When Min S. Lee ’13 arrived at Harvard, he planned to carry on a treasured family legacy by becoming a doctor. Many of Lee’s aunts and uncles, as well as his older brother, had already become physicians, and Lee was ready to follow the path from college to medical school—until he spent a summer implementing a water chlorination project in the Dominican Republic.

Lee has since decided to shift his focus from the premed track to a career in international development.

Like Lee, Marissa A. Glynias ’12 had planned to become a doctor before she came to campus.

After shadowing a doctor during her sophomore year of high school, Glynias developed an interest in vascular surgery, which led her to enroll in an introductory biology course through the Harvard Summer School Secondary School Program.

Glynias, now a joint Anthropology and Music concentrator, decided not to pursue medicine. She spent her past summer working at an archaeological dig in Georgia, and she is currently considering graduate programs in archaeology.

Lee and Glynias are two of many students who have chosen to drop the premed track after exploring other options at Harvard—not necessarily because they do not like medicine, but because they have found another discipline that they prefer.

“Some students come here and are motivated to pursue medicine because they haven’t really thought about lots of other options,” says Lee Ann Michelson ’77, director of premedical and health career advising at the Office of Career Services. “They get to Harvard and they start seeing lots of other paths.”

Michelson says that while approximately 20 percent of students informally declare an interest in pursuing the premed track when they first arrive on campus, only seven percent eventually apply to medical school as seniors.

Most former premeds say that their interest in medicine declined when they discovered more exciting opportunities that were better suited to their skill sets.

“This is the wonderful thing about college—as soon as you enter, you’re exposed to a variety of things, things you never knew existed,” says Xiang “John” Du ’12, a former Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology concentrator who is now an Economics concentrator considering a career in finance.

WHY PREMED?

It is not unusual for premeds at Harvard to get eye-rolls and knowing sighs when they announce their pre-professional plans, and students and administrators say they are not surprised at the large number of students who initially express an interest in medicine.

“I think the reason why most people want to be premed, speaking just from my experience, is that’s the thing they’re most familiar with,” Du says.

“You grow up going to doctors. You grow up watching TV shows about medicine, like House and Grey’s Anatomy—that’s the thing you’re most exposed to,” he says.

For Organismic and Evolutionary Biology concentrator Jeremy L. Hsu ’11, an interest in medicine arose largely from an early passion for the natural sciences.