I was admitted to UCLA for Fall 2017 as an Undeclared-Life Sciences major. My parents have told me to seriously consider going since UCLA has great resources and its own medical school. However, I have friends who attend there that say it’s a cut-throat environment, especially for nursing and premed students. It’s apparently impossible to get good extracurriculars without constantly fighting and competing for them. I know that is a part of life, but they make it sound so awful. One even said freshmen year students try to sabotage each other! Personally, I love being surrounded by intelligent people because I love to collaborate with people smarter than me and ask for help and in turn provide help others when I can. But it sounds like UCLA isn’t that kind of unified community…
I have two other great, cheap options besides UCLA. Neither have a medical school, but they offered me a bunch of opportunities (faculty mentors, research positions, etc.) that go along with my scholarship program. They are ranked Top 50-60 range, both private schools. I’m also waiting to hear back from two Top 25 schools next week.
So, should I just knock UCLA off my list? Or am I not considering the benefits enough?
Yeah, I’m going to be honest here but the pre-health environment is pretty competitive here. Just simple things like trying to go to office hours to ask a question or applying for some position, you’re always going to face that kind of competition. It really depends on what kind of person you are. Since UCLA is a public university and has the highest enrollment out of the UCs there are A LOT of premeds here. For private schools, it’s probably a little easier cause they try to keep the class size small and the student to instructor ratio small. Also since UCLA is a quarter system, it’s so quick that you have to be able to understand the material quickly. IF you have a good science background, I wouldn’t worry so much; the stronger science foundation you have, the easier it’ll come to you. I found a lot of the courses here are built upon things I learned in high school. I haven’t heard anyone who tried to sabotage other people lol actually there are a lot of helpful people who also want to do well. Yes, most of the classes you take are going to be based on the curve but there isn’t a lot you could sabotage someone with unless you’re relying on anyone else but the professor or TA for information. To put it in perspective most of your classes will have about 100-300 people per class (depending on the course) but sabotaging one person isn’t gonna make a big difference. But this a very minor aspect of UCLA’s curriculum… If you want to do well, you have to be determined to do well. What I mean by that is that anywhere you go you’re going to need to take advantage of your resources and there will be other people who are competing with you to do the same. I wouldn’t let that scare you. UCLA has a ton of research opportunities since it is a UC school and the advantage of the medical school. There are a ton of pre-med resources, you can volunteer/do research at the Ronald Reagan Hospital which puts you directly in that medical environment.