It might not come as a big surprise that electrical engineering is one of the highest-paying bachelor’s degrees. What might surprise you, on the other hand, is how some students leverage their electrical engineering undergraduate background to pursue a career in law or medicine. Although many students don’t realize it, an electrical engineering curriculum helps you develop the skills that are valuable in law school and medical school.
Traditional Paths to Law and Medical Degrees
To earn either your law school degree (Juris Doctor, or J.D.) or your medical degree (a Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, also known as M.D. or D.O.), you need exceptional performance in your academic pursuits. What you don’t necessarily need to be accepted into either of these advanced, competitive programs of study is a specific major. Having a substantial science background is important for success in medical school, but you don’t necessarily need to major in pre-medical studies, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Law school students come from every discipline, the American Bar Association reported.
What’s most important for success in law school and medical school isn’t knowledge of one specific discipline, but instead the skills to succeed in classroom and clinical settings. These skills are integrated into the coursework of an electrical engineering program.
Going to Law School as an Electrical Engineer
As technological innovation continues to evolve, understanding the laws that govern scientific breakthroughs and the tech industry has also become increasingly complex. If you’re interested in the laws and policies that pertain to technology, starting your college studies in electrical engineering can give you a unique background in the technical aspects of these fields. Law school students who enter the field from a more traditional major, like English or liberal arts, may struggle to understand the highly technical concepts involved in the tech industry, even if they excel at the study of law.
Some universities even offer joint graduate degree programs in law and electrical engineering. In a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Science in Electrical Engineering program, you combine classes in both law and engineering. Alongside your coursework in circuits, software and hardware systems, communications and networking, physical technology and signal processing and optimization, you’ll take classes in civil and criminal procedure and in legal writing. You might take specialized courses in the regulation of artificial intelligence technology, free speech and the Internet, cryptocurrency law and policy, intellectual property, technology and patent licensing, information privacy, digital technology and more.
A benefit to majoring in electrical engineering, rather than liberal arts, is that a bachelor’s degree is sufficient to get started in a career path with a six-figure median salary, according to the BLS. If plans change or you take a gap year, you still have excellent career potential.
Electrical Engineering and Medical School
You learn a lot of technical skills in an electrical engineering program, but you also learn a lot of high-level, versatile skills that can help you make it through medical school. Developing competency in logical and critical thinking and in problem-solving is especially valuable for aspiring doctors, according to IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
You could even use your knowledge of the design and function of electrical systems to better understand parts of the human body. The heart, for example, has similarities with an electrical pump connected to an elastic hose, the IEEE explained. Although you still need to understand the specific parts of the human cardiovascular system and their functions, you can draw valuable parallels between troubleshooting a malfunctioning electrical pump and practicing the medical specialty of cardiology.
All that being said, if you only take the bare minimum of laboratory science courses required for your engineering studies, that might not be sufficient to meet the prerequisites for medical school, according to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). This means you will need to strategically plan your coursework and, possibly, use a fifth year of undergraduate study to fit in all of your classes. You will also want to make time to participate in research and extracurricular activities that share some common ground with healthcare and medicine as all as engineering.
There are also engineering schools that offer an interdisciplinary pre-med option for electrical engineering students. A pre-medical engineering program will include a much heavier emphasis on biology and chemistry courses, along with your engineering studies.
Additional Resources
What Classes Will I Have to Take for a Degree in Electrical Engineering?