Hello, I’m a high school senior looking to major in biology premed. I was admitted into UCLA and confirmed my intent to enroll. However I recently found out that my waitlist for Duke got changed into acceptance so now I have to decide whether to stay with UCLA or switch to Duke.
I haven’t received any financial aid for UCLA and Duke hasn’t given me any financial information yet.
This decision is really keeping me up at night because I honestly don’t know where to go. I’d like any information or advice that could help me make a decision. Anything from academic rigor to social life would help. Significant differences, etc.
Thank you in advance!
You can’t make the decision until you receive your financial aid determination from Duke. Also, are you from California?
No, I’m out of state for both
Duke, no question. (not a fan of paying OOS fees to attend a UC for a generic interest like premed.)
I would agree, Duke.
Duke!! I agree with BlueBayou. If you are OOS- Duke all the way.
You might ask yourself how each college will be handling college in the fall in light of COV-19?
I believe the UCs said they cannot guarantee housing this fall as they might not be able to do their typical triples because of social distancing and a shortage of dorm rooms.
Duke has a much smaller undergrad population and 50% greater endowment; would they be able to weather the pandemic better than UCLA?
I would also compare grade inflation or deflation at each college as that is going to be a key component when applying to medical school.
And has been mentioned, the COA certainty factors into the equation.
I would absolutely choose Duke over paying OOS tuition to be premed at UCLA. If you were a CA resident it would be a tougher decision.
I would have said this even pre-pandemic… but even more so now.
UCLA has already stated that they cannot guarantee housing to incoming students and that they will be offering online instruction as an option, if not the only option, for the fall. I can’t see wanting to pay OOS tuition to take UCLA gen-ed classes in my house.
No guarantee of what the fall semester will look like at Duke either, of course, but at least they’re not scrambling to figure out how to run a university of 45,000 students, 30,000 staff members, and 2500+ faculty, in the middle of the nations second most populous city, while also at the mercy of potential funding cuts by the state. Duke has control of its own resources, and has a much smaller population to deal with. It is just mathematically impossible for UCLA to look out for your individual interests as a student to the extent that Duke can, through these uncertain times.
As suggested above, Duke is the better and, likely, more affordable option.
Wait until you know if Duke is going to be affordable. To compare your aid packages, run the numbers here: https://www.finaid.org/calculators/awardletteradvanced.phtml
Duke if you can afford it.
@nearbysight . . . Here are a few links.
Duke’s latest on the effects of Covid on teaching, etc. The video following is dated March 13, 2020, so it’s over a month behind in the latest developments. They’re obviously waiting a bit more before making further decisions and putting forth the information.
Here’s UCLA’s response to housing re Covid:
https://portal.housing.ucla.edu/covid-19-information
There is further notice at UCLA, as others have noted, that remote learning will occur in the fall if a reopening is not possible for students to stay in university housing.
I believe UC Santa Cruz might have given the option to students (or a select amount, say non-residents) to defer entering if it isn’t possible to have in-person instruction in the fall. I hope the other UCs follow suit, including allowing the student to take remote classes from, say, their nearby community college for those from outside of CA, if that’s even possible for you.
And here’s a link that’s hard to force oneself to look at – but I’ve forced myself to do so everyday – and it might be helpful; Covid’s effect on the individual states and the country as a whole:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
The new cases have “flattened,” but they’re still not relenting. The great news is that the outcomes have improved significantly in the ratio of those recovering v. those not surviving, but there are still nearly 1m unresolved cases. But the good news seems to be that the net open cases is not increasing drastically . . . hopefully. There are still 4.6 months before fall quarter begins at UCLA, so we’ll hopefully see at least significant improvement by then.
As far as both universities, California has been harder hit than North Carolina, but CA has a population of just under 40m, and NC has ~ 10m. Of course when there are people who gather from all over the globe and all 50 states as at both universities, with Duke’s students from the other 49 states being more plentiful in proportion than UCLA’s, there could be carriers of Covid to the student body from elsewhere. So caution, hopefully along with testing, will be the order of the day at both.
All the best. And don’t fret over your decision because you’ll be well in whatever you decide.
Good, still have time to add: And it’s a bit late now, but your in-state wasn’t a good option for you?
@firmament2x No, I don’t have any great in state options so I looked out of state
Duke is ranked 10th in the nation according to U.S. News and 6th according to College Niche. It is one of the BEST schools in the nation for pre-med. If you have an intent to go into medicine, Duke is your best bet.
@NearbySight . . . okay, gotcha.
The difference between the two with respect to advising is that UCLA doesn’t believe in having committees that steer the student to apply to med school or not, based on stats and other qualities a candidate presents.
UCLA believes in enablement, which is why it leads the nation in number of baccalaureates who apply in a given year. And off of those who do, the current acceptance rate is ~ 52% to MD programs (not including DO), which is very good considering UCLA’s non-restrictive advising policy.
Duke’s is undoubtedly higher, but their advisors cull numbers to raise the percentages. And once a period of time passes, then a candidate falls off and doesn’t count in the statistics.
This year Duke and UCLA had 346 and 1014 med school applicants, respectively. Based on their relative sizes, UCLA would need 1637 med school applicants to have the same percentage of applicants as Duke. There are two possible explanations for its underperformance:
(1) Students at Duke are much more interested in pre-med than students at UCLA.
(2) Pre-meds at UCLA are getting weeded out at a higher rate than pre-meds at Duke.
The two are not mutually exclusive, of course.
I’d recommend Duke, knowing the significant budget troubles headed the way of public higher education. If you end up needing to compare financial offers, don’t forget to factor in a possible fifth year at UCLA (not uncommon due to course enrollment challenges.) If you can swing it, I’d say Duke all the way.
