<p>Without financial aid, JH should be <em>significantly</em> more expensive for you, as a California resident, than Berkeley is. If med school is your goal, keeping the cost of your undergraduate education lower would benefit you. You pretty much pay for med school with loans, so not taking on too much of a debt burden now will really help you out during and after med school. </p>
<p>That said, ideally, you’d pick the school that you feel fits you best, and where you’ll be happiest. However, for you, that may very well mean taking your family’s opinions very heavily into consideration. That may be part of what will maintain peace, and make you happy. It needs to be a decision made by you, but it must take all the factors that are important to you into consideration, and one of those factors may be your family. </p>
<p>I’d consider the schools equally as prestigious, and both will do a very good job of preparing you for med school admissions. In terms of that, you can’t make a wrong choice here. Don’t worry too much re: prestige. Both are prestigious. You’ll be fine either place. </p>
<p>Know that you don’t need to major in “pre-med” in order to go to med school. In fact, most universities don’t even off this as a major. You can major in anything you’d like and go to med school, so feel free to major in math, econ, business, or what have you. So long as you also take the standard med school pre-req courses, do the volunteer work and etc., you’ll be well prepared. </p>
<p>UC Berkeley is one of the top universities in the US for economics, stronger than JH. It is also one of the best for math, again outranking JH. Not that JH is bad, but Berkeley is top 5 in those majors. JH is stronger than Berkeley for the biological sciences, yes; but again, if you did choose Berkeley, that choice will not hamper your ability to get into med school at all.</p>