<p>Hi, I was wondering if the competition at SD is comparable to the cutthroat environments at LA and Berkeley?</p>
<p>Pre-med is extremely difficult, and yes, there is a lot of competition. In some large classes there will be only a handful of students who get A’s and that’s it. Most of the science classes are extremely difficult and demanding.</p>
<p>With even a moderate amount of studying, you can get Bs in classes. It just takes a little bit more effort to put yourself ahead of the curve and get the A. I’ve never seen any instance of a class having grades partitioned such that “only a handful of students” get As. In fact, as my classes got progressively more specialized, the grading got more lenient. In my pchem class (which is argued to be the most difficult class a chem major will encounter), the professor wanted to reward those who did the hard work, so people who did normally-A-minus-level work got As. (As in, there no A-minuses assigned to anyone that quarter. There were A-pluses, As, B-pluses, and all the normal grades following that.)</p>
<p>And in terms of the amount of material, if you take something like biochemistry – I audited classes at Berkeley and MIT, and they required SO much more of the students. UCSD’s pretty moderate. Columbia’s biochemistry class is a joke.</p>
<p>thanks astrina for the insight. for pre-med does psychology b.s. cover the med school requirements?</p>
<p>if you study u get an A.</p>
<p>@sandman - you need to look that up for yourself, and for the specific med schools you’re applying to. but off the top of my head, i doubt it, since psych majors have no need for organic chemistry.</p>