Chances at UC San Diego + How is their cognitive science program

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - San Diego
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<p>UC San Diego recently came onto my radar as I've been taking advantage of the CollegeBoard college finder and the main reason I'm fairly interested in knowing more about the school and what my chances are are because 1) it has a lot of science majors and programs and 2) it has a neuroscience (technically "Cognitive Science with Specialization in Neuroscience") major. As you can guess, I'm very science-oriented and although I may not be sure that neuroscience is exactly what I'll end up studying (though at this point, I do think it is), I am almost certain I'll be getting into some sort of biological science major no matter where I end up... so schools like UCSD where there are plenty of science majors are appealing to me.</p>

<p>I'd like to know what you think my chances are of getting in (plus perhaps chances at aid from the institution, if any), as well as what both their cognitive science and physiology/neuroscience programs are like... how decent they are, etc.</p>

<p>Here are my stats:</p>

<p>From: Florida</p>

<p>ACT: Composite - 35, Reading - 36, English - 35, Science - 34, Math - 33, Essay/Writing - 32 (Essay: 9)</p>

<p>SAT: (not too great) CR - 650, M - 670, W - 800</p>

<p>GPA: Unweighted - 3.94, Weighted - 5.58
Class Rank: As of mid-year, I was ranked 30-something of 515... so top ~7%, but some juniors graduated early and such, my GPA changed, etc. so my rank should be different... higher if anything.</p>

<p>AP Classes: Bio (5), World History (4), Psychology (5), US History (4), Calc AB (4), English Lang (5), Spanish (x), Enviro (x), Calc BC (x).... x = AP's I'm taking my senior year</p>

<p>EC's:
-FBLA (9, 10, 11, 12), VP of FBLA (11), Pres of FBLA (12)
-Spanish National Honor Society (10, 11, 12)
-National Honor Society (12)
-National Technical Honor Society (11, 12)
-Mu Alpha Theta (11, 12)
-Rho Kappa (11, 12)
-Florida Public Service Association (11, 12)
-Senior Council (12)</p>

<p>-I've built and currently maintain websites that generate income
-I've participated in two highly-selective week-long leadership camps this summer... one through the county's sheriff's office, which selects ONE student from each of the 26 high schools in the county. The other, Seminar for Tomorrow's Leaders (S4TL), selects about 160 students from various Rotary districts throughout west Florida. These equate to about 130 hours of intense leadership training, team building, and working on making oneself a better person.
-I plan to hold a job through my senior year, beginning the end of this summer.</p>

<p>[Financial aid is a huge need for me. EFC = $0. And FWIW, I'm Hispanic.]</p>

<p>Thanks for any feedback.</p>

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<p>You have a very good chance of getting in. Of course, it is a little harder for out of state students but your stats and ECs are very good. You might also get financial aid from them. Try applying for a few scholarships. </p>

<p>As for the cog-sci department, it is very good. However, from what I’ve heard from a couple of my friends who graduated UCSD with a cog sci degree, it was difficult for them to find jobs related to their degrees. But the department itself is very good at UCSD.</p>

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<p>How do you get a 5.58 GPA?</p>

<p>The joke that even the cog sci professors say that is you major in it, you had better want to do research at UCSD as a grad student after school because that’s where you’ll end up.</p>

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<p>

Weighted GPAs in my county are such a joke… you get .04 points added for an A in an honors course and .08 added for an A in an AP course (each semester)… our valedictorian is going to graduate with a near-8.something GPA.

Thanks for the input. I do intend to do some sort of graduate studies, no matter what path I take… I want to further my education as much as possible and have no intentions at stopping at a Bachelor’s degree.</p>

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<p>@Rypto - not true. Depends what Cog Sci specialization you go into. For example I did HCI and found an internship doing user experience for the summer and there are tons of jobs available for that stuff in San Diego. I have friends who did similar or found full time jobs programming / doing other UX work. With regular Cog Sci you can probably get a job doing lab work in a neuroscience lab. HCI definitely seems like the most direct specialization that translates into a job.</p>

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<p>@Arctic - Thanks for the clarification, my knowledge on the cog sci department is pretty limited. I’m not sure what specialization my friends did but I see your point.</p>

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<p>Having this tunnel view of getting ‘more education past bachelor’s no matter what’ is a great way to end up in tons of loans.</p>

<p>Graduate school isn’t for everyone. Don’t delude yourself. Experiment with different career paths in college and play it by ear.</p>

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<p>

It’s not really a tunnel view. It’s where I see myself. I didn’t say I’m not stopping at a Bachelor’s degree, I only said I have no intentions of stopping there. Of course something can come up and change that, but it’s not my desire/goal/plan at this point. Research and academia is ultimately where I think I belong.</p>

<p>Do you think college professors had no clue that it’s where they wanted to end up? That they just randomly end up going to graduate school, getting their PhD’s and becoming professors? Or do you think they have a bit of an idea before college or at least in undergrad, that they want to go further, research, and publish? I’m legitimately asking you, because I don’t know the answer.</p>

<p>I appreciate your feedback, but your post sort of rubbed me the wrong way because it seemed unnecessarily harsh and pessimistic.</p>

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<p>I don’t have data on all professors or graduate students, so I’ll use myself and those I’m most familiar with. I’m going to the #1 program for my doctorate in the fall and I didn’t have ANY intentions of ever going into research or graduate school upon entering UCSD (I came in as a computer engineering major hoping to just have a lucrative career right after college).</p>

<p>My undergraduate advisor was a pure math major in college and then decided to go to graduate school in behavioral psychology only after he saw a talk by Dick Hernnstein one day in a “applied mathematics in psychology” talk at Yale. My doctoral advisor worked in industry after college (BA in marketing), then got his MBA after, and after working in industry for almost 10 years, changed the trajectory of his career and enrolled in a Ph.D. program. Both professors are at top universities and are both at the top of their respective fields.</p>

<p>It wasn’t until I began to take classes in a variety of fields, and that I was luckily offered (and unexpectedly) a position to be an RA under a professor after doing well in two of his seminars. It wasn’t until then that I even began flirting with the idea of going into graduate school.</p>

<p>Most jobs do NOT require more than a bachelors degree in order to obtain them or to get promoted to them. That’s why I feel that the preconceived goal/intention is overkill. Way too many of my friends are paying out of pocket for terminal masters degrees when employment data show that the added marginal salary increase won’t justify the cost of tuition.</p>

<p>What I’m saying is in an idyllic world with unlimited amounts of money, there is nothing wrong with wanting more and more education. The problem is there are costs and benefits to getting more education, and unless you’re getting a degree required for advancement in employability, the costs will always supersede the benefits.</p>

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<p>And the reason I phrased my first post that way is because you sound like the majority of pre-meds at UCSD who have this end goal of going to med school, but haven’t really done much work to understand whether or not it’s the best for them.</p>

<p>Most of them wait too long to be a little malleable about their futures, and by the time they begin to explore their other opportunities (besides med school), it’s too late. Undergraduate was easy. You have all the potential in the world to go into whatever field/occupation you want–you just have to discover both.</p>

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<p>I think you have a pretty good chance of getting in, though you might not receive much aid if any since you are out-of-state plus the main reason the UC’s are getting more lenient about letting in out-of-staters is due to the budget crisis. Oh yeah you might want to find out your UC gpa since your gpa won’t be based on your county but by UC standards. Honors classes taken out-of-state are given no weight, only AP classes are. Also for capped weighted gpa for UC’s, at most only 8 pts can be added. And they don’t count senior or freshman grades, and certain classes don’t count towards gpa like gym typically.</p>