I'm Better Than You

I saw today that the med students where I work wear their white coats to class. It's not a hospital. There are no patients. Why do they need to wear their coats? Are they told to wear their coats, like it's a uniform? Or did one of them just decide to do it and then the others start to do it too so as not to be shown up. It's a medical school. There's, like, 8 students there who are not trying to become medical doctors.

It's not just that they're wearing these coats. These are "advanced" kids, striving to be doctors by the age of 22. It's a building full of pretentious Doogie Howsers (in my opinion, Doogie was not pretentious, he was just smart). So the coats really don't add anything. Can you add showy-offness on top of false Doogieness?

I promise you, I'm not bitter. I just don't understand why. Do other medical schools without patients do this?