By ERIC MESSINGER

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Pre-med students tend to show a lot of variety. Many are brilliant, more are stressed-out, some are intense and all of them hope to live through the chemistry core. And since Stanford doesn’t offer a pre-med major, students take their studies in many different directions, including their choices for majors.

One of the most popular options for pre-med students is to major in Biology or Human Biology (Hum Bio), which overlap in focus and required courses with pre-med requirements. While Biology offers a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Hum Bio students earn a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and are free to pursue more humanities courses within the major. Many students find this balance attractive in choosing their courses of study.

“I’m interested in aspects of the humanities,” said Sara Parke ‘09, a Hum Bio major. “I like political issues, poetry, writing and other ‘fuzzier’ activities, and this provided a broader scope.”

“I believe that Human Biology would be more applicable to me as a doctor,” added Stacey Chu ‘11, a Hum Bio major. “Biology, certainly, involves a more detailed understanding of the more minute parts of animals and plants. Human Biology, however, encompasses the social and cultural side as well, aspects that I believe would be important to get a grasp on as a doctor working with people.”

Other students find themselves more interested in the hard sciences, though they occasionally feel taxed by the combination of scientific and pre-medical training.

“It’s hard when you take the higher-level math and engineering courses” said Shashank Ravi ‘10, a Chemical Engineering (Chem-E) major. “I sort of use that as an excuse for not doing as well.”

Still, those pursuing rigorous tracks can pick themselves out of a crowd.

“You definitely know who the other Chem-E kids are,” Ravi said.

With double majors increasingly popular, some students find themselves bridging the Farm’s science-humanities divide, especially with opportunities for interdisciplinary work.

“I wanted a major that would allow me to take classes that were of my own particular interests,” said Ginille Lazaro ‘09, who is double-majoring in Hum Bio and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE). “I have been able to look at the ‘human’ side of medicine through my major and the public service courses that I have had the opportunity to take.”

“Because CSRE has a public service concentration track,” Lazaro added, “I have the opportunity to engage in many service projects and coursework that are related to minorities in health.”

Other pre-meds have found themselves gravitating towards Classics, a traditional home for students who want to spend time with Plato and Catullus, for a kind of complexity different from that of organic chemistry.

“Classics has done wonders to complement my science classes,” said Classics major Nikita Vashi ‘09. “Not only does it have direct applications, for instance in that a lot of medical/scientific terminology has linguistic roots in Ancient Greek, but there are so many connections between the fields that, to this day, surprise me every time they pop up.”

Classics major Jiahui Lin ‘10, who had been pursuing a degree in Biomedical Engineering, also found a home working with the ancients and revisiting the Latin she had taken in high school.

“It sounds cheesy, but when I switched in I fell in love with it again,” Lin said.

“Plus at the Classics socials they have better food, and I’m a big foodie, so I definitely think it was a good decision,” she added.

Regardless of their choice, many pre-med students find themselves bonding closely with other pre-meds, often more than with their peers in a major.

“Pre-meds share a certain camaraderie that’s absent in other student populations,” said Steve Ko ‘11, who plans to double-major in Spanish and either Biology or Hum Bio. “After all, how can two not become close after suffering through the Stanford chemistry department together?”

Pre-meds often enter college knowing they want to go to medical school, and the common observation is that the number of pre-meds falls over the course of four years. Still, some students find themselves pulled into the track later than they expected, drawn by the possibilities of medicine.

“I basically had my major picked out before I became pre-med,” said Kristine Baluyot ‘10, a Psychology major. “But I started to become unhappy with how insubstantial psychology can be, and I wanted to study something clearly physical and clearly meaningful, that would have a definite impact.”

“It was 3 a.m. during the winter quarter of my junior year when I chose,” said Daniel Novinson ‘08, a major in Public Policy and possible double-major in Economics, who also writes for The Daily. “I was pre-law, I had taken the LSAT and I knew that you can have a societal impact through becoming a lawyer. But I was thinking of what was the one field where I could maximize the odds of doing meaningful work, and public health seemed natural.”

Many students hope their majors will provide an interesting four years, even if their careers will take them elsewhere.

“It’s somewhat difficult to do everything you want to do in college and still fulfill the pre-med requirements,” said Hillary Lin ‘11, a Symbolic Systems major. “But even if I ultimately decide not to become a physician, I will still have taken classes that I’m very interested in.”

Regardless of students’ individual interests, the lure of medicine still seems to cross all disciplinary boundaries.

“All my life I wanted to be a doctor, largely because both of my parents were doctors,” Vashi said. “But, towards the end of high school, I realized I had so many other interests, particularly in the humanities. At first, I avoided all science classes completely.”

“But eventually I enrolled in an introductory seminar on the cardiovascular system,” she continued. “In the second class, we dissected cow hearts and it was absolutely thrilling. I went back to my dorm and gushed about it to my roommate who pointedly remarked, ‘You’re really bad at not being pre-med.’ I realized she was right.”