This article has nothing to do with gaming, but will offer you a sense of UCLA’s trajectory over the last few decades:
thanks, your links are super helpful
I’m sure northeastern has become better over time, but it has always seemed like a school that doesn’t care about its students like LACs or even UCLA might. Northeastern, at least to me, has always been well-regarded but feels a bit “manufactured” to me.
Always alsways always go to an easier school for premed
NU today is really really difficult to get into. I know people into higher ranked schools getting turned down there. I think it’s like Arizona State in this regard - the school has made HUGE strides and is amongst the leaders - but it’s reputation amongst those 40+ was from 20 years ago, not today. If the slate was cleared, NU would indeed be a top 50 school and ASU and its incredible business and engineering programs would be a strong (not the best) undergraduate program. In fact, in Arizona, the residents today consider it overall better than UA whereas historically that was reversed.
Arizona State (and University of Arizona) are held back in rankings that are heavily based on admission selectivity related criteria, because they are not difficult to get admitted to*. This does not mean that they are bad choices for many students, although elitist ones may turn their noses up at going to college with students who had 3.0 HS GPA.
*From a state policy perspective, maintaining ASU and UA as broad access universities in the two largest metro areas of the state makes a lot of sense, in terms of giving probably 4/5 of the state population a nearby (probably commutable and therefore relatively lower cost) option.
Sorry - wasn’t trying to say ASU was strong in the rankings - it’s not. It’s better than where it would have been. In fact, it’s the #1 most innovative school year after year and it’s Honors College is typically, along with South Carolina, ranked at the top. I just meant to say that for people looking from 20 years ago (40+ years old), they are seeing the old party school reputation and not the much more focused program it is today. It is the leading school in Supply Chain, is strong overall in business and engineering. There are many great schools - was just comparing it to NU in the sense that both are today much better than 20 years ago but reputationally people remember the past…that’s all I was trying to analogize.
Thanks
I think people are too quick to say what school you attend premed doesn’t matter as long as your GPA and MCAT scores are high enough. There are different median GPA’s and MCAT scores of successful candidates and different percentages of successful med school applicants for each college. This information is available with some digging and may require a direct discussion with the undergrad program in question. While this info is dated (I tried to get updated info from Harvard’s website, but it refers you to another document that is in the Career Services library https://ocs.fas.harvard.edu/files/ocs/files/premed-academic-publication.pdf p8),
"OCS estimates that, ultimately, 17 percent of a given class will apply to medical school…
Harvard’s advising staff emphasize that one or two bad grades will not sink a medical school application. According to OCS’s medical school admissions data, Harvard pre-med applicants with a 3.50 GPA or higher had a 93 percent acceptance rate to medical schools in 2012." The Harvard Crimson
Harvard is not known for grade deflation. Perhaps the 93% were all great test takers, but having a Harvard degree obviously is different than having a degree from a second tier school for med school purposes.
Except that here, the choices are between UCLA, Northeastern, Pomona, and Vassar. There’s no second-tier school on the list (stretching things, you could say Northeastern is second tier, perhaps.)
I agree that not all colleges are the same for med school, because the pace and depth of the courses will differ, as will the academic expectations, resources, and opportunities.
But that’d be relevant if comparing East Stroudsburg with Pitt, or Macalester with St Cloud State, or Denison with Shawnee State (granted, some of those would be third-tier colleges).
It doesn’t matter in this case, because all universities are highly reputable.
If anything UCLA has less money for its undergrads than either Pomona and Vassar, and the weedout is much higher (simply because a public university cannot accomodate all top students who want to go to med school, whereas a private college, be it Harvard or Pomona, has the resources to handle them.) And, again, that’s not against UCLA, which is an exceptional public university.
Completely agree as to OP’s situation. I was responding to the various comments we see all the time on threads related to med school. It is not one size fits all. Applicants need to do their homework by school as to what it takes to successfully get into med school from that college.
Got it. 
The best place to go for pre-med is the best school you can still excel at. GPA is SOOO important and recommendations, where can you be in the top 10%
Then look at med school placement rates. Both Pomona and Vassar have 85% med schools acceptance rates. That is very high. I didn’t find the number for UCLA.
You can shine with research opportunities not taken by graduate students at an LAC, really find a mentor, and be at the top of the class.
You can also tell Mom and Dad that Pomona is ranked #4 on US News Liberal Arts College rankings, and that is higher than UCLA’s ranking in National Universities.
