The newly redesigned BIOL B.A. major offers excellent preparation for those students whose career goals include clinical training in allied health professions such as dental hygiene, medical and research technology, nursing, pharmacy and physical therapy. The requirements for admission to these programs overlaps substantially with the BIOL B.A. degree. Many students who go on to this type of clinical training will complete only two or three years at UMBC and will not receive a UMBC degree. However, many students will go on to complete their UMBC bachelor's degree and those students consider a BIOL degree. The BIOL B.A. program has been redesigned to reduce the number of courses that allied health students require to finish the major.

In the old BIOL curriculum the courses BIOL 275 Microbiology and BIOL 251/BIOL 252 Human Anatomy & Physiology were not recognized as satisfying any major requirements. All of the allied health pre-professional courses require Microbiology and/or Human Anatomy & Physiology, so students who were majoring in BIOL had to take these courses as add-ons to the major curriculum. The revision of the BIOL B.A. includes an opportunity for students to use either BIOL 275 or the combination of BIOL 251 and BIOL 252 as one of the Junior-level electives. The major requires a second BIOL 4XX elective, which can be BIOL 430 Biological Chemistry, which satisfies the pre-pharmacy requirement for a one-semester biochemistry class.

The pre-medical technology, pre-nursing and pre-physical therapy programs include non-major courses in Chemistry, CHEM 123/CHEM 124 Introduction to General, Organic and Biochemistry I and II. The courses do satisfy requirements for the BIOL minor program but they do not satisfy requirements for either BIOL major. Students who would like to earn a BIOL B.A. or B.S. should substitute CHEM 123/124 with CHEM 101/CHEM 102 Principles of Chemistry I and II. These courses are major courses in Chemistry and satisfy requirements for BIOL B.A. and B.S. degrees.