<p>I want to go into Pre-med, and perhaps try a bit of astrophysics, so I was wondering which of these two schools would be the best at the undergrad level. I know that Berkeley is very competitive but at the same time, Caltech's cirriculum is tough as well. And in order to get into a good med school, I have to maintain a good gpa, so which one is the better choice for me?</p>
<p>Go to Berkeley. I guess you’ll like it there more.
Unless you’ll find a school with only about 200 students per year level with a pretty boring atmosphere… your “cup of tea”, Caltech is it for you.</p>
<p>The CalTech curriculum is MUCH harder than the Berkeley curriculum. You can take courses at Berkeley to match the CalTech curriculum, but the standard Berkeley curriculum for the sciences is going to be much much easier going.</p>
<p>Well, if you want to aim for Astrophysics, Caltech is the place to be. But if your emphasis is med school, the GPA from Caltech will pretty much eliminate you from the rest of the competition (Unless of course, you are extremely bright and end up doing well in all your Caltech courses…which is a possibility). So it really goes down to, do you think you can handle Caltech?</p>
<p>For a premed, I think Caltech probably will hurt your GPA immensely. Berkeley is competitive, but my roommate manages to maintain around a 3.9 with lots and lots of studying. I think at Caltech, your GPA generally takes a dip no matter how hard you try, unless you truly love all the classes you take and they all click. You have more freedom on how difficult and/or how packed with challenging physics, chem, bio, and math your schedule will be in Berkeley. As someone said, Caltech will force you to take hard subjects in all those areas. </p>
<p>However, if you’re really into astrophysics, I imagine Caltech is amazing for that stuff.</p>
<p>i got accepted to Cal, but rejected from Caltech. if i had to choose between the two of them, i’d go to Caltech. yes, Caltech will kill your GPA, but the thing about Caltech is, is that the networking there works a lot better than at Cal. You could have a 2.9 GPA, but still get into an ivy league med school or grad school, because the profs will just “phone a friend” to get you in. however, Caltech really prepares you to be like a scientist and think like a scientist, so if you just want to be a doctor and not necessarily a medical researcher, Cal might be the place to go for you.</p>
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<p>At Cal, most of the departments are such that if you make the effort and are like one of the better Caltech students, the professors will also “phone a friend,” and they very well could be at the top of their fields! If I had to choose to go to this school, I’d not go to Caltech for this factor, but rather in appreciation of the very different setting it provides from Cal. I think if you’re really good, you will have no trouble attracting the professors’ attention at Cal.</p>
<p>My own reason to favor Cal is that it’s a large school that sort of “leaves you alone” a lot to decide your future. That may be very good for a premed, as you will want to be able to play around with schedules a lot to see what maximizes your GPA. I’m pretty sure that while “phone a friend” works for grad school, it doesn’t for med school, which is numbers based.</p>
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<p>I agree with mathboy98. I have never heard of the ‘phone-a-friend’ strategy ever working when it comes to med-school admissions. Grad school, yes, but med-school? Unlikely. In fact, it is the general consensus within the Caltech forum - agreed to even by a Caltech fanboy such as Ben Golub - that the school is a suboptimal choice for premeds because of the grade deflation. Med school adcoms, sadly, don’t really seem to care that some schools grade harder than others. If you have poor grades, they won’t care why; they’ll just reject you for your poor grades. </p>
<p>It is for that reason that I would say that, if you want to be a premed, Berkeley is the better choice. Let’s face it. Berkeley has a slew of easy classes - i.e. in the humanities and social sciences - where you can get top grades without having to put in very much effort. Nor will Berkeley require that you take all of your technical coursework at Berkeley. For example, you could choose an easy major and just complete your premed science/math courses at an easy community college during the summer or after you graduate. While that may not look good to premed adcoms, it looks far better than taking those courses at Berkeley and getting poor grades. Caltech, on the other hand, will require that you take the core curriculum science and math requirements, which include most of the premed requirements, at Caltech.</p>