It has been well documented that grades and MCAT matter more than undergraduate college, along with good ECs and a strong personal statement. A high GPA from a state university will bode better than a 3.5 at Harvard so I would go where you will be happiest.
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And I just saw that you’re also considering Vassar and Pomona, two excellent and well known liberal arts colleges that would be fabulous places from which to apply to medschool.
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I’d be wary of the smaller schools (though I don’t necessarily agree that they are 'less prestigious)… BU is known for grade deflation, and like littlerobot said, GPA is important for med schools. Not sure about the lib arts schools.
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thank you for your input!
Prestige is a weird thing. It really comes from how well known the school is to the general public. How elite a school is, or how good the academics are, are different. I would say that Pomona is far better than UCLA in all aspects. The people in the know are aware of how elite Pomona really is.
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that’s true, I have heard of BU’s grade deflation. but I think BU offers more resources for personalized help than ucla, same with the lacs. students i’ve talked to there really speak on the accessibility of professors, whereas at ucla it’s less so. could be wrong though!
thank you, good to know!
Chiming in here, because I’d love to hear more on the topic. Would you say any LAC is better than any UC? (Or in particular UCLA?) Or only top tier LACs?
(Edited to add— this is for pre-med)
This is a really useful debate. I would like to suggest the conversation continue with the stipulation that the original poster misstated the level of prestige of some of the schools he listed, and that the conversation not focus on the unquestioned quality of places like Pomona and Vassar. Besides, the poster has not been admitted to those schools yet!
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It is very difficult to generalize. There are too many unknowns. For example, your freshman year roommate may have a larger impact on your college success than the actual school.
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At the end of the day, a pre-med student should go somewhere that enables them to afford med school. make sure you don’t graduate with a lot debt. You should also remember that all med school applicants have to take the same credits. An intro to biology course at Pomona probably isn’t that different from the same course at UCLA. Albeit the class size might be smaller.
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Also if you had to pick UCLA or northeastern I would pick UCLA. Northeastern is known for gaming the rankings. I’m sure it’s a great school but not as great as other schools like ucla. In an ideal world if you can afford Pomona and get in I would choose that.
Northeastern is most distinctive for its co-op-centered curriculum. Is this a good or bad thing from your viewpoint? For many students, it will be the first or last choice based on what they think of the co-op-centered curriculum.
Neither Northeastern (about 14k undergraduates) nor Boston University (about 17k undergraduates) is “small”, although they are smaller than UCLA (about 32k undergraduates). Both also have a reputation of being prestige ranking gamers.
Pomona and Vassar are much smaller (about 2k undergraduates each). If prestige matters to you, both have it.
If you do get into medical school, it will probably cost more than $400,000. Would choosing lower cost undergraduate result in lower debt at the end?
Given the low odds of getting into medical school (from any college), which college would you prefer to attend and graduate from in the case you do not get into medical school?
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As @Eeyore123 noted, it is difficult to generalize, and to some degree it depends on what you plan to study. A LAC may well be better for a student interested in popular disciplines like biology or CS, which tend to have large classes and inattentive faculty at the UCs. On the other hand, a student majoring in, say, Celtic Studies would find Berkeley a better fit academically than virtually any LAC.
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A few years ago, I would have agreed that Northeastern was just gaming rankings and not much else. However, they have successfully improved in more ways than just climbing rankings. I would say it is a better institution now than it was five years ago. I believe the quality of professors, students, and resources has improved quite a lot, so I’ll give credit where credit is due.
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This is an important point. My daughter is thinking pre-med, was accepted with merit at Northeastern, and then was happily surprised to be accepted at UCLA last week (same schools OP is currently accepted to). Since so many students will be weeded out through the entire pre-med path, one’s decision of where to attend has to include other factors. Undoubtedly, a student’s experiences at UCLA vs. NEU are likely to be very different 
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If you like, you can view a site such as this:
Note that while the ranking includes LACs and universities, it appears to favor highly selective, private institutions.
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That page says that it used “16 different sources of information (in addition to each college’s website)” and “13 weighted factors” but does not say what those sources of information or weighted factors are.
Makes you wonder how a college where students complain about “grade deflation” (actually, less grade inflation than peer colleges) makes it to #2, and three colleges with heavy core curricula (that can cause GPA damage if students are required to take courses not in their academic strengths) appear in the top 25.
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thank you all for the input! you’ve given me different perspectives to think about between the two types of schools. please note that I, myself do not consider pomona/vassar less prestigious (hence the quotes in the title) but I wrote it that way because my parents consider them to be, and that is part of the debate that we are going through. also my pronouns are she/her 
I have not heard about bu/northeastern being prestige ranking gamers. What does that mean?