Hi everyone. I’m a bit of at a crossroads here. Originally, I intended to go to UCSD for general biology (premed), but recently I found they offered me absolutely 0$ in scholarships. This is surprising to me considering I’ve gotten at least $10,000 from every other UC (including LA). In total, my tuition at SD would be about 20k, whereas at LA it would be 10k. I’m not trying to graduate neck deep in debt. My biggest worry is that LA is just so competitive. I don’t know the actual difference in rigor but I was settled on San Diego, and now I just don’t know. I’m the valedictorian of my class with a 4.7 Gpa and a 1530 SAT score, so I know I may be doubting myself here, but if I want to go to med school, I have to get the best grades possible. Will I survive UCLA?
How are you @thegriz01 . . . as I make my debut – in Hebrew there probably isn’t a word for re-debut, so I refer to it as the afore mentioned “debut.”
The beautiful thing re these two universities is that they are both on the quarter (actually trimester if the other term used is “semester”) system, which means you’ll have a greater opportunity to take a greater breath of classes. I would recommend that you have a fallback minor or even a dual major which you can utilize to become employed in an entirely different field than in health if you so need; i.e., if you find that you cannot maintain the requisite gpa for med-school entry. (But despite the overwhelming amount of UC premed majors, UCLA baccalaureates lead the nation in the shear number of med school admittances, and SD is up there too besides Berkeley.)
There was a speaker at UCLA’s Economics graduation in ~ 2012 who even majored in econ at the University, but he concurrently took the core courses (premed) for med school and subsequently graduated from Vanderbilt Medicine. He never used his med degree, although he intended to do so, but he received some sort of revelatory moment after graduation and became involved in hedge funds and was able to foresee the mortgage crisis in 2008 and did well (for lack of a better description).
I don’t state that you do this outright, but perhaps your doing what I stated in my paragraph 2 might be something in which you might be interested in case worse comes to the worst. In anyway, talk to your counselors at whatever university you choose – you have no bad choices in either.
Wishing for the best.
Thank you so much for the time you took to reply to my post. I appreciate it a lot and will definitely take your advice 
I would guess that the path to med school is about equally steep at both schools. UCSD’s med school acceptance rate is significantly lower than UCLA’s. So perhaps UCLA weeds out more premeds, earlier in the process. But - just my opinion - if I were going to get weeded out, I’d rather it be earlier, so that I could devote the rest of my time as an undergraduate to making progress on an alternative path, than at the point of med school decisions when more than 60% of med school applicants coming out of UCSD get rejected.
The premeds I know at UCLA report that many of their required premed classes have lots of repeating students in them, trying to raise their grades from the first attempt… which makes it all the harder for the first-timers to do well. Premed at any UC is tough in this way. But I don’t think you should be afraid of measuring up at UCLA in particular. I certainly wouldn’t go 10K/year out of pocket for UCSD over UCLA! You’re a great student who is just as capable as the rest; use your resources to be PROACTIVE - set up tutoring from day one, form study groups, stay ahead and never ever wait for the first bad grade to put supports in place. Make your humility and trepidation work for you by utilizing every possible support from the beginning and you will leave those who are overconfident in the dust. You absolutely could thrive at UCLA, so weigh it on the attributes that matter to you, not through a lens of intimidation or self-doubt.
That said, if you really prefer UCSD, call up Financial Aid and ask what’s up. There shouldn’t be that big a difference in the aid formula!
Congrats and good luck!
It looks like you’re assuming (presuming?) that UCSD has more baccalaureate applications to med school/year. This isn’t so as in the 2018-19 academic year, UCLA had 1,014, Berkeley had 662, UCSD had 578. Florida had 852, which was closest to UCLA. I’m sure that the rate of acceptance for UCLA and Berkeley would be in the 50% range or a bit higher, but not 60%. And one has to remember that those who assent to release of data to the universities to display these data in surveys are probably looking for greater assistance. SD’s numbers are probably lower, which caused the administration there to start an inquiry as to why the numbers have dropped, but it may be because of my previous sentence.
I agree, though, that thegriz01 shouldn’t be afraid of the competition at UCLA. The students there are collaborative and competitive – as these two words are not mutually exclusive. And I’m sure that there are plenty of fraternal groups of UCLA grads who’ve become MDs.
And, too, the data presented by aamc.org is unfiltered data. Some universities like to present a 90% acceptance rate to med school. This may be close to being true at a place like Harvard, especially since their students represent a complete cross section of all states and many nations, but much of this for other universities is a cosmetic presentation in which the counselors tell the applicant to accede to all they present, including deferring in applying, or they’re out of the survey.
Edit. . . sorry, I’m not completing my thoughts. According to this same data from aamc. org, the vast majority of UC grads who attend med school will have done so at schools of medicine outside of the state. If there is a shortage of doctors, then UC grads are meeting the challenge, but the seats to CA SOMs are extremely limited with respect to their numbers.
@firmament2x , I didn’t mean to assume or imply anything about the total number of med school applicants from each school. I would expect UCLA to have more, as they have more total undergrads (although proportionately more med school applicants, per the numbers you supplied). What we don’t know is how many students at each school started out intending to be premed. For whatever reason, the pool of med school applicants that UCLA produces is more successful than those from UCSD. If it isn’t actually tougher to get through the premed coursework at UCLA, then it’s a superior choice for the aspiring premed, hands-down. My guess (admittedly unsubstantiated) was the it is somewhat tougher to get through, but that this toughness produces a more successful pool of applicants. Which, to my mind, is still a better option than ending up with only a 35% chance of med school acceptance after all that work, but that’s JMHO. And we’re in agreement that the OP is well-equipped to handle whichever school (s)he chooses.
