<p>Hi, I'm a psychology pre-med student deciding between LA and SD.
I've determined that the competition at both schools will be rough because both LA and SD have alot of pre-med students.
I've also determined that the location for both schools are pretty great.</p>
<p>So I've decided to pick a college based on their social life.</p>
<p>I come from a small high school of 250 kids, where everyone grew up with everyone. I'm used to the small community feeling. So I'm a bit wary to go to UCLA and be thrown in with everyone.</p>
<p>Current students, does the 6 college system actually create a small community feel in a large public college? Because if there is that sense of community, I think SD might be the better place for me.</p>
<p>Sort of. It doesn’t create a community feel overall because everyone will be taking different classes so most of the people you meet are likely to be not from the same college as you, except college-specific writing classes of course. However, if you live on campus, every college’s dorms/apartments are in their own part of campus so if you attend your own college’s events, you’ll be able to interact with people from your college, which makes it like a small community in that sense.</p>
<p>Yeah, but you can say that about most large universities. Most places have their housing split up around campus and you would generally go to your own living area’s events.</p>
<p>@stephieism</p>
<p>I don’t believe that the college system is necessarily beneficial. I think students just trick themselves into thinking it must be beneficial and that it creates a smaller sense of community. Ultimately I think most universities do the same thing already, meaning that their campus is split up into different areas where students live and interact. They just don’t officially “name” the parts of its campus like UCSD. It just makes it sound more legit when in reality I don’t see how it’s any different than most universities.</p>
<p>If you’re concerned about sense of community, I would go off of what you felt when you visited the campuses (if you did). Maybe UCSD does have a better sense of community for you compared to UCLA but I’m just saying that it doesn’t necessarily have a leg up just per it’s college system.</p>
<p>That’s just my opinion. I know a lot of people who completely disagree with me on this. But when they do disagree, I ask them exactly HOW our college system makes UCSD different than other places and I usually don’t get a good answer on that. It’s as if people are subconsciously thinking “Well this sounds really cool and official so it must be doing something”, and well, that’s not necessarily true.</p>