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Biology

It is the degree people pick to become a doctor. Nearly half the people who start it finish in something else.

Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-05.

Try the career before you pick the major

Most people here are aiming at medicine. Spend five minutes making a doctor's calls before you spend four years getting ready to.

Room 4 · his file

Sam Torres, 58 · chest pain

  • •burning, middle of his chest, comes and goes
  • •that’s all anyone has asked him so far

the opening line, nothing else yet

Ask him about it, then tell me what you think is wrong with him. How you got there matters more than being right.

You are in the room with Sam and you have five minutes. Which questions do you ask him?

The pain itselfThe moments it hit

Try a day as a physician

A short, playful taste of the real work.

Try it out
Where it leads

Health work first, most of it becoming a physician, the doctor who examines patients and works out what is wrong, then research and teaching. Most of it needs another degree on top: by 35 to 45, 64 out of every 100 biology graduates have one.

The week

Fifteen hours of lectures and labs, with roughly 30 hours of your own work behind them. Most of those 30 are problem sets and write ups, and a lot of them are chemistry.

What people earn four years after they finish
WEAKEST PROGRAMS$45,860TYPICAL$57,546TOP PROGRAMS$71,160

Where people end up

Where biology and physical science graduates had landed one year out, counted per 100 of the ones in work.

  • Nurse or health technician21%
  • Scientist or engineer18%
  • Salesperson13%
  • Teacher11%
  • Builder, driver or tradesperson6%

Another 31 were somewhere none of these five names reaches. The ones going to medical school are not in this picture at all: a year after finishing they are still students.

Top ways to become a physician.

What a week is like

You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.

About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.

It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.

A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.

  • In class15 hours
  • Work on your own30 hours
  • Yours67 hours

What those 45 hours are spent on.

  • with other people

    Cells, genetics, evolution and how a body works, in rooms that hold a few hundred people in the first two years and thirty in the last two.

  • with other people

    Three or four hours at a bench at a time, following a procedure, writing down what happened, and then explaining why it did not happen the way the procedure said. Chemistry labs and biology labs, most terms, both.

  • with other people

    Calculus, statistics and a year of physics. They are the classes people forget are in this degree, and they are in it.

  • on your ownthe hard part

    Two years of it, general chemistry and then organic, and it is the part of this degree people leave over. The work is drawing what happens to molecules, over and over, until you can see the next step before you write it.

  • on your own

    The report is due whether or not the experiment worked, and writing up a result that came out wrong takes longer than writing up one that came out right.

  • on your own

    The general classes nobody escapes, whatever their major: writing, a humanities course, a social science one. In your first two years they are close to a third of what you sit.

  • Biology classes and labs25%
  • Chemistry, physics and maths44%
  • Everything else you still have to take31%
  • Classes you pick yourself0%

Nearly half of your first year is chemistry and maths rather than biology, and you pick none of it.

How much do you make?

The people the $57,214 counts are the ones who stopped at the four year degree, and most biology graduates do not stop there. By 35 to 45, 64 out of every 100 of them hold a graduate degree, which is more than almost any other major.

  1. Right out of college

    $57,214

    Four years after finishing, the average biology graduate earns $57,214, and everyone it counts is working and not back in school.

  2. Midway through

    $83,000

    Between 35 and 45, the average biology graduate earns $83,000.

  3. At the height of it

    $171,790

    The best paid tenth of people doing healthcare work earn $171,790.

Four years of biology on its own pays $57,214. The jump to $83,000 by your late thirties is mostly what the second degree pays.

Where you study moves it a little. The weakest biology programs land graduates at $45,860 and the strongest at $71,160. A graduate of the best biology programs still earns less than a graduate of the weakest nursing programs, who lands at $73,921.

What each biology degree pays four years after finishing.

  • Cell biology$66,697
  • Biochemistry$65,466
  • Microbiology$62,582
  • Neuroscience$62,451
  • Biology$57,214
  • Zoology$44,055

Plain biology is by far the biggest of these and one of the lowest paid of them: about seven times as many people finish it as finish biochemistry.

The average money still owed on student loans

$23,412

The standard plan clears it in ten years.

Is this you?

The thinning happens in chemistry, and it happens in stages rather than all at once: general chemistry, then a second term of it, then two terms of organic. Nearly half the people who start a biology degree have left the field within six years, and the accounts of it are all the same shape. One doctor counted their own year: 800 people came in as pre med, 600 after the first chemistry course, 400 after the second, 270 after the first organic, 210 after the second, and 160 went on to medical school. If chemistry is the thing you are hoping to get past on the way to biology, this degree is mostly chemistry for two years.

Tap any that sound like you.

This is probably you if

Probably not you if

What people who did it say

  • mimelim, a vascular surgeon

    Student Doctor Network, March 2013

    "My undergrad had 1500 students per class, of which 800 were pre-med coming in. After gen chem 1 - 600 After gen chem 2 - 400 After orgo 1 - 270 After orgo 2 - 210 On graduation 160 went on to matriculate in MD programs. Don’t know what happened to the other 50."

  • A Nony Mouse

    Student Doctor Network, March 2013

    "The number of PreMeds divides in half after each chemistry course."

  • Roxas, a physician

    Student Doctor Network, March 2013

    "O-chem by faaaaaar! Last year, 1 section only had 12/50 pass O-chem 1, with the highest grade being a B-. Typical is around here is around 50-60% failing each semester"

  • seanmcdirmid

    Hacker News, January 2020

    "Biology is one of the lower paid STEM disciplines, and the toughest to break into professorships. Most biology majors are just premed anyways."

Questions people ask

Is a biology degree worth it?
On its own it pays $57,214 four years out, which is below most degrees here, and $23,412 of debt goes with it. It is worth it if you are going on to something else afterwards, which is what 64 out of every 100 biology graduates do.
Do you have to major in biology to get into medical school?
No, and it is not the edge people think. Biology students are the biggest group of applicants by far, and they got in at 43.4 percent, against 51.8 percent for people who majored in humanities and 52.3 percent for maths and statistics.
What is the hardest part of a biology major?
Chemistry, in four stages: two terms of general chemistry and then two of organic. Nearly half the people who start a biology degree have left the field within six years, and this sequence is where most of them go.
What can you do with a biology degree?
Health work takes the largest share, then lab and research work, teaching, and selling scientific and medical products. Most of the health routes need a second degree first.
How many hours a week is a biology degree?
Around 45 hours all told, the same as any degree. What is different is where they go: labs run three or four hours at a stretch, and about ten of your own hours a week are chemistry.

Where these numbers come from

See the other majors