@srparent15 i can definitely see why someone who isn’t used to the bigger cities be surprised and taken aback by the areas around USC. I’m surprised they didn’t like the area around UCLA. That’s actually the appeal about UCLA, in addition to the campus. It’s definitely not for everyone. Seattle is similar if you go downtown and off campus, as well as Berkeley.
The surrounding areas are definitely not for everyone and it’s tough to leave the comfort of where you’ve been k-12!
I think you raise a great point as the vast majority of pre-med Freshman do not end up staying pre-med.
My D is planning BME, so I did a lot of research last year on BME programs and we did have UAB on our list because it showed up on several lists for good BME programs. I think due to associations with the well regarded med school.
That said Pitt is ranked 20th for BME per USNWR, so hard to beat as an option. I would say decision driver would be how much $ is a factor.
Nevermind. Not worth my time.
I will let my friend know about USC and I will tell about UCLA to my daughter who is still upset about the waitlist from there. These young people should have their priority correct. My daughter would have ended up paying like $70000 to UCLA where as she got $51000 to Georgetown and will only pay $20000.
Thank you so much for this info on UAB. I didn’t know about it.
USC appeal:
SoCal location
New “village”
Some top programs (accounting, journalism, media/entertainment, sciences)
D1 sports/great school spirit
Amazing alumni network
Good weather, zero humidity
Private college with good faculty to student ratio
Very diverse student body
Smaller class sizes
Cons:
Compact campus for the amount of undergrad/graduate students (220 acres?)
Sketchy neighborhood within a few miles of campus (it’s south central LA)
Some materialism, elitism
Some people just don’t like CA
Expensive
Trying to shake its 1980s/90s rep as the “university of spoiled children”
The bottom line is that in CA, there really is only one other top private D1 university and that’s Stanford. USC is a good second choice for many students who want the mix of work hard / play hard.
“The bottom line is that in CA, there really is only one other top private D1 university and that’s Stanford.”
Caltech is not D1 sports, but I thought I’d mention it. But, who gets into Caltech, it’s so damn hard.
BME is a great field. We are in the SF bay area, and my older daughter finished her master’s at Berkeley last year in BME and easily found a 6 figure income job in the local biotech market. In fact, she is keeps fending off ‘poaching’ attempts by other companies. BME is not at all like EE or ME, and is really a separate discipline.
Soooo, finally almost an end to this wild and crazy senior year . None of it went as expected, planned, or hoped. Including the admissions cycle. But in the end my daughter chose a school that checked off all her boxes (in/near a great city with lots of history arts and culture, in the northeast or New England, huge school spirit/sports culture, gorgeous old architecture campus, not too big or too small, has opportunities for dance, etc.). And she is very excited and very happy, and that is all that actually matters. And we are all happy she is continuing her education at a Catholic Jesuit school, since she has been going to Catholic school K-12, so it just seems right. So Boston College here she comes!!
Her stats:
•Earned a 4.85 GPA 1st semester of senior year, all A’s, taking 5 AP classes and one Honors class, with a cumulative GPA of 4.64 and a total of 10 AP classes and 10 honors classes
•Has earned an end of year academic merit award in her math classes freshmen, sophomore and junior years
•Has been on the Principal’s Honor Roll each semester since the 1st of freshmen year for earning a 3.75 or higher GPA
•Is a member of the California Scholarship Federation, the National Honor Society, and the Spanish Honor Society
•Earned an AP Scholar Award
•Has tutored children ages 4-14 at Kumon and privately for 2 years
•Holds a leadership position in the Empowerment Club, which empowers women on campus and in society, for 3 years
•Member of the Medical Club, for future medical career interests, for 3 years
•Participates in the Medical Focus Program, in which she shadows medical professionals and visits medical facilities
•Participates in student government and was elected senior class treasurer
•Was chosen by administration to be an Ambassador for her school, representing the school in on and off campus recruitment events
•Has participated in numerous service opportunities, including at food banks, women’s shelters, environmental clean up, children’s events, animal shelters, and a horse rescue sanctuary
•Is a working child actor/dancer in commercials, television, and film, is a member of SAG-AFTRA, and has an agent and a manager
•Spent her summer taking online classes in Egyptology, an interest she has had since 2nd grade, and 2 Weeks in the Life of a Medical Student, at Brown University
•Has been dancing since she was 2, seriously training since she was 7 at the same dance studio, where she is in her 11th year on their performing/competing dance team and has earned many awards
I have attached my daughter’s college list, updated now that this has all thankfully come to an end. Results were better than some, worse than others, and we have had to redefine our original hopes and goals along the way.
Congrats to all of us for making it through this. But especially to all of our kids, who have worked so hard, lost so much, and endured more than they should have had to during the pandemic. I hope all of our kids land somewhere they will be happy and thrive.
It’s ridiculous really. My son has done well in the Physics class relative to other students, although I don’t know what that means since the tests that are given are the AP tests and of course he can get a much lower grade and it’s an A, so it’s confusing. I also don’t know how well the teacher is grading the FRQ type of stuff since it’s his first year teaching this class after having taught Honors Freshman Physics for so many years. But my son has been watching the videos from the prior teacher to keep on top of things and I do think those extra three weeks will be a huge help.
Yes, May 3 is the Mechanics. I couldn’t remember the date! The teacher actually gave the class the option when they wanted to take them. We just went back full-time in person last Tuesday so I think this is a big help too even though some kids are still remote. I think my son said only 2 at the time. My daughter took the E&M course last summer I just told my son he should look at her book. Also, one one of the review books for the AP test was recommended a few years ago for my girls. Maybe 5 on AP Physics C it’s called or something like that, so I think he will actually look at it unlike them.