Well, all the UCs have increased enrollment in the last decade, with UCLA and Berkeley at ~ 30K undergrads. UCSD is just short of that at ~ 28K along with Davis and Irvine. SB is a hair over 20K. Even USC has ~ 20K undergrads, but has 25K grads(!), so total enrollment there is at ~ 45K is ~ the same as UCLA and Berk. (USC has spring admits as does Berkeley.)
The problem with SD is though it may admit a top-tier student, it has about a 15-20% matriculation rate, so it loses a lot of these top-tier students to other universities. It’s still a great STEM oriented school however.
I never really considered that UCLA would better prepare me for med school, or at least help me weed out that possibility early on. The exact data can become confusing. I’ve thought about it a lot today, and with the help of everyone’s comments, I’m leaning more and more towards UCLA.
It’s hard for me to even consider a career outside of medicine, just because I feel so passionate about it, but I understand that I have to be realistic and accept the possibility that maybe I’m just not cut out for it. Regardless, I’ll learn that at some point, and I don’t doubt UCLAs ability to help me figure myself out.
Slowly, but surely, I’m gaining confidence in myself. I’ve also tried to get excited about everything else outside of school LA has to offer.
I’ve never been disappointed in the help I’ve gotten from the people on this site. I’m immensely thankful for your insight.
Hope you all have a great night.
-Val
Just information I came across on the Pre-Med forum. Not to discourage you, but help you realize the odds for any CA “pre-med” student.
CA is one of the worst states for a pre-med to be a resident of. Large population; not enough med school seats.
CA produced over 6200 med school applicants in the last cycle. Only 16% of the those 6200+ matriculated at a CA med school (public or private). Another 25% matriculated at an OOS med school, but most CA applicants (59% or 3652) were not accepted into ANY med school.
Nationally, less than 40% of med school applicants are accepted into any medical school in any given year. The odds for MD/PhDs are even poorer–238 applied; 88 matriculated.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf
https://www.aamc.org/download/321542/data/factstableb7.pdf
Re: #9
Actually, California seems to be about average in terms of pre-meds’ success/failure rate. 58.6% of California medical school applicants fail, compared to 59.0% overall, according to https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf .
However, what is bad for California pre-meds is that those who do succeed in getting admitted are likely to face higher medical school cost and debt than those from many other states. Only 16.7% get into in-state medical schools versus 24.8% overall, and the in-state public medical schools are not as discounted in California as in some other states. Note that the need to apply widely out-of-state also increases application-related travel costs.
You’ll be fine @thegriz01 . . . if I were to assign a probability based on your qualifications of your becoming an MD, I would say you’d have > 90%+ chance that you will become one and in the specialty you greatly desire, so take aquapt’s exhortation to heart. The constant, dour theme on these boards that so-and-so UC campus is a grade deflator isn’t true. Those who present these themes are comparing UC students’ grades to Ivy students’, which is not really fair in the first place.
There will be some occasional professors that will individually work to deflate grades, but they are not all that common. Therefore, one more piece of advice if I may: try to plan your schedule in advance – some of this will occur naturally as some courses foundationally will lead to others; then obtain word of mouth as to the professors who’ll be teaching the next quarter’s courses and stay away from the ones who receive very poor student evaluations. I don’t know how comprehensive the offerings at Bruinwalk is, but perhaps this might be a good source as to the grading, teaching, etc. of professors at UCLA.
I believe the problem is the way you state this. I’ve seen you present this same data in other threads, but you’re looking at things as a negativist when you can state that one applicant being accepted to medical school – i.e., that this same individual will receive at least one acceptance from all of his or her total applications – is 40-41%. This, rather, should give students hope based on the acceptances at the various SOMs. Here are the rates of acceptance at some of CA’s medical schools:
……………………USC, Keck……………………….2.2%
……………………Stanford………………………….1.3%
……………………UCD….…………………………… 1.6%
……………………UCI.……….………………………1.6%
……………………UCR………….…………………… 1.3%
……………………UCSD……………………….…….1.9%
……………………UCSF………………………………2.1%
……………………UCLA, Geffen…………………….1.2%
I think you’d be better served to present things in more of a positive light; in other words, try to be more encouraging. California’s rates are just a tad above the national’s as noted at ~ 41%, but in either way I believe this is very good. The greater number of applications across a greater array of esteemed SOMs undoubtedly improves an applicant’s chances of being accepted, for those who need to become doctors. For California residents, this means a much greater probability of attending med school at one of the other 49 states and possibly outside of the country.
I wouldn’t worry about the other ~ 60% who weren’t accepted in the current cycle. They’ll have options to attend a grad life-science, public-health program to keep their hopes alive of becoming MDs and reapplying in a subsequent cycle, or they may settle for being pharmacists or dentists, which are major options particularly in CA. Either way, their futures are not doomed, but if they desire to be MDs, then they should by all means try to continue that pathway.
If I can, I’ll try to work with some of the data from aamc.org to see how CA residents, particularly those at the UCs are doing in gaining med school acceptances, with some moderate inferences, etc. (even if stats is not one of my stronger suits).
Let me explain my “for those who need to become doctors” clause in my fourth paragraph, second sentence. For those who are so called to become MDs, there will be some who’ll have to undergo a circuitous path to become doctors which => that they’ll just have to undertake that pathway to satisfy that calling. And by no means is this some sort of primrose path of which others have to warn these students. Think of things more positively.
Just a test to see where this thread was moved.
I highly doubt that UCLA does anything better to prepare its students for med school. Rather, the UCLA students are likely slightly stronger students to begin with.
That said, isnt’ the acceptance rate at both of those UCs rather modest? Below 50%?