What puzzles me is the cognitive dissonance required to believe that a top LAC like Pomona is a better, more prestigious school than UCLA but it will be easier to be at the top of the class there than at UCLA.
I can see the argument that there might be more research opportunities pro rata to the number of students (though having a major medical center on campus might offset this) and that smaller classes mean closer relationships with professors (although that largely depends on your willingness to seek them out). But I fail to see how it’s easier to be at the top of the class at a school which supposedly admits better students. Wouldn’t that require choosing a less prestigious LAC with a lower proportion of really strong students?
I’m not convinced that Pre-med at any college is easy, and if it were, having to study to learn a ton for the MCAT would likely make up for it.
I do, however, suggest to students that they go somewhere where their stats (GPA and SAT/ACT) are in the Top 25% of students (unless they would be in the Top 25% at any school - then it’s irrelevant). This has worked out the best IME as those two show the foundation level the best. Schools tend to arrange their intro class material based upon the foundation level coming in and pre-meds are always comparing themselves to others as that’s the nature of the beast. When students see themselves as competitive, they tend to do better. When they don’t, most get discouraged and can get weeded out even if they were as good as the others who merely had fewer educational gaps from high school.
I don’t think that equates to easy though. What material isn’t covered on Day 1 should be covered later when one is Pre-med.
Not saying it is completely true in this case, but sometimes a specific part of the university (especially a large one) can behave differently than the total. For example, the specific pre med classes could be more difficult than the general classes. So, history could be easier at UCLA, but OChem could be easier at Pomona.
Pomona is in its own league from the schools you mentioned. You’d have so much high quality, individualised attention and would perfectly set you up for grad school. You can kinda get lost in the woodwork at a large state school like UCLA.
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear and that my thoughts were conflated in my post. It will not be easy to excel at either of these schools. But I do think LACs offer different opportunities to excel and especially to get to know faculty and develop mentoring relationships. The can be much harder to develop at large state universities, even ones as great as UCLA. It can be done, of course, but it takes much more determination and effort.
For many students, going to a LAC is better than a UC. It depends on fit. Some people will do better with the smaller classes and more personalized attention they get at a LAC.
Unless I’m mistaken, there are 8,000 students going through the LS sequence. Biology, Psychology, and Psychobiology are among the most popular majors at UCLA. A large number of them, as per UCLA, register as “Pre-Health”.
Many students at UCLA want to be doctors - they’re among the smartest in California so the competition is fierce, not just because they’re smart, but because there simply isn’t enough resources to keep all the bright students on that path.
At Pomona, the top majors tend to be, in that order, Economics, Math, and CS. Top students students may aim for PHDs, not necessarily MD/DOs (the joke among the 5-colleges is that you can recognize a Pomona student because they’re carrying Infinite Jest). There’s a wide spread of interests, not a concentration.
The proxy for “premeds” in the top 5 majors is the Neuroscience major, which is very popular and has on average between 22 and 32 students each year. (The top 3 majors have 40-50 students each). There are roughly 400-420 students at Pomona, so the competition for …anything (space in the library, professors’ attention, space in a lab, choice of classes…) is non -existent because it’s not necessary.
That’s also in part because Pomona has MANY more resources per student: they’re a very rich school, endowment per student was, as of June 2020, $1,373,841 (I checked to give the exact number). Whatever their students need, they find. It includes making sure their premeds have the resources to get into med school.
In addition, professors at Pomona are hired not just for their research, but also for their ability to involve students in that research. As a result, undergrads can participate in research without having to compete with (much more accomplished) grad students or fellow upperclassmen. Some join even as freshmen or sophomores.
Professors generally develop close connections with students, which allows them to write personalized, detailed letters of recommendation (if needed). They will point the students to various clinical or volunteering opportunities and the college will provide support to take advantage of that.
That can be done at UCLA, but is rarer, because there are so many more students competing for the same spots, and if professors have lecture halls filled with hundreds and hundreds of students, they don’t really know who they are.
A few will manage to stand out, not all of them, not even most of them. They will all receive high-quality instruction and we all know a UCLA degree is highly respected, so that’s not the issue - the issue is that colleges like Pomona or Vassar will offer an experience that’s more conducive to success as a premed.
It’s kind of hard to be invisible or unknown when there are 24 majors in your class and the student:faculty ratio is 8:1.
It doesn’t mean being premed at Pomona is easy. Far from it. I don’t think there’s a college where being premed is.
However, there are fewer obstacles there, due to the structure (student-centered/high-research) and the resources.