Thank you @WayOutWestMom! Your response was super helpful. It answered one of my key questions about the medical school. Do you think too that UCM would be the college that provides that most needed education/opportunity? All I have heard so far in this thread was nothing but good about this school and it’s advantage over the private USF an even USD.
Yes!
Take advantage of the major opportunity that has fallen in your lap!
UCSF has cost us $240K over 4 years (not including $3K rents in SF!). Most of my daughter’s friends have taken out loans, loans and more loans.
You’ve been given a gift of Merced that will have amazing opportunities. Take advantage of what you’ve been given.
I can’t (and won’t) tell you what you ought to do. This is your decision.
But let me give the advice I gave my own children. Take pre-med out of the equation. Odds say the vast majority of freshman pre-med hopefuls won’t ever apply to med school. (No knock on you. Just the odds are against you and every other freshman pre-med. No matter how much you say you want it today, there’s no guarantees it will happen. Or that you’ll even want to apply 4 years from now.)
Which school would offer you the best combination of fit, opportunity and cost?
Fit because happier students do better academically. Also college is 4 years of your life you will never get back. You need to be able to enjoy your time at college.
Opportunity, including the opportunity to explore new interests and ideas, even though they may lead you away from medicine. The opportunity to find mentoring from professors. (You’ll need strong LORs for med school, grad school or whatever career pathway you end up following.) The opportunity to get involved in campus activities. (See FIT above. Plus med schools are looking for well rounded individuals with interests outside of science/medicine and who have demonstrated their ability to be leaders.) The opportunity to get involved in research, if that’s an interest of yours. (It’s a pre med misconception that lab research is a critical thing to have for a med school application. It’s not…) The opportunity to grow and learn and meet new people who come from backgrounds different from yours.
If there are any near the college clinical sites where you can easily volunteer–that’s plus in the opportunity column. (NOTE: clinical site doesn’t necessarily mean a hospital. There are lots of different types of clinical sites–like county healthcare clinics, Planned Parenthood, Healthcare for the Homeless, stand alone day surgeries, etc.)
Cost because debt can cripple your personal and economic life. It’s terrible way to start out in life after college, especially since you’re not guaranteed to land high paying job to repay that debt. Also medical school is hideously expensive. If you are successful in gaining a med school acceptable you’ll also gaining a quarter million dollar in unsubsidized loans that will continue to accrue interest and capitalize while you are in med school and residency. Even physicians may have trouble repaying a $500K high interest debt.
If you can swing it, and costs won’t break the bank, I’d give a bump up for any university that allows you to live away from home for all reasons I listed in the post above.
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This was a tough year, probably a lot due to Covid. I wouldn’t say “not good enough”, there were so many strong candidates that arbitrary decisions had to be made. The Harvard head of admissions was once quoted as saying they could build a class just as strong as the ones they accepted out of kids they rejected. You are not alone in being disappointed this year.
The Burbank mother knew her high school senior would have a tough time competing for a freshman seat at a University of California campus in a year of record-shattering applications — more than 200,000 students were vying for about 46,000 spots. Still, she thought her daughter — with a 4.3 GPA, eight AP and honors courses and a host of extracurricular activities — would have a shot.
She was floored in March when the campus notifications began rolling in. Out of seven UC campuses, her daughter was denied or wait-listed at all but UC Merced.
“It was heartbreaking,” said the parent, who asked for anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy at a time of great disappointment. “And I got really angry. We just got the rug pulled out from under us. What more could our kids possibly have done?”
UC explains admissions decisions in a record application year of much heartbreak, some joy
There is one other thing you wrote I want to comment on
One thing that hurt me at the beginning and was hard for me to digest and then accept it was the fact that I didn’t need to study hard all my sophomore and Junior years, I still could get into some of the schools that I got accepted including UCM.
You might want to spend some time online reading about Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation. What you have written is an example of extrinsic, that the point of studying is for the rewards such as grades and admission. I would argue that its best to have a mix of them; you do it for goals, sure, but you also do it for the rewards of learning and challenging yourself.
Furthermore the extrinsic benefits may still come. By studying hard you built a better foundation than your peers, the ones you’ll be competing against in class in college. You have put in place good study habits they’ll struggle to adopt, you know the material the profs will have expected students to learn in HS better than many. Similarly with your lab work. Your HS ECs may not have tipped you into your first choices for college, but it can still pay off. When you look for research opportunities in college having experience already makes you a stronger candidate. If 5 kids ask a prof to work in the lab and he has space for 2, that experience will pay off.
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@Hwy101
And that ^ is also why I think UCM is a better choice: more opportunities in line with your interests, including research.
I foresee there’s going to be a pretty big list in early May, because this cycle has been completely different from usual. As a result, lots of re ordering and sorting is likely to happen. Did you complete a common app? If you didn’t, familiarize yourself with it, start it, then be ready to add possible colleges to the dashboard. Do deposit somewhere on May 1. But May 5-10 be ready to send out a few more apps.
You could also email UCMerced right now and ask whether they’ve got special opportunities such as an honors program, if you can apply for scholarships. Ecplain you got options but are seriously considering them. Send, then see what shakes out.