Economics majors who earn finance certificates and head to Wall Street are a dime a dozen, much like molecular biology majors who go to medical school. But other students break the mold, pursuing certificates that do not align with their career interests or majoring in departments unrelated to their graduate school plans.
For premed English majors and German concentrators who want to work at investment banks, opting for the path less traveled is often not an easy choice.
So you want to be a doctor?
Premed students are burdened with scores of requirements just to make them eligible to apply to medical school. In addition to the MCAT, Princeton premeds must take at least eight classes — two semesters each of general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology and physics. Students with Advanced Placement credit in a relevant field only need to take one semester of that subject.
For the stereotypical premed — a molecular biology or chemistry major — the premed requirements are easy to fulfill because they largely overlap with departmental courses. But some students who are premed opt to major in departments less directly tied to medicine, such as the Wilson School or English.
"In our experience," Health Professions Advising Director Glenn Cummings wrote in an email, "those who concentrate in a subject where there is both curiosity and talent fare far better than those who mistakenly believe that the choice of major alone will make them attractive to medical schools."
Wilson School major Nelson Chiu '07 said that because premed requirements "are hard to do no matter what you study," students should "go with" what they want to major in, even if it is not a science field. Uniting his interests in public policy and medicine, Chiu plans to pursue a master's in public health and an M.D. after graduation.
He added that "a lot of students have this misconception that majors are supposed to prepare you for a job," but he thinks students should pursue their passions even if they do not lead directly to a certain career.
Sarah Brown '09, a premed majoring in English, said that balancing her major with her premed studies was harder than expected. But because she knew she wanted to study English from the start of her freshman year, Brown fulfilled most of her English departmental requirements early.
By primarily taking science and English classes, Brown has been able to balance writing-intensive courses with classes requiring lab work and lots of studying for exams.
How about a lawyer?
While students with plans to attend medical school follow a relatively standard academic path, undergraduates interested in law school can forge unique routes to their J.D.s.
Though politics, history and Wilson School courses like POL 315: Constitutional Interpretation and POL 320: Judicial Politics are popular among students considering law school, they are by no means required. "We can take the classes we're interested in," Pre-Law Society president Aaron Spolin '08 said.
Law schools, Spolin said, "care about GPA and the LSAT score." Other than that, "everything else" — including one's undergraduate major and course of study — "is of secondary importance."
He added that a few weeks ago, when Philip Lee, assistant director of admissions for Harvard Law School, visited campus, Lee said he had majored in psychology as an undergraduate before attending Harvard Law. Lee said he was not disadvantaged in his application to law school because of his undergraduate concentration.
Katherine Chiang '08, a former vice president of the Pre-Law Society and a chemical engineering major, said the stereotype of the pre-law student as being a politics or history major is not necessarily true. "Contrary to popular belief, a lot of lawyers are actually biology and physics majors," she said.
"A lot of people," she added, "think engineering and law fields are mutually exclusive, but they're not," especially in the fields of patent and intellectual property law.
Michael Konialian '09, a mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) major who plans on earning a Wilson School certificate, wrote in an email that his choice best merged his interests in engineering and law into his undergraduate studies.
He said that he may have difficulty fitting in unrelated courses he wants to take because MAE has the most requirements of all the engineering departments and the Wilson School has the most requirements of any certificate program. "There are a lot of courses I would love to take but that I just don't have time for," he said. "I am going to likely have to audit or P/D/F every one of my non-MAE or WWS courses from next semester onward."
Banker?
Marcus Lampert '07 started taking German at Princeton to complete his language requirement. By sophomore year, he thought he wanted to be an economics major because he liked the subject.
But when it came time to declare his major during the spring of his sophomore year, Lampert decided to major in German because the department is much smaller than the economics department.
"There are four or five [professors in the German department] I talk to regularly," he said. "I can stop in at any professor's office at any time and talk to them."
He mentioned having the opportunity to have dinner with his two of his advisers, two graduate students and a German academic and said he would not have had this opportunity in the economics department.
Nevertheless, Lampert decided to stay connected to economics by pursuing a finance certificate, taking a combination of economics and operations research and financial engineering (ORFE) classes to fulfill the certificate's requirements.
He has accepted a job at an economic consulting firm starting next year.
Yacine Ait-Sahalia, director of the Bendheim Center for Finance, does not believe that finance should be taken as a pre-professional track, however. "While the finance certificate has obvious professional benefits for students who will start their careers in the financial industry, the curriculum is academic-driven," he wrote in an email.
In an effort to encourage students who are not majoring in economics or ORFE, the finance program has increased the standards for admission into the program for economics and ORFE majors. Also, the finance program has been trying to pair students with advisers when their concentrations show little potential for overlap in a thesis, Ait-Sahalia added.
"Finance courses involve advanced probability, statistics, economics and many other disciplines, at a level that would surprise those [who] would expect merely a 'pre-professional' program," he said.
Or for the sake of learning?
Not all students who earn certificates do so for the perceived benefits of a job in finance, law or medicine.
Psychology major Alison Wood '08 said that she chose to earn a finance certificate to incorporate more quantitative analysis into her studies. Instead of pursuing a career on Wall Street, Wood plans to go to graduate school for behavioral economics.
On the other hand, Alexia Adrianopoulos '07 is majoring in politics with a certificate in neuroscience. She acknowledged that there were times when she questioned her reasons for pursuing a neuroscience certificate without a desire to go into the field but added that "it was something I was passionate about."
Though none of the courses for neuroscience and politics overlapped, she doesn't believe the courses required for the neuroscience certificate should have counted toward any departmental courses because "there should be an across-the-board standard." But, "there are some ways that they could accommodate students [in terms of course load]."
Adrianopoulos said that pursuing neuroscience "becomes a bit more tricky if you're not a [molecular biology] or psychology concentrator" because the search for the right advisers can be frustrating at times, but "if you are proactive, there's no problem."
"Go with what you want to study," Lampert said. "I get the impulse that a lot of people choose majors with their careers in mind."
Or as Chiang put it, "Princeton is not a vocational school."
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