Medicine was always an option for her, but Tuten’s path to a Harvard pre-med career was hardly predictable.

“When I was younger, I would say doctor. But also architect. I’d go back and forth,” she says.

In high school, she wanted to be a photojournalist, she says. But a conference on medicine in Washington, DC—recommended to her by her high school biology teacher—helped her make up her mind.

She witnessed live open heart surgery, attend a mock debate on euthanasia, and interacted with AIDS patients. She says the experience made her want to practice “pediatrics, obstetrics, anything with families.”

When she left her “two traffic-light town” of Beverley, Ohio for Cambridge, she says she found the college atmosphere, and especially pre-med classes “large and impersonal.”

She says that it has been “hard to stand out in pre-med classes,” and was put off by the “stigma” of the pre-med and the cut-throat competition.

“I want to go to medical school, but I’m not a pre-med,” she says.

This relaxed attitude is mirrored by her parents.

“They’re pretty much happy as long as I’m still in school and not flunking out,” she says of her parents, who never went to college.

Tuten, a biology concentrator, says that she has gotten most of her pre-med information from her friends rather than through formal advising. Pre-med classes are conducive to making pre-med friends, she says, and most of her friendships have been formed over shared problem sets and exam review sessions.

She says she finds that pre-medical advisors are assigned late in Kirkland House, and other Harvard resources have been accessible but not necessarily appealing.

With 42 pages of papers due within a week of the MCAT, Tuten has more than the big test to worry about.

But for now, her focus is on the imminent eight hours of filling in ovals.

After spending her spring break studying for the MCAT at home, and drilling for at least eight hours per week at the Kaplan center since, her plan for tomorrow’s exam is to “get a lot of sleep.”

—Staff writer Ishani Ganguli can be reached at ganguli@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Margaretta E. Homsey can be reached at homsey@fas.harvard.edu.