A young woman from North Augusta preparing for medical school is using some unconventional tactics: beauty pageants.

Saturdays are what David Towles likes to call Pageant days at Edge Salon in Hammonds Ferry. Girls with years of pageant experience prepare for their latest competitions. His daughter Elizabeth, who has been competing since she was nine, is getting ready for Miss South Carolina Teen USA.

“When I get on stage, if I want to win it, I will,” she said.

But for one girl this is all unfamiliar territory.

“I never did any pageants. I didn't have any friends do any pageants,” Lauren Stutt said.

At only 20 years old and in her third year at the University of Tennessee Stutt decided to try for one of those dazzling crowns. Not just any crown, she set her sights on one of the biggest pageant systems in our country, Miss USA.

“She came in for her first haircut and I told her you really ought to do South Carolina USA,” Towles said.

“It just kind of sounded like a good idea,” Stutt said.

Not to Stutt's mom, Tina, because Stutt is majoring in biomedical engineering and preparing for medical school.

“She's so over committed right now with schooling she's got a lot on her plate,” she said.

So the person who knows best just how much that plate can handle did the convincing.

“She did. Her enthusiasm about it and I did think about from a med-school perspective she's going to be under a lot of stress. She needs to learn how to handle the stress,” Stutt’s mom said.

“This kind of gives me the experience before I have to go to the med-school boards,” Stutt said.

Towles thinks she is more than prepared.

“As a biomedical engineering student takes a little bit of brains to do that,” he said. “And a little bit of hair and makeup.”

Both Elizabeth Towles and Lauren Stutt's pageants are next weekend in North Charleston South Carolina.