Tiffany Zhang Didn’t Choose Between Music and Medicine. She Embraced Both.

The summer before her senior year, Tiffany Zhang (C’25) decided to leap into the unknown. 

A pre-medical student majoring in biology, Zhang had already completed all of her required biology coursework and felt it was time to dive deeper into her other passion: music.

She emailed her advising dean, Marlene Canlas, with a bold plan that she now calls her “greatest academic risk.” Zhang declared a second major in American musical cultures, Georgetown’s only music-focused major.

“I knew this was probably the last chance that I would have, not just with the musical equipment, but also with a community of musicians I could draw from and all the classes that I wanted to take,” she said.

The decision – and the support she received from her Georgetown mentors – shifted something in Zhang. She realized she did not have to choose between passions. After graduation, Zhang plans to explore opportunities in both medicine and music. 

“It was the first time I fully embraced how much music meant to me,” she said. “Georgetown supported my growth not only as a student, but as a whole person. Because in the end, no matter how different my passions may seem, they’ve always been in conversation with each other.”

Finding Her Voice

Growing up in Middlebury, Connecticut, as the daughter of immigrants from Beijing and the first in her family to attend college in the U.S., Zhang was deeply influenced by both music and science.

She began playing the piano as a toddler with her parents’ encouragement and later taught herself to sing and play the guitar. Singing gave Zhang a voice she didn’t realize she had.

“It was a crazy way of bringing me out of my shell,” Zhang said. “In pre-K, I was the most shy child ever, and I was so afraid to talk to anybody that my teachers tried to fail me. … But when I started singing around when I was 9, I noticed how drastically it affected who I was. It built a core part of my personality, because most people who know me now know I’m very loud and outgoing.”

Zhang’s interest in biology and medicine stems largely from witnessing her mother undergo chemotherapy twice. Her mom was first diagnosed with breast cancer when Zhang was in elementary school, and again with ovarian cancer during her junior year of high school. She is now cancer-free.

Zhang has worked in an ovarian cancer research lab at Yale School of Medicine since high school and plans to pursue a career in oncology. She chose Georgetown in part because of its wide range of research opportunities and proximity to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

During her time on the Hilltop, Zhang worked as a clinical research assistant at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she interviewed cancer patients and survivors to explore the relationship between diet and symptom severity.

Zhang, who has a concentration in biochemistry, molecular, cellular and developmental biology, also served as a student academic assistant for the biology department – an experience that she said gave her “a strong sense of purpose in giving back to students who were in the same position I once was.”

“She was incredibly social with all the students and put them at ease,” said MC Chan, an associate teaching professor of biology. “Students trusted her, as did we.”

After graduation, Zhang will take a gap year before attending medical school. She will continue working in her ovarian cancer cell lab at Yale and serve as a medical assistant at a local hospital in Connecticut.

“It has always been clear to me that Tiffany knows who she is and puts incredible effort towards her interests and her people,” said Dail Chapman, an assistant teaching professor of biology. “I simply adore her vibrance, creativity and ability to be unabashedly herself.”

The Value of Persistence

Unlike in science, where Zhang confidently navigated her pre-med curriculum, she said she felt like a “complete impostor” in her American musical cultures classes. 

Her senior fall course load consisted of music industry seminar, rock history, songwriting and composition, the art of improvisation and recording arts. During introductions in her first class, she found herself surrounded by students with industry connections or who had grown up in recording studios. 

“The first day I entered Recording Arts I, I thought I had mistakenly wandered into a foreign language course,” Zhang said. 

Her love for music has continually taught her the value of persistence.

Zhang auditioned every year in high school for the all-girls a cappella group, only to be rejected each time. And in her first year at Georgetown, she faced six more rejections before finally being accepted to Superfood, a co-ed a cappella group on campus.

“It wasn’t just a testament to resilience and getting back up after repeated setbacks – it was the moment I found my people,” Zhang said. 

Shortly after declaring her second major, Zhang came up with what she describes as a “joyfully reckless, wildly ambitious idea” for her music capstone project. It was something she had dreamed of since she began writing music at 12 years old but never had the tools or space to realize. Zhang wanted to create a fully self-produced extended play album featuring her own original compositions.

Zhang spent hours in Georgetown’s “swelteringly hot” recording studio. 

Last month, she completed and presented her capstone project, Roots, an EP of six tracks, four originals, all of which she arranged, recorded, mixed and mastered herself. The album explores themes of personal growth and connections with others. 

“I didn’t just grow technically. I grew as a listener, collaborator and storyteller,” Zhang said. “I had to learn to trust my creative instincts, sit with discomfort, stay open and put myself out there enough to collaborate meaningfully with other musicians.”

Carlos Simon, an associate professor of music and a Grammy-nominated composer, described Zhang’s writing as “honest and transparent.”

For Benjamin Harbert, a professor of music and chair of the Department of Performing Arts, Zhang’s journey exemplifies the courage in pursuing passions.

“I think what Tiffany demonstrates is that you don’t need to have all of your musical skills fully formed to commit to something. She finished a major within a year, and she finished it successfully,” Harbert said. “I think Tiffany shows us that it’s never too late.”

The Other Side of Risk

For a long time, Zhang feared music would pull her away from her pre-medical studies and scientific work. That pursuing one passion meant abandoning the other.

Something that one of her music professors, Jay Hammond, told her helped shift her perspective. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” he said. “It is inevitably shaped by everything else you’ve ever loved.”

Zhang’s greatest academic risk led her to the freedom of fully being herself. 

In addition to her medical school plans, Zhang will be an artist-in-residence at the Harold Leever Cancer Center and nearby senior centers. There, she will perform music for patients and continue exploring music’s healing potential in clinical spaces. She also plans to scout out recording studios and small venues across Connecticut to keep creating music and performing. 

“My Georgetown experience often felt like gazing into a reflective pool. Whatever intention I brought to the surface was reflected back to me,” Zhang said. “I learned that if I pursue something – intellectually, creatively or personally – with genuine effort and authenticity, no matter how hard and uncomfortable it is in the moment, I could make it real.”

–Kelyn Soong