Linguistics at UCSD

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - San Diego
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I’ll make the intro short: I am a rising senior who is starting to write UC personal statements.

So I have been pondering over linguistics for quite some time now, but I’m finding it hard to find some concrete information on the major itself. I understand UCSD is ranked pretty high in this department worldwide, yet I don’t know why. What sets UCSD apart from other linguistics programs, since I know very well that UCSD has an amazing bio program. Furthermore I would like to know what types of supplement classes would one need to take while taking Linguistics in college. I am considering to take biology, chemistry, and other pre-reqs for medical school. If you’re wondering why I’m planning to go to medical school while taking Linguistics, it’s for 2 reasons. One, I’m good at learning and speaking new languages on demand. That’s a skill and talent that I believe I can make a professional and stable career out of after college. Two, I wanted to somehow connect it with Medicine because I’ve always been very inspired by Doctors without Borders, and I aspire to become one. Traveling and researching in different, non-English speaking countries would then be easier for me.

In all, I want information on classes that I’ll need or have to take as a major in linguistics, will I have time to take the pre-reqs for med school with those classes, and is it possible to take summer courses at community colleges to get some classes out of the way, to make room for my other classes. I have AP credit from AP Lang. and AP U.S. History. I am planning to take the AP Calc AB exam and AP Psych as well next May. To supplement my application for Linguistics, I also volunteer as a translator for an Asian drama streaming website. I speak English, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Korean, and Spanish fluently and can read and write in all of them and I am currently learning Japanese and Cantonese currently. My grades aren’t spectacular because of my junior year actually. I have a UC/CSU GPA of 3.54 and got a 1350 on the new SAT. I am retaking the SAT this October to hopefully receive a better score that can balance my average GPA. Looking at my personal experiences and my questions, I hope you can give me your best answers.

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If you go to the UCSD Linguistics website you will be able to see all of the courses that are required for the major. My only advice to you is if you want to apply to medical school you have to make sure you have the highest GPA possible in your undergraduate major and do well on the MCATs. Not to discourage you, but medical school can be a real crap shoot. My D’s good friend had a 3.89 GPA from UCB and excellent MCAT scores and applied to 20 medical schools and was not accepted to any and was waitlisted at 2.

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@showmom858 Thank you for directing me. I do sort of have an understanding that medical school is at the most part very unpredictable, which is why I think by doing linguistics, I’ll have another option.