Need help Deciding between Baylor, UC Riverside, Rutgers or UC Merced - Premed track

Hi everyone -

I am deciding which one would be the best choice for a premed track. Briefly, I got admitted into UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, UC Merced, Rutgers and Baylor. Total cost looks like

I am very passionate about the medical field and looking to pursue premed program. Please advise on which of these colleges will be a best choice that will help me get to med school. From my research, looks like Rutgers and Riverside has a program where I can apply for med school during my sophomore year. Also Baylor seems to have higher med school admission rate (70%) - not sure how inflated it is.

Some questions are

  1. Is there any grade inflation/deflation in these colleges - would like to keep up the GPA
  2. Any advantage (leg up) in getting into home med schools by studying undergrad there
  3. Will my OOS impact my admission into Baylor school of medicine
  4. Is it worth applying for the accelerated or the guaranteed admission early during undergrad or is it better to wait till completion of undergrad to have a broader choice

Any thoughts on UC Riverside vs Merced? I hear that UC SC is more focused on comp sci and tech area.

Cost Comparison:
For all 3 UCs (total cost) = $38k+ (I am from CA so paying instate cost)
Rutgers = $ 52K
Baylor (after scholarship)=$38K

My apologies for throwing in a lot of questions in here. Appreciate your thoughts and inputs!

Thank you in advance!

Most medical school applicants from the very top undergraduates schools get into ONE and only ONE
medical school. A good number get into zero medical programs two years in a row, and give up and go to get a masters in public health.

Often med school requires that you work one to two years after your undergraduate education or every summer
in a clinical setting in order to learn more about medicine. So getting in under an accelerated plan, is highly competitive.

Note that Baylor Medical school is in Houston and not Waco Texas, where undergrad is located.
Baylor is a private Christian school, that will ask you to sign a promise on behavior.

Baylor Medical school is combined with MD Anderson in Houston in a big medical complex.

I would post this also on the U of California page, asking about the three UC,s and premed. options and acceptance rates.

Accelerated programs are probably very competitive at Rutgers I would guess. Rutgers is a very large public school in Central NJ with a lot of diversity, its on a campus divided up by rivers in a few towns, New Brunswick and Piscataway NJ.

Rutgers is older (founded in 1700s) and highly ranked university in some of the sciences and engineering.

I would post your question about Rutgers accelerated medical program on the Rutgers page too.

There may be some advantages to Riverside, or Merced over Santa Cruz because the first two offer a medical school and Santa Cruz does not.

If you’re Christian and are okay with the Christian content at a Baptist university, then Baylor for the same cost as a UC would be a real bargain.
UCR has excellent pre-med tracks so in terms of UCs I’d pick either UCR or UCSC. Try to visit, do an overnight where you attend classes.
Uc’s have a lot of grade deflation.

Thank you. The scholarship is one of the factors that makes Baylor look really good. I read somewhere that Baylor undergrad is not associated with Baylor Medical school, but also read however that they are part of the board and hold about 25% seats and hopefully it will benefit undergrads from Baylor? Any insights into that?

I am visiting Riverside this weekend an will post my comments based on the visit after that. Thanks again

thank you @Coloradomama This is very helpful

Yes, Baylor med school is unrelated to Baylor (college). Don’t skirt the religious issue, either. Baylor isn’t Evangelical Christian but the tenets of its faith matter. If it fits yours or you’re okay with it, excellent - but don’t go thinking it won’t matter, you have to respect the fact Baylor is to Baptists what Notre Dame (U) is to Catholics.
Important question: most pre-meds never get into med school. As a result, any pre-med needs a Plan B. What’s yours?
One if your choices may be better for the Plan B.

Published med school rates are essentially worthless, as you have no idea what is in the numerator or denominator. (think about it.) Plus, the UC’s don’t track grads very well so making comparisons off of faulty data is not a good exercise.

At UCR, you can try for the Early Assurance Program a year before normal medical school application season:
https://somsa.ucr.edu/thomas-haider-early-assurance-program

Baylor does have a pre-med committee which does committee letters for medical school applicants:
https://www.baylor.edu/prehealth/index.php?id=955383
This presumably means that the pre-med will have more advising on terms of how realistic his/her chances for medical school admission are, causing some of those with poor chances not to apply, raising the medical school admission rate since the applicant pool will be made of stronger pre-meds than it would be at a free-for-all undergraduate school.

@MYOS1634 I am not a devoted religious person, but I am a christian, and I think I will be ok with it. My plan B is to pursue business administration and may be end up in hospital management. (I loved my summer interns at hospitals).

@ucbalumnus the biggest pro on my list for UCR is the early assurance program (hope I will land it)
My concern with Baylor is if I will end up in the OOS pool and have very small chance of getting into Baylor School of Medicine