The details you’ve shared are very much appreciated. It opposes some presumptions I had about UCLA. I just wanted your opinion, if you were in my place, which university would you choose to have the best shot possible to medschool
Sorry Pranav, I’ve been called a UCLA homer by a couple people on this board, even if stated hypocritically because they have likewise been themselves towards their college biases, and additionally, I do stop short of stating which college someone as yourself should attend based on which one I would.
I know that UCLA has a very strong South Asian/Indian presence, and they and all other ethnicities have a keen interest in Bollywood type activities.
“ . Let me add another edit: there are 178 freshman med students admitted to Geffen, so the typical class will have 14-16%, typically, who did their undergrad at UCLA”
@firmament2x how many of these admits were international students?
According to @firmament2x’s numbers:
About 27 out of 1152 UCLA medical school applicants went to Geffen.
“Can” being the main word that should be emphasized.
It depends on the major, of course, but for most pre-meds, it seems unlikely that UCLA would provide extra opportunities commensurate with the extra cost. I’m assuming the OP wasn’t accepted in to the CS major.
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Applying as an International who didn’t attend HS in the US to American medical schools looks to be even more severely disadvantaging.
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@PurpleTitan per your post #43…
About 27 out of 1152 UCLA medical school applicants went to Geffen.
…you did what all the colleges do when they reject an applicant in trying to “allay” their disappointment: they’ll list total apps and present their final class size. E.g., so-and-so college has 3,000 seats for 75,000 applications, so that represents 4% of the applicants who enroll, when it will take many more of those who have been accepted to achieve their 3,000 student freshman class (for those colleges not named Harvard).
Of those ~ 27 who do enroll, it typically represents ~ 40+ who’ve been accepted, so that would be 40/1,152 or 3.5% acceptance rate. The number of applicants is higher for 2020 by about 100 from the referenced database which was last updated in 2019, so 40/1,052 = 3.8% in the aligning with years. That 3.8% is undoubtedly extremely daunting, but that’s still better than the 2% acceptance rate that Geffen reports for its total freshman class, but we knew that it was long odds anyway.
{Another edit:} Additionally, the assumption I made was that all the 1,152 applied to Geffen which isn’t that far off from being true: in the past with 1,000 total apps, about 900 of them did apply to UCLA. So assuming that 90% of the 1,152 who applied to med schools in 2020 applied to Geffen, ~ 1,037 would have applied to UCLA SOM and in another very large assumption, that 44 were accepted (40*1,152/1,052) ⇒ and AR of 44/1037 = 4.2%, which is still very daunting.
The UC has six medical schools and UCLA {edit: grads do} well with all of them. UCLA also has two affiliated schools which are primarily for underserved communities but for which there are not very many UCLA grads who are accepted to them, besides their being smaller programs. UCLA does extremely well with USC Keck, and not so well with Stanford; only a handful get in there. All in all, about 1/3 of UCLA baccalaureates attend medical schools in CA, which of course leads to ~ 2/3 or a bit more who attend med school in the other 49 states. And the typical number of UCLA bacs who attend med school/year has been ~ 500.
In regard to acceptance rate as noted in a prior thread, If the overall numbers were ~ 1,000 UCLA grads who applied, there would be ~ 500 who’ve been accepted (again, with at least ≥ 1 acceptance) at med schools (this doesn’t include DO schools or schools in the Caribbean) based on history, so we’d have to know what the spike in applicants would do for 2020 with respect to the AR rate. If the rate follows from the upward trend at 52%, that would ⇒ just short of 600 who had offers. Undoubtedly, the student-led advisory to med schools at UCLA has improved, because the administration and faculty try to let the students help fellow premeds, along with these students getting help from their prep courses, in addition to a trend of students doing self-study with online/social-media help.
Further, according to your post #45:
It depends on the major, of course, but for most pre-meds, it seems unlikely that UCLA would provide extra opportunities commensurate with the extra cost. I’m assuming the OP wasn’t accepted in to the CS major.
Wrt to your last sentence, I doubt this was the case. UCLA for its CS major, which is in the engineering school, doesn’t typically recycle applicants for a second or tertiary choice major. They have only one shot to get in an E program; if they don’t make it, their apps are typically discarded. They have a small chance to get into UCLA’s E school with and undeclared E major, but they don’t have any chance at a Letters and Science major.
I didn’t get the impression that Pranav wanted to get into CS and was rejected; maybe I missed it, but L&S at UCLA has a Mathematics of Computation major which is housed in the math department which allows those in this major to take classes in its math department and crossing colleges into the engineering school. In more of a bio-computation major, UCLA has a Computational and Systems biology major that will mostly lead to an MS with a specialty.
Sorry @thumper1 I don’t have the information of how many Geffen students are international.
Was the OP accepted off the waitlist at UCLA? If not, he missed the matriculation decision deadline which was by May 1.
I don’t think UCLA has sent out waitlist offers of admittance yet, so they’ve been extending commitment date to well after May 1st.
{Edit, making a lot of them:} in a post above Pranav said he had 3 days as of a day ago to accept the offer. So perhaps he committed and paid the deposit to Toronto and had a WL acceptance from UCLA?
Due to current unprecedented circumstances, it was the safest option to dual deposit to both universities. I wrote a mail explaining my situation to both universities as well, after which I was allowed to go ahead with it.
I think dual depositing is a huge no no when you’re considering between 2 US unis as there’s a clause on the commonapp warning the applicant not to do so.
Thank you so much for the data! It really goes a long way in clarifying some statistical doubts for me.
Any update? What did you finally decide?
All the best man.
Hi again, I decided on UCLA. During these 2 weeks, I was able to reflect and talk to some more people who said UCLA is the way to go if you want to explore new majors, etc. because of a quarter system.
Also, I already have a strong network there plus the weather is a HUGE bonus 
Appreciate it dude.