@warblersrule . . . regarding your post #15…
Let me clarify what I stated. By “Duke’s is undoubtedly higher,” I meant that the acceptance rate for Duke students to med school would be higher, whether naturally or with the input of advising. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that ~ 65% would be a natural acceptance rate for Duke students, but if the University reports a higher percentage, then I would say that it’s probably been orchestrated by advising to raise the percentage.
Therefore, I probably should have said, “…but their advisors [may be] cull[ing] numbers to raise the percentages,” because they actually could be presenting more natural statistics. This then would probably mean that there were even more premed majors at Duke who applied per year than your quoted aamc statistics, because some may have deferred or found other careers based on the input of advising.
And this will be definitely true of UCLA but not because of advising. Again, the University is more about enablement, so the advisors (student-, university- and/or independent-based ones) won’t prevent someone from being advised if he or she applies to med school, which means the numbers are probably less culled, with the rigor and difficulty of premed at UCLA being a natural weeding-out process. Dentistry and pharmacy are popular alternate choices for UCLA grads, so they may be opting for these instead, even if UCLA has a good proportion of first-generation students whose parents want them to be doctors in a very bad way.
Another thing that complicates the numbers would be the timeframe of when baccalaureate-holding students from a particular university apply to med school. Obviously, the norm is to take at least a one year “gap,” so the average time for a UCLA grad to enter med school would be ~ 1.5 years from the point of graduation, according to the University of California website. Oddly enough, it showed Berkeley grads entering materially later than UCLA’s, but this could be sample-size error or whatever. My point is that checking the aamc statistics for those entering per year from a university doesn’t take these into account . . . but the numbers from a particular university from one year to the next are pretty consistent so a cycle perpetuates itself which have a mix applicants with 0-5 gap years.
There’s an African-American woman who’s pretty popular on Youtube who’s recounted her story of being a “B” average student for her first three years at Stanford, but picked things up grade-wise in her senior year. I think she entered a post-bac program and she raised her grades and scores, and was accepted to med school I think it was for 2020. UCLA has a bit more of these types of students than Duke, so the weeding out process does occur undoubtedly more at UCLA via your point no. (2). But when a 1st-gen student becomes a doctor, the benefits to society are far greater than doctors routinely birthing future doctors. This is the partial aim of UCLA’s premed program.
And how does this apply to the OP? He/she’d probably be a little bigger star at UCLA than at Duke. It won’t be like one of the contributors in another thread when he compared Stanford and Cal State’s premeds, but there will be a little bit of difference because of UCLA’s 1st-gen students. My point here, too, is that medical school admittance is a function of the individual not the university, in a perverse way not unlike the point that that poster was making.
Edit: @CardinalBobcat , budget woes will occur at many universities, and even the Harvards of the world with large endowments may have to be pulling from them. Those with lots of International students will definitely be hurt.
“(1) Students at Duke are much more interested in pre-med than students at UCLA.”
Probably not, UCLA’s freshman enrollment is about 6000, if you assume say 80% of the life science enrollment of 2000 and 50% of physical science of 1,000 majors are pre-med, which I think is reasonable, you have about 35%, which is typically higher than private colleges like Duke, which is around 20% or so. Since Duke puts most of their pre-med majors into arts and science, it would be a little tougher to figure out like with UCLA.
- Pre-meds at UCLA are getting weeded out at a higher rate than pre-meds at Duke
Duke encourages kids that have C’s and D’s in science to switch out of pre-med, very good advice imo. From Duke’s advising page:
“You should realize that if you have a long history of C’s in the sciences at Duke, then you will appear to medical school admissions committees to be someone who doesn’t know how to study well, someone who doesn’t choose to study well, or someone with insufficient skills in the sciences. Be honest with yourself. It may be an indication that you are better suited for another career.”
“Medical school courses are primarily science courses. If science classes and labs are not appealing, you might consider this is a sign that you should consider other careers. Also, look at your overall grades. If you’re getting C’s in the sciences and A’s in History or English or some non-science area, it may be that your real interests and talents lie elsewhere.”
“If you had a really terrible time in Organic Chemistry and don’t feel that you understand the subject, then that is a problem.”
I actually found this refreshing in its honesty.
Let me make a correction in my post #17 in paragraph 2:
@theloniusmonk . . . Here’s a page that gives some advice for UCLA’s pre-health majors:
https://lifesciences.ucla.edu/undergraduate/pre-health/
The video features Dr. Clarence Braddock, Vice Dean for Education at David Geffen SOM who says to major in “whatever your passion is.” Obviously “getting C’s in the sciences and A’s in History or English” would be problematic, but part of majoring in something besides life or physical sciences besides finding one’s passion would seemingly be to put more study emphasis in the premed courses which could be spread out over time and combined with something in which the student would also be interested.
But also at UCLA, there are Dance majors and social-science and humanities majors who take the premed track. And some students at UCLA are willing to take the “L” and go to dental, pharmacy, optometry school, or even PA or nursing school, probably moreso than Duke’s.
I wouldn’t say that 50% of the 1,000 physical science majors would be premed even among the Chem majors; I think they typically want to go for a PhD in Physics, Astrophysics, Earth Sciences, or Chemistry, or go for a grad degree in Engineering or materials.
And I don’t like to repeat what I’ve said in other threads so I’ll change it up a bit, but UCLA does put some really good Chem professors in the lower-division 14 series, because the University knows that there will be more premeds who are influenced by their teaching which is pretty innovative. Here are a couple links:
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/uclas-neil-garg-wins-countrys-leading-teaching-award-and-its-250-000-prize by UCLA newsroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERfzl-9jhqQ by Daily Bruin
Edit: I think these professors are obviously full professors, but UCLA does pay “instructors” very well also:
https://data.chronicle.com/category/sector/1/faculty-salaries/