I suffer from a bit of an inferiority complex.

No, not because I still haul around CDs for my tunes or because I hail from Maryland, the 9th smallest state. Its just that I feel like a rogue Biology major among my peers — a taboo amidst the sea Penn pre-meds. I’ll admit it — all the talk of the MCATs, mock interviews, and favored Kaplan instructors still intimidates me.

Last Saturday I had the fortune of kicking back at home, marveling at April snow, and watching hours of Law & Order while my fellow bio majors braved hours of a much less entertaining sort — they took the MCAT. The “holy grail” of the pre-med life, this was the test pre-meds had heard about years in advance, studied for months in advance, and panicked from days in advance. But alas, the path to becoming a Grey or McSteamy certainly isn’t the only one available to science types.

Medical school reigns in the hearts and dreams of a good chunk of Penn undergraduates–
29 percent of all graduate school-bound seniors attend medical school, tying only with law school in popularity. This 2006 Career Services Exit Survey also revealed that only 10 percent of graduates who pursued advanced degrees enrolled in natural science, math, and computer science programs, while 5 percent attended alternative medical/health programs.

Data from Career Services’ pre-medical survey shows that Biology majors comprised the largest proportion of budding doctors. 78 Biology majors applied to medical school in 2006. Across all majors in the College, 272 applied and 184 were admitted.

These are impressive figures- 272 reasons to make this Biology major feel as out of place as Don Imus, well, darn near everywhere. What’s a non pre-med to do, besides basking in the comparative sanity of not taking 5 hour full-length practice tests? The answer, according to Penn Biology Professor Dr. Greg Guild, is limitless.

“With science, you can be a lot more creative,” he said. Guild currently advises 40 majors, and having served at Penn for 27 years, he has accumulated many insights. “I remember one advisee, who after being accepted into medical school, realized it’s not what he wanted to do. He wanted to be an architect and declined the admission.”

Certainly, it is socially acceptable to hop on the pre-med train, but Guild points to the multitude of
alternative career options that interest many other students — graduate school, law school, a combination of both, or fields that even Kaplan can’t exploit.

When I look around, the one-up-manship of pre-lecture conversations and post-exam freak-outs creates a false illusion. Not all science grads should pursue the white coat, and, indeed this Leidy Lab devotee won’t be confined by my peers’ medical plans. That is, until ER’s sweeps return in May, and then all bets are off.

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