<p>I am a recently admitted undergraduate psychology major at Cal Poly. I am seriously considering between Cal Poly and UC Davis.
I am almost certain I will be applying to medical school, so I was wondering if you had any idea on which school would better prepare me for entrance into medical school.</p>
<p>I heard it is so difficult to get classes at Cal Poly.
UC Davis has huge classes so it would be difficult to be close with professors for them to be able to write me letters of rec. </p>
<p>Which school is more competitive on getting good grades?
I need a good GPA to apply!
Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>My assumption is that if you had good grades in HS you should do fine at either school as long as you apply yourself. From personal experience with my kid, Cal Poly does not practice grade deflation like some schools do.</p>
<p>At every orientation event they will hammer into you that you should study 25-35 hours/week (2hours/unit/week). If you follow that formula at Cal Poly you will most likely have grades similar those that you had in HS. My kid had an UW 4.0 GPA in HS and maintains a similar one at Cal Poly in engineering. The difference? In HS he studied enough to get full credit for homework and not a moment more and he rarely studied for tests no matter the subject. At Cal Poly he consistently applies himself to his studies and spends hours preparing for exams and presentations.</p>
<p>I have no idea what UCD’s grading policies are or the difficulty of the classes. My assumption is that it will be similar to other top UC’s.</p>
<p>Not as difficult to get classes as you may think usually. Just read other threads on here…
I don’t know which school is more competitive on getting good grades. I know people at Cal Poly care about doing well, but the atmosphere is not overly competitive, which is nice. Like in my high school, people would purposely give another student incorrect information before a test, so that they could get the highest grade in the class. That doesn’t seem to happen here thankfully. Teachers at Cal Poly work pretty closely with students and most of mine have made a good effort to get to know me, which has been nice. The small class size definitely helps. I’ve had to take a few giant lectures over my four years here, and I’ve personally hated them. Not because the class or teacher was bad, but just because there were so many people and it felt very impersonal. Luckily I haven’t had to take very many large lectures. </p>
<p>The amount of studying you’ll have to do depends on your major. I’m guessing you’re going into something science oriented? IN that case you’ll probably have a decent amount of work. Science classes also have lab components usually, which take up more time than straight up lecture classes. You get to do some interesting stuff in lab though. I was afraid of the workload when I was starting out here. Turned out I had nothing to worry about. Looking back, I kinda really wish I had changed my major, but I didn’t.</p>
<p>" Like in my high school, people would purposely give another student incorrect information before a test, so that they could get the highest grade in the class" </p>
<p>The reason why i’m losing faith in humanity…</p>
<p>@tylerJH: yeah it was horrible, which was part of the reason why I wanted to get far away from the area where I grew up. People (students and their parents) were preoccupied with comparing themselves to others and having brand name material goods (a large portion of the area was extremely affluent). I’m sure you can find people like that in a lot of places, including some at Cal Poly, but there were so, so many more where I grew up. My high school eliminated class ranking and valedictorian citing competitiveness as a reason. They wanted to try and reduce the competitive atmosphere a bit. Not that all competition is bad, but too much is too much.</p>
<p>I agree w/OsakaDad - as my engineering student’s grades are basically consistent w/HS, though he does seem to put in somewhat more effort. If anything his math/sci grades are a little better and his english a bit worse. So far, no real problems in getting courses. He did learn quickly to master the CP registration process. Due to a communications screw-up between our HS and CP Admissions on his final transcript, he wasn’t pre-enrolled in his starting fall courses like nearly all other students and had to scramble to register in late registration. However, that experience did give him a great introduction and background in course planning and registration. So far the workload is nor precluding him from a boatload of outside activities, including working-out, pledging a fraternity, and taking a long Coachella weekend.</p>