I almost always play as "Sole Survivor" For Shepard's backstory because it opens up a SHIT TON of dialogue in all 3 games, a lot of it plot important.
But it's also kind of fucked up to have the human characters all being "oh wow Commander Shepard! It's so cool you have all this survivor's guilt!" and have Shepard visibly cringe and go "HAHA YEAH. HEY I KNOW, LET'S CHANGE THE SUBJECT!"
Anyway Scholarship boy does a Google.