<p>How are the UCSC faculties and counselors? Do they truly care about their undergraduate students and help them through whatever or no?</p>
<p>Are the professors good for preparing students for the MCAT?</p>
<p>How is the competition for premed students? Are classes easy?</p>
<p>i would love to hear about this as well…</p>
<p>The classes are far from easy but if you work very hard you’ll get a good grade. The classes are pretty packed so I think there are a lot of pre-med students but there’s no competition here. No one is knocking somebody down just because they want to get into the best medical school.
There are some bad professors in the chemistry department I’ve run into 2 but as for the bio I haven’t had an experience with a bad professor yet. Most of the professors I run into generally care about the student’s progress.
The only problem with the health science is that we don’t have a lot of counselors/advisors that are experts in the pre-heath area. I think we only have one pre-health advisor in the career center and the biological sciences advisors are very vague and I feel like they don’t know the process very well however they just set up peer counseling for pre-health haven’t been by to see them yet but I feel that can be helpful.
I’m just a second year so I haven’t taken the MCAT yet so I don’t know if the stuff we cover will be detailed enough for the MCAT.</p>
<p>I have been researching these questions. I was wondering after graduating UCSC what your impression was.
Did the professors successfully prepare students for the MCAT?
Could you recommend which pre-health counselors or advisors to seek. Additionally, any recommended teachers.</p>
<p>Don’t underestimate your classes. I used to go to UCSC and I had a perfect freshman year! I thought I was the **** and smart because I pulled off a 4.0 the whole year with classes including math up to multivariable calculus, the whole series of general chemistry, and a quarter of biology. Boy… did I have it coming 2nd year when I took organic chemistry… I had to change up my study methods completely (no more cramming lol). I got like a 3.2 first quarter in my 2nd year but eventually I adapted and I started doing better. Just don’t slack and you’ll be fine, the difficulty on a scale from 1-10 I would say 4. But that’s all in the past now, I did an intercampus transfer to UCLA. The lower division classes give out limited amount of A’s with 10-15% depending on the professor so it is somewhat competitive.</p>
<p>I just read back on my reply. Wow have times changed. Upper division bio classes are tough! </p>
<p>MCAT: I would say they kinda prepare u for the MCAT. It depends on your professor. i had very bad physics professors so i wasn’t prepare for that aspect. Also I took a prep class with Kaplan and I felt that was more helpful because it really narrowed down what u need to know.
Pre-health advisors: We had a really good one Suzanne but she has since relocated. I don’t think we have found a replacement for her unfortunately. There are some peer-health advisors but I have never really used them do I don’t know if they r good or not.
There’s a good club on campus AMSA (american medical student association). The people in that club are really knowledgable so if u need any advice I would recommend u join that club and talk to the students there.
Teachers: good news I’m pretty sure most of the bad professors I had have retired. Just don’t take any classes with Dalbey unless u have too. I think he’s the only one still around. I recommend checking ratemyprofessors before u sign up for classes. Generally the ratings on there are pretty accurate.</p>