Got accepted into UW for Public Health, and UCSC for Biology.
I understand that UW has extremely difficult base classes that are “designed” to weed out students? Which are curved around the ~2.5 GPA range.
With that said, UCSC is most likely the better college for a higher GPA - an invaluable factor when it comes to graduate school admissions. However, after visiting UW and UCSC, the lack of resources UCSC has compared to UW is concerning. Easy example to see this would just be visiting UCSC and seeing how packed the libraries are and how lacking the technology they have there is, when compared to UW and the libraries they have over there.
Lastly, there is also the factor of “wasted effort” in high school. The Boy Scout Camp esque campus of UCSC is kind of depressing to me, personally, and I feel like I would be much more disappointed during the duration of my undergraduate years there, when compared to UW’s grandiose campus.
With that said, I would definitely have a smoother time at UCSC GPA wise, where I can be more “happy”, as I wont be nearly as bogged down by the difficulty of the classes as I would be if I went to UW.
Any thoughts and advice is appreciated.
Thanks.
(Hi mom if u are looking at my post)
There is no easy way out for premed and never under estimate UCSC to get high GPA for premed.
When I say easy, it’s relative to the comparison in rigor to UW.
And BTW, in general, how do graduate schools view students who some classes like general chem + ochem at a CC, instead of the University the student is graduating from?
Taking difficult courses from CC and trying to evade your own 4 years college rigor is being viewed badly by med school and will cause rejections.
Sheesh!! The way you are slamming a quality school like UCSC after visiting both of your choices?! Just go to Washington!!
Chill
Most premeds who show up on day one at college change their career goals and of those who actually apply 60% fail to gain even one acceptance anywhere. Premed is hard everywhere. Weeding is not the norm at these schools because of some designed plan to thin out the herd. Most profs probably don’t know or even care who’s premed or not. College profs just do not hand out As like pez candy as often seen in hs. In fall 2017 approx 480 students were enrolled in Chem 1A (a premed req) at UCSC. I don’t know how many were premed or not, but I suspect few, if any, were there because they said hey I’m going to add a fun or light course to my schedule. Maybe 15% ish got As, most got something lower, probably Cs. This is the kind of competition you will face at both schools and in every course, especially when getting As is very important to one’s career goals.
https://pisa.ucsc.edu/class_search/index.php
How much do you have to pay at both schools.
Doing that with pre-med courses is often looked at unfavorably by medical schools, who tend to look down on CCs to begin with and may see a student who has matriculated to a four year school doing that for perceived easier grading. (Students who start at CC and transfer to a four year school would be a different situation, but it is probably best for them to take at least some of the pre-med courses like biology and organic chemistry at a four year school if their major is not something like biology or chemistry that has advanced courses in those subjects anyway.)
~35,000 at UCSC (In State)
~55,000 at UW (OOS)
So financially speaking, UCSC is the better choice by far.
$80,000 will be significant in putting a dent in the amount of debt you will end up with after medical school, if you are admitted.
Also, in the event you are not able to get into medical school (most pre-meds get weeded out early; those that make it to applying are successful less than half of the time), $80,000 of either money or debt avoided would be helpful when going into a lower paying field (like biology or public health).