<p>I’ve read many many old posts about whether or not going to a better undergraduate school helps you for medical school acceptance. I’ve gotten two answers:</p>
<li>Medical Schools do not care about your school, and only your GPA</li>
<li>Medical Schools factor in your undergraduate competition, and thus a student with a lower GPA at a competitive school is better than a student with a higher GPA at a less competitive school</li>
</ol>
<p>Which of these is true? My problem right now is that I got into UCLA, but UCR just sent me a Full Tuition Regents Scholarship. If I go to UCR and get a higher GPA, is that better for me than to go to UCLA? Also, both have research opportunities, but UCLA by far has more. Any help please?</p>
<p>The truth is probably somewhere in between. It's foolish to think a 3.9 from Cal Tech would be viewed the same as a 3.9 from UCR. At the same time, there are thousands of colleges across the country. Adcoms are not going to know the level of grade deflation and the quality of students at each institutions. Adcoms are familiar with the prestigious colleges. They know these institutions generally have a lot of grade inflation but that's balanced by having strong students. East Coast med schools are not going to be as familiar with the UC's as UC med schools. In my opinion, an East Coast med school is less likely to distinguish b/w UCR and UCLA than a UC med school. It is also my opinion that UCLA and UC Berkeley are severely underrated by Ivy League and other top East Coast med schools. </p>
<p>My theory is that you must be able to attain a basal acceptable GPA of around 3.4-3.5 no matter where you go. You should go to a school that will enable you to do this. However, if you aspire to go to a top med school, you may need to go to a prestigious college as well as have a great GPA. I just came back from Second Look Weekend at a top research med school. Over the course of 3 days, out of all the acceptees I talked to, I ran into maybe 3-4 students that did not come from super-prestigious colleges. They came from places like Trinity College or UVa. The rest ALL came from Cornell, Stanford, Harvard, Duke, Brown, you get the idea. I didn't talk to all of the 150 students at Second Look but I talked to a substantial number of them.</p>
<p>So the question is: what is your career goal? To conduct research and go to a super prestigious research med school? In that case, I would advise going to UCLA, even if that means a greater chance you won't get to med school at all. If you simply want to be a physician and attending a prestigous med school won't be a priority for you, then UCR is probably the safer choice.</p>
<p>As always, I have to add that how much you like each school will trump any kind of GPA analysis. This is all assuming you like UCLA and UCR equally.</p>
<p>Well I would like to go to a top med school, but I realize it's probably out of my reach. The med school I want to go to would probably be a UC Med School (UCSD or UCLA). Preferably UCLA. Would me going to UCLA for my undergraduate increase my chances at getting into UCLA's medical school or is that also a myth?</p>
<p>1.) It is not the case that medical schools ignore undergraduate institution. You can see quite clearly that they make adjustments depending on what school you're from. However, this is NOT an adjustment for grade inflation or competitiveness. What it is, we don't really know.</p>
<p>2.) In any case, I don't think anybody's going to be distinguishing between the UC's.</p>