My daughter got admission in to Umich and UCLA (neorosciences) for premed. She is very motivated towards medical profession. We are in-state to Michigan and out of-state for California. So, she will at least spend $30k more for UCLA per year. We are not sure if it is worth paying out of state tuition even if we can afford it.
In general, both are very good colleges. Is UCLA better for pre-med specifically for neorosciences? Will she have a better chance to get into any medical college if she graduates from UCLA?
Will she have a better chance to get into medical schools in California if she graduates from UCLA although she is out of state?
Are there better research opportunities and other opportunities like shadowing at UCLA compared to UMich?
Please share your opinions. For students who are in same situation or current college students who were in the same situations in the past, what decision did you make and why?
This shouldn’t even be a question. UMIch is every bit as good as UCLA, and arguably better. Why pay more for OOS UCLA. You are fortunate to have UMich as in-state option. Save the money for medical school.
If the cost were the same and you were out of state for both, this would be a tough choice between two great universities.
I see three reasons for preferring Michigan.
One is that it will cost you a lot less. Save the $$ for medical school.
The second is that it might be easier to get into medical school if you are in-state. The University of Michigan has a very good medical school.
The third is to save on the cost and time and effort of travel. If anything goes wrong, you can show up on campus to help or your daughter can come home for a long weekend. Things like messy breakups do happen even for very strong students in the middle of a semester.
Premed classes are going to be tough, and are going to be full of very strong and very motivated students at either U.Michigan or UCLA.
Just about any college in the country can adequately teach the dozen or so lower-division classes required to apply to med school. There is no advantage to ucla or any other college based on having attended that college. Med schools are going to look at what the applicant did (grades, mcat, references, volunteer experience in medicine, etc)
Save your money and have her go to Michigan. Furthermore if your DD doesn’t already have volunteer experience in a medical setting then I’d give little weight to pre-med considerations and pick the school that gives her the best opportunities no matter what her eventual career.
Many HS kids aren’t aware of more than a handful of career fields, and medicine is an attractive one out of the bunch because they think they need to pick something when they enter college. And even within medicine many kids are probably only aware of doctor and nurse but these are far from the only ones in the health field that help people. Physical therapists, radiology techs, speech pathologists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, to name but just a few as shown on http://explorehealthcareers.org
Being “pre-med” is often a snap decision that doesn’t take a lot of effort (such as filling out supplemental apps the way you do in nursing) or have a lot of commitment; sign up for calculus and chem frosh year and you’re on your way. The flip side is the attrition rate is tremendous. Only about 40% of those actually completing all the requirements and taking the MCAT get in, and for every one that goes that far there were probably 2 or 3 others that started frosh year thinking of pre-med at many colleges.