<p>People tell me that the science majors/premeds in UCI are extemely fierce.</p>
<p>Does its level of competition surpass those of the other two mid-tier UCs (UCSB & UCD)?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>p.s. can't decide on UCI or UCSB for sciences</p>
<p>From personal experience, I have a bio major friend right now in his 3rd year at UCI.
It's pretty fierce for him and he really doesn't like the "stress" of it, he says it isn't worth it in upper division if u don't like Bio that much</p>
<p>so he is changing to Environmental sciences. Is still competitive.
Pre-med is fierce because of the classes ( he intended to be a bio major for med, but now he has decided not to)</p>
<p>He likes UCI but he always tells me "There are better schools, with better opportunities" referring to Ivies, higher ranked UCs and even State Schools.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the person</p>
<p>If you're pre-med, your school's "competition" doesn't matter. There's seriously no place where you can find people that are so dumb that you feel smart. If anything, the professors (who've graduated from all over) challenge you beyond average to weed you out. You're going to get a good amount of competition everywhere b/c some people pick schools thinking it's "easier". Keep in mind you're still going to compete with the rest of the undergrad colleges for any future acceptances.</p>
<p>My best advice is to pick a place based on a different criteria then competition b/c it's very vague wherever you go. You can only get a basic idea that say UCLA rejects go to UCI... but then are those UCLA rejects from top tier competitive high schools? Who knows?</p>
<p>Whenever a freshmen says that s/he's a "pre-med" or want to go into a similar field, I simply take that as "undeclared" as there's a high turnover rate of freshmen students with biology as their major.</p>
<p>for guaranteed A's in the premed sequence, skip the mid-tier campuses adn go to Merced where you can be a star (and likely Regents scholar).</p>
<p>Is the competition the same for bio majors who aren't pre-med? I love biology but I don't want to be a doctor. I want to go to grad school in the marine sciences or possibly something with genetics.</p>
<p>I would say that BIO in general is pretty hard. Why? Its one of the most popular majors here. You can easily run into multiple ppl on a random day who are bio majors. Given the number of people who are in bio and the fact that the school doesn't want that many bio majors there will be lots of weeding out. Similar to bio medical engr, many people start to switch majors b/c they either can't handle the material or competition.</p>
<p>^that's EXACTLY what my friend told me</p>
<p>he said "You want to be a bio major? then don't apply as one, just apply into other major (humanities) and then when you're here change it"</p>
<p>Cause people get cut out pretty badly.</p>
<p>^that's EXACTLY what my friend told me</p>
<p>he said "You want to be a bio major? then don't apply as one, just apply into other major (humanities) and then when you're here change it"</p>
<p>Cause people get cut out pretty badly.</p>
<p>I am a first year non-bio major at UCI atm, but I have taken the exact classes as a Bio Major and truthfully the competition is not even close to as bad as I thought. There are a ton of people in both the Chem and Bio classes that do not belong there(due to all the people coming in as Bio majors that really have no idea what they want to do).
The most competition I had was in Chem lab, but chem class and bio class hasn't been bad at all.</p>