<p>UCLAri,</p>
<p>If you combine the stats we saw on this thread with the admit rates of schools like Duke/Northwestern/Cornell (80+% admit rate), you will see Berk doesn't seem to be a good place for pre-med. I still can't figure out why it's admit rate is low when compared to the top privates. In one year, it's even lower than national average--you are talking about some average no-name school possibly doing better than Berk. That's quite unexpected.</p>
<p>It's about VOLUME. You forget that Berkeley is going to be sending off many many more students to med school than say Cornell or Columbia. </p>
<p>However, as a first year college student, the last thing you should be worried about are yield rates to medical school. IT'S NOT IMPORTANT. You should be worried about which school is going to offer you the best academic and social experience, largely because you're very likely to change majors (and career goals) to begin with.</p>
<p>"DON'T EVEN THINK OF RESEARCH UNTIL YOUR 3rd year. Concentrate on classes and volunteer work your first 2 years."</p>
<p>are you kidding me? at UCLA, many students start inquiring about research during their spring quarter of their freshman year (in fact, the student research program is highly advertised) and then do research starting as a 2nd-year. it only takes about a year to get settled, at least at UCLA.</p>
<p>UCLAri,</p>
<p>The comparison should be about %, NOT volume. Think about it!</p>
<p>I do agree that many do change plan/majors during college.</p>
<p>i think what more people should look at is the percentage of people applying to medical school per the number of people in the class. Last year about 600 people at berkeley applied to medical school (contrary to what it says in the carrear center), and assumeing there are about 6000 people graduateing per year that means that about 13% apply to medical school. This means alot of very qualified students and alot of not qualified students apply.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, </p>
<p>Oh, I know that volume is the issue, I'm not dumb.</p>
<p>However, I just wanted to give a good solid numerical explanation for Cal's supposed underperformance. It's not that Cal is underperforming per se, it's just that there are too many damned qualified Cal and UCLA students applying to med school! We'd fill them all!</p>
<p>And along those same lines, I want to explain something to a lot of you:</p>
<p>Not getting into medical school straight out of undergrad is not the end of your medical career. I know many people who proceeded to partake in post-baccalaureate pre-med programs and go off to med school, and others who worked as EMTs, saved up money and paid off debt, and went to med school with more medical knowledge than their straight-to-grad counterparts!</p>
<p>Straight-to-grad schol students are not always the best students.</p>
<p>"how will you manage at other top schools? I sincerely doubt that any of the top-25 schools is significantly easier, or harder, than Cal"</p>
<p>I disagree</p>
<p>Cal is like Cornell, relatively easier to get in to but harder to get out of. Whereas other schools like HYPS are harder to get in to but easier to get out of :)</p>
<p>LOL, I gotcha. However, I don't believe that Harvard academics are a joke, having done work with someone there. They're no joke. It's the grading policies that are a joke.</p>
<p>
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It's not that Cal is underperforming per se, it's just that there are too many damned qualified Cal and UCLA students applying to med school! We'd fill them all!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am not aware of any evidence that shows med schools have quotas. Harvard's law/med schools have disportionally large number of HYPS grads; Northwestern's med school also has tons from the NU college. If schools were told to have quotas for "diversity", those would never happen.</p>
<p>I suspect Cal's underperformance stems from the fact it's grading is harsher and hence more are applying with lower GPAs; at the same time, med schools may not care about the grading standard of any school. I also suspect because of larger number of recommendation letters needed from each professor and less interaction with professors in a big school, the quality of recs suffers.</p>
<p>schools only care about accepting students with high gpa no mattter what school, so they can boast it in US news Rankings.... i dont think they count in berkeeley's anal difficulty that much</p>
<p>true! thats why I turned down berkeley</p>
<p>but is UCLA just as hard?</p>
<p>Sam, think about this for a second. If you're an admissions committee, and Cal, UCLA, and Michigan come knocking on your door with literally a full medical class full of first year students, all of whom are qualified, you're bound to turn a few of them down, aren't you?</p>
<p>None of the Ivies boast the numbers of students that Cal, UCLA, and Michigan possess. Now, I am in no way willing to argue that any of the aforementioned schools possess the same top 1 percentile sort of student bodies that which Princeton is host. Nonetheless, Cal is literally teeming with smart students, and I'd venture that it is pumping out far more (in numerical terms) qualified students than Yale, which has a much smaller graduating class.</p>
<p>There is no way that any singe medical school could accept all of Cal's qualified applicants, the numbers are just too large. </p>
<p>Back to your HYPS argument- Yes, but California grad schools are teeming with Cal and UCLA grads, so I think the argument (which has been upheld by many of my professors) is largely one of geography, not qualification.</p>
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schools only care about accepting students with high gpa no mattter what school, so they can boast it in US news Rankings.... i dont think they count in berkeeley's anal difficulty that much
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</p>
<p>Somehow I don't think that Cal is any more difficult than Harvard, just that the grades are lower.</p>
<p>Grade inflation is an issue, but we're talking about inflated grades at schools already known for excellent academics.</p>
<p>Oh, and UCLA and Berkeley also have inflated grades, if only to a lesser extent than at many privates.</p>
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but is UCLA just as hard?
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</p>
<p>I'd venture to guess that it's similar in difficulty, but that UCLA students are less intellectually motivated than their Cal counterparts.</p>