Currently, I am a senior in high school applying to various institutions. Due to my preference of attending UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, or USC, and knowing that getting in will be tough given my grades and ACT/SAT, I plan on going to community college. My goal is to major in Biomedical Engineering and hopefully attend medical school. I have been told community college is easy to do well in as long as you are motivated and don’t fall off track. I was wondering if this is true? Also, applying as an engineering major is very competitive and was wondering what GPA I should strive for (realistically) to attain both goals (4 year university transfer and medical school)? Any other suggestions will be appreciated!
If your ultimate goal is medical school, then being an engineering major at any of the schools you mentioned is probablynot the best idea. Prestige of undergrad furthermore does not matter for medical school.
I hear that medical schools look down on applicants who have all pre-med work completed at a CC - not sure if this is entirely true.
You need close to a 4.0 to be competitive for BioEng at UCB and UCLA (UCSD isn’t quite as difficult, it seems). I don’t know anything about USC.
From what I understand, it’s more of non-medical tracks (Art History, Mech Engineering, Economics, etc.) meeting all the medical requirements at CC. If your a traditional pre-med track (Bio, Chem, Pub Health, etc.) and will take relevant higher division classes at the UC then your other prerequisites at a CCC will essentially be moot and it doesn’t matter where you take the prereqs at.
I have decided to major in Biomedical Engineering because I know I will have something to fall back on in case medical school is not the right fit for me, or for some reason I fail. I know that applying as an engineering major will take a hit on my GPA. From what I understand, the first two years in college tend to be general electives. If taking these general electives at a CCC where the curve is higher and easier to do well in, my first two years in college should solidify my GPA, right? And the only thing I should worry about is doing well once I transfer to a 4 year university. Please correct if I’m wrong!
from an earlier post of yours
Look, never say never, but these scores don’t seem to indicate a lot of aptitude for engineering or the sciences
Wrong. Spend 10 minutes looking at the xfer admission requirements for engineering on college websites. The UCs specifically say forget about that general elective stuff (eg. IGETC) we want you to take calculus, physics, chem, etc. The prereqs for engineering. I’ll bet privates such as JHU where you also applied this fall are the same. Your plan to somehow sail thru easy classes at a CC, get admitted to engineering, then somehow do well in engineering… None of it appears realistic, sorry to say.