you can do with a degree in health science in the workforce, read What Jobs Can You Get with a Health Science Degree?