i was accepted to both ucla and umich (i’m an oos student but cost is not an issue in this decision as it’s the same at both school). i’m planning on taking the premed track, so i wanted some opinions on whether to take ucla or umich. both are fairly large public schools so i know that premed is going to be tough no matter which school i pick, but i’ve particularly heard about ucla being notoriously competitive (with regards to bell curve grading and the weed-out intro classes). ucla is the better option in terms of proximity to family, weather, etc but i’m wondering if all of that’s worth it if premed is going to be so difficult.
Both send lots of kids to medical school so when I read about grade deflation, I wonder - because perhaps the med schools know.
What will you major in? Which school overall seems better for you.
You clearly like UCLA and Pre-med is going to be difficult at…name any college.
You might contact the advisor to find out about shadowing opportunities or other things - and some schools have special programs within their advising - for example, Alabama has the McCullough Medical Scholars. Not sure if either UCLA or Michigan will have a program like that or perhaps a pre-med LLC, etc. that might tip the scales for you toward one vs. another.
I was able to determine that the average UCLA bac-recipient’s gpa during the 2021-22 academic year was 3.59. Most of the graduates were at ‘3+ to 4 years’ in attaining 180(+) units in spring of 2022, and additionally in attaining the units to satisfy their major(s), and were in the high-school graduating cohort of 2018, meaning that’s when they entered UCLA, which would be right around four years in completing their degrees. This was 54.4% of the entire graduating class which included transfers, and of just those who entered from high school they were 87% of the graduating class. This doesn’t mean that 87% graduated in four years; that number was 84.5% who took their degrees at the max of four years (again, of those who entered from HS and from the 2018 cohort).
The question, as related to your initial post would be, presuming your son is a life-science major: How would that 3.59 average at graduation for the whole class relate just to life-science/bio grads? Most of the grads are in Letters & Science (L&S) and Bio is in L&S. As related to Latin Honors which is calculated to the thousandth in gpa and awards these three honors to the top 20% of the graduating class, L&S would be somewhere in the middle of all of UCLA’s colleges and schools in ascendant gpas. But, again, L&S is the largest of colleges, and there are a good number of Bio students at UCLA, so it would appear that Bio majors could or should uphold the ~3.59 average and it may be higher, at least partly because there is culling of these majors.
Assuming the points above are applicable, if you factor in Latin Honors into the mix, a good 20% of Bio majors would have ≥ 3.881 (3.88) gpa at graduation, per the lowest gpa of Cum Laude honors for L&S. This would seemingly imply, assuming a normal curve, that the 70th percentile grads would have ≥ 3.80 gpa, and it might dip to ~ 68th percentile or a bit below. But the average for Bio-related majors could be higher than the class average too as per above, because Bio majors could be majorly culled. So I’d say that a good 1/3 of the graduating Bio Sciences class would have at least a 3.8 gpa.
It’s therefore evident that that UCLA does not have grade deflation.
i will be a cognitive science major, and ucla checks all my boxes but the premed life is causing some hesitation. but i think it would be the same no matter what school i choose, so maybe i just need to process that
