UCLA vs Texas for Pre-med?

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I want to start off as a pre-med in college to see if I like it, and I was wondering if UCLA or Texas would have a better pre-med program in terms of this:</p>

<p>-Ability to do research/get internships at the medical school (huge factor for me)
-Which one is less competitive/easier to get grades at...I know it's hard everywhere, but if someone has any idea about this, please comment. I heard that UCLA is cutthroat for pre-med, so I am somewhat worried about that.
-How many grads get into the top med schools (i.e. Stanford, HMS, etc.)
-Which is better for business and engineering since there's a decent chance I won't do medicine?
-Non academic factors such as social life, college town, etc.</p>

<p>UCLA ftw. I'd go there, any somewhat decent school will be cutthroat in premed classes. Either way, they are both located in power house public medical school states. You can't go wrong either way.</p>

<p>can you explain what you mean by "power house public med school states"? Sorry, I'm new to this terminology.</p>

<p>
[quote]
-Ability to do research/get internships at the medical school (huge factor for me)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>UT-Austin doesn't have a med school</p>

<p>
[quote]
-Which is better for business and engineering since there's a decent chance I won't do medicine?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>UT-Austin has awesome business + engineering programs. </p>

<p>
[quote]
-Non academic factors such as social life, college town, etc.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Austin rocks as a college town, but then again, LA probably does too.</p>

<p>Overall, I would go with UT-Austin, but I am a little biased.</p>

<p>both TX and CA have many good and CHEAP public medical schools (if you can establish residency)</p>

<p>California schools, at least in my experience, are not particularly cheap.</p>

<p>No med school is cheap, but for CA residents the UC tuition is 0 however they do charge fees of round 20k. Not bad as compared to the general private 35k tuition + couple thousand in fees...</p>

<p>and most of the UC med schools are top notch.</p>

<p>Baylor is relatively cheap.</p>

<p>Yes, Baylor and the Public texas schools are cheap (relatively, as always ;) ) and very good as well. They are similar states. I think the public texas schools may be slightly easier to gain admisssion than the UCs.</p>

<p>UT Southwestern Medical School is part of the UT system - so it's in Dallas, not Austin, but anyone who does well in a pre-med type degree from UT Austin should be able to feed into UTSW Med School. Austin College is a small liberal arts college who's pre-med students do well getting into medical schools.</p>

<p>... anybody who does well at UT Austin (class size 9000) should be able to feed into UT-SW? That's quite a definition of "well."</p>

<p>Forget cost. Cost is not the most significant hurdle with admission to medical school. The most significant hurdle is GETTING IN. </p>

<p>And getting into a CA medical school is the same as an in-stater as an out-of-stater. There are, however, advantages for being in-state in Texas. In other words, you are not punished for applying to CA medical schools from out of state, as they give no preference to in-staters. You are, however, punished for being out-of-state when it comes to applying for Texas schools.</p>

<p>So now your challenge is to figure if you want that advantage or not.</p>

<p>UCSF explicitly warns that they favor in-state students, as I'm sure Davis and Irvine do as well.</p>

<p>bluedevilmike,</p>

<p>I stand corrected. I was under the impression that there was no advantage to being in-state. Mea culpa.</p>

<p>UCLA doesn't favor in-state residents. The other ones do (with UCSF a little less than the others).</p>

<p>personally (not that anyone cares...) I'd rather attend UCLA yet I would rather establish residency in TX when applications to med school are do; doing both of these is probably rather difficult. All in all, I think you should pick which undergrad school you like best overall and concern yourself with medical school when the time becomes slightly more imminent.</p>

<p>alright, I think that I have just about made up my decision, and I'm probably going to Texas. I like UCLA, but it's a bit more expensive OOS (although TX isn't that much more OOS), and I decided that I'd rather be a resident of Texas and have a much better shot at UT Southwestern, Baylor, etc. than have only a slightly better shot at UCSF, UCLA, etc. trying to establish residency as a Californian (btw, can someone send me proof that TX public med schools accept a lot more instate than OOS people? I'm having a hard time buying that. Does Baylor count also, or is it private?). I really hope I didn't make a stupid decision and turn down an infinitely more prestigious school and nice campus for UT :(. Plus, I guess if I want to do business, then I'll have to transfer out of UCLA anyway since it's worse than UT for business, and I can always try to transfer to NU or something for more international prestige (since the UT name doesn't carry very far outside of TX).</p>

<p>One more thing: are any of the public TX med schools good? I know they probably won't be on par with the CA med schools like UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, etc., but are they at least relatively strong and not total no-name schools?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.utsystem.edu/tmdsas/Final%20Statistics%20Report%20-%20Entry%20Year%202005%20-%20Medical.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.utsystem.edu/tmdsas/Final%20Statistics%20Report%20-%20Entry%20Year%202005%20-%20Medical.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>as you can see, Texas residency is very important for Texas schools(1120/2970 57% of Texas residents accepted and 91/724 12% acceptance for out of state applicants); prestige? the degree is MD, after that, it depends on your interests(private practice, academic medicine etc..)</p>

<p>1120/2970= 37% acceptance rate for texas residents and they made up 92% of the accepted pool; sorry for the typo above;</p>