Hi I’ve been accepted to the Honors program are SDSU, as well as UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and am waiting to hear back from UC San Diego and am unsure of which one would be the better school to go to advice?
Oh I am majoring in Biology
- Future goal with Biology major?
- Have you visited all the schools?
- Are the costs similar?
- Do you prefer one location over another?
- What kind of college experience would you like to have?
- I’m unsure
- All except SDSU but I am visiting over my spring break
- SDSU is the cheapest by around $4k
- Location wise San Diego Andy Santa Cruz were my favorite
- I just wish to get the best possible education
You will get a great education at all your options but I believe fit is very important since a Happy student is a successful student.
-You need to consider academics which should include the ease in the ability to change majors, add a minor and the overall courses available since you are not sure on your career direction.
-Finances of course so you need to know your budget limitations.
-Social scene can very important so visiting will help give you an idea of how you will fit in with the other students.
-Access to good academic and career advising.
Both my son’s solidified their decisions after visiting their top choices on Admitted students day or the Campus Open house. I cannot stress enough that you should talk to current students and ask their opinions on their likes and dislikes.
Best of luck.
While you may not like the inland location of Davis as much, it is top-notch for biology with so many sub-options, and a great college town with a far more favorable housing picture than Santa Cruz or La Jolla. And if you like the social vibe at SDSU, I’d say Davis is more similar to that than either of your other UC’s. I would give UCD really strong consideration. SDSU Honors is a great program that’s well worth considering too, but 4K/year isn’t a huge difference. Take four-year graduation rates in to account too, because if you were to need an addition semester to graduate from SDSU, that would more than wipe out the cost savings. (Less than 50% of SDSU students graduate in four years. The 4-year grad rate for Honors students is 77%, so that’s quite a bit better, even though Honors students do not get priority registration.)
One other thing to consider is that SDSU is on semester vs the rest of the UC’s on your list are quarter systems. Definitely need to be very organized, have good time management and hit the ground running as a Freshman on the quarter system.
My younger son is a recent SDSU graduate/CS Major. He made it out in 4 years but that did include taking a few classes during summer session and having some a decent amount of AP credit.
I concur with @aquapt that UCD for Biology is a excellent option and my top pick since my older son was a UCD grad.
There’s not priority registration?
Not according to this: http://mep.sdsu.edu/dus/uhc/files/04695-FAQ_Orientation.pdf (File is a few years out of date but nothing I’ve seen has indicated that this has changed - hopefully someone will chime in with a correction if it’s different now.)
And it’s probably very common, per Gumbymom’s remarks, that students need to do some summer classes in order to finish in four years. That too could eat up a lot of the $4Kx4 cost differential, when you take lost income as well as summer tuition/housing into account. (That said, I don’t know how many UC students are doing the same thing.)
If you don’t mind sharing what were his AP scores and for what tests? Also did he take college classes while in high school as well as AP?
My younger son got 38 units of AP credits as a Freshman at SDSU. He opted out of Calculus 1 and 2 by using his Cal AB and BC credit (both 5’s). AP Biology (4) gave him credit for a Science GE. AP World (3) gave him a History GE credit and AP US Government (4) gave him a Political science credit.
He didn’t use his AP Physics credit and decided to take the 2 semester major requirement. He also got elective credit for US History, Econ and Environmental Science.
As a Freshman 1st semester at SDSU, you do get priority registration for the required GE classes and they do open up more classes as they fill up. They also started using waitlists for the classes vs. crashing, so you can get an idea of the chances of getting off the waitlist for the popular classes. Your AP credits will applied to your class standing so after 1st semester, he was already at Sophomore standing and that moves up your registration times.
UC’s are not as generous with AP credit and his brother that attended UCD was not able to use any AP credits for opting out of GE’s or major classes. UCD did let you use AP credit toward class standing and better class registration times but this is no longer available. My older son did do 1 summer session for 2 GE classes after Freshman year, just to get them out of the way and also graduated in 4 years at UCD.
Where a lot of students run into issues with graduating in a timely manner, is change of major and not being flexible with their class times and professors.
Should not be a surprise that the stronger incoming students (the honors students) have a higher 4-year graduation rate.
My kid was a STEM major in the honors program at SDSU and finished in four years. He didn’t take summer courses, but did enter the school with a lot of AP credits (I don’t remember how many, but I believe he scored 5s on all the tests - maybe Physics was a 4). He didn’t have problems getting his classes primarily because he was flexible with his schedule and didn’t mind if he had early morning or 3 p.m. classes. The new-ish waitlist system was a huge help, too. Plus, he never changed his major, which is usually how extra time is added to the graduation timeline. He’s in grad school now, and had an awesome experience at SDSU. He worked on campus and was very involved in on-campus organizations, so he had a well-rounded time. In recent years, I just don’t personally know of many Aztecs who graduate in more than 4.5 years since everyone is very budget focused. (Disclaimer - When I graduated from the school 30 years ago, it was much more of the norm to graduate in 5 years, but there were very few of us who were from outside of San Diego who attended the school at that time. It is a completely different university now).
You have a wonderful slate of universities from which to choose! You’ll thrive at any of them with focus, determination, and tenacity. I hope you’re attending Explore SDSU. If not, I hope you’re able to talk to current students during your visit. Like @Gumbymom wrote about her kids, my kid also committed to the school after Explore SDSU/admitted students weekend.
Here’s a recent article about SDSU’s graduation rate - http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=77417