As far as registering, they haven’t released their dates yet but I think the normal course sequence is Chem, Mechanics, E&M but probably because kids also don’t have the calculus for physics. We found out Michigan won’t take his MVC/Calc 3 course credit (no surprise), so that’s a redo, and assuming he can get the credit for Chem, the unknown are the physics. I’m leaning towards having him register for E&M and an extra course and then drop whichever one he won’t need pending the AP score. The only issue is that Michigan charges more money (have never seen this either at my other kids schools) if you enroll in more than 18 hours. So hopefully he can enroll but drop before we have to pay. Total racket.
Austin has a lot of homelessness and some parents totally freak about it and they have literally not seen anything unless they come to Chicago or worse to San Francisco or some of the other larger cities. They also don’t seem to understand why these people are homeless and think they’re all Criminals, which is really bothersome. Yes, some are but homelessness is a huge mental health crises and it’s not being addressed as well as it could be.
It wasn’t that they didn’t like the area around ucla. That wasn’t the issue at all. They just didn’t like ucla. Huge classes didn’t care for the course of study that kind of thing. One is in a program where she is at a large school but most classes of her classes are only 30 students. The other one is in a program also more highly regarded than ucla (both are actually) but just something about the school didn’t appeal to any of them. Wasn’t about the neighborhood for either UCLA or USC or any school really now that I think about it.
Also, we live in Chicago so it’s definitely not a case of someone not used to being in a large city. My kids love LA since we go regularly to visit my brother and my son lives in SF.
Sounds like a fabulous fit ! Congratulations 
I’m glad to be proven wrong and great to hear that your daughter is doing well in the field 
My observation came from my experience interviewing new grads at a big tech company for entry level software development jobs between 2014 and 2019. I must have screened somewhere close to 150 recent graduates for these jobs which I would describe as generic software development.
One thing I noticed was the number of biomedical engineering graduates I interviewed. I asked several of them why they were applying for software development positions and they told me that they were finding it hard to find positions in the field. I’m really glad to hear the situation has improved since then!
Remember 18 units is the max, so you can’t go over that number. But otherwise, I think it’s a good strategy.
My D registered during freshman orientation and the advisor helped her choose her courses and “granted” her various AP credits.
And she often registers for extra classes and drops/switches them later.
Is there a site that summarizes the core curriculum and external credit acceptance rules for different schools? Some of the websites are not totally clear and trying to get a quick overview for the top 5 without drilling too deep for today. Thanks!
Ahhh, wouldn’t that be nice! Let me know if you find one. Trying to figure out which of the larger universities will accept IB credit at the moment, but it would be really helpful to see what the core requirements are. I suspect lots of individual school sites will need to be navigated.
Yeah, this is what my UT one has done. Register for the extra then add/drop as she likes or doesn’t like. So, they won’t let him register for 21 pending the AP class? Isn’t it up to us if we wanted to pay for it? Those stupid science courses are 5 credits and then everything else seems to be 4. I suppose he can blow off signing up for a science and just take 4 - 4 hour and leave it at that. The only way he would be behind is if he doesn’t get a 4 on AP Chem which seems unlikely based on how he had been studying as if he needed to get a 5 and has done well in the course and practice tests have been at a 5. It’s the E&M that’s the biggest hurdle. I think that one had an in person section too.
Thank god he already has the AP Calculus credit. One less thing to worry about there!
The class registration website won’t let you exceed 18 units, even if those extra units are for a class where your S would be on a waiting list. If you want to exceed 18, then speak to an advisor.
Just a guess, since we’ve not tried, but probably with a prepay of the additional money and an exemption, a Michigan student could take more than 18 units. Your tuition covers 12-18 units, so extra money would for sure be involved. And for OOS students, the cost is very, very expensive.
I’d caution against taking a heavy load for a couple reasons. One, 1st semester freshman year is an adjustment for most students. They’re spreading all those 3.9 uwGPA students over the spectrum of A’s, B’s, C’s and below. Two, Saturdays are generally lost because of football. My D18 would end up studying Saturday evenings and that’s not normal. Most don’t. Three, they need a little time to find their friends. Although yours is coming from Chicago, so he likely has a group of friends already.
Now, some kids will be able to handle the heavy work load, grading adjustment and social life with zero problem. I know my D18 works her butt off with almost no free time and she’s taking 16 units. Obviously, there are kids that are simply “naturals” when it comes to school and just blow through classes easier than others.
He’s not planning to take 5 classes, but since results of the AP tests won’t be in until July and there’s a chance he will register in June (assuming that’s when they start orientation - no dates are published yet) then I would have hoped he could register for 5 with the plan to drop the extra once he knew his scores. Either the science he doesn’t need or the extra intelectual breadth course. But if he can’t do that, maybe he has to just register for 2 intellectual breadth, the math and the engr101 unless he can take other engineering courses. Hopefully like my daughter he has a plan of classes he is interested in and a wide variety as I assume so.
It’s funny they don’t let them take more than 18. At Cornell many of the engineering majors take more than 20 hours a semester which I think is nuts but with the amount of labs they need to take and other requirements, I guess they don’t really have any other choice. Mine had 6 classes last semester which I told her she shouldn’t take. She did wind up dropping one and kept 5, which was still too many and unnecessary since she has banked AP credit she still hasn’t used but now she’s changing her major to ORIE with probably just minor in CS and Business so has a wasted class and has to take an extra one so I guess that banked AP and taking a full load each semester has saved her butt.
