My daughter is struggling in UCSD (Biology with Specialization in Bioinformatics major, Muir College, regents) vs UCLA (Pre Computational & Systems Biology), future career aspiration is Ph.D. then scientist in drug discovery/development.
any suggestions? many thanks.
location is less of a factor, we like both campus.
my daughter is in the same boat- UCSD vs Berkeley. Biological science major. pre-med route. We will visit both schools but any thoughts and feedback would be great
@rx0305 both campuses are great and as a parent who has had kids at both UCLA and UCSD what I would say the determining factor would be the regents at UCSD. This means she gets priority registration and housing and that is huge. Both are large public schools and it can be difficult to get the classes she wants, having that priority registration will make a big difference. She can’t go wrong with either choice, congratulations to her!
For a student that wants to go into research, UCSD Regents with priority registration and guaranteed research would be my suggestion
Research program
Participation in a cutting-edge research program during the first quarter of enrollment, subject to availability. Physical Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, and Engineering are some of the participating divisions.
While the Regents Scholarship program is a UC systemwide program, the Regents Scholars Research Initiative (RSRI) program is unique to UC San Diego. More information is provided in the admit packet sent to Regents Scholars in March.
The fact that UCSD offered her Regents, shows that the University thinks she’s special and a step above – not necessarily a lot higher – than what UCLA believes.
If that is her aspiration- Phd in drug development - I would say UCSD. The research funding for UCSD is ahead of UCLA and Stanford. UCSD spent 1.4 billion in research spending which more than half of it went to Life Science.
The Regent scholarship is not only for the priority registration and 4 years of guaranteed housing, but also priority in undergrad research position as well. Plus San Diego is the biotech hub. The opportunity for life science research is tremendous
My D13 was also weighing UCLA vs. UCSD Regents, but she never ended up making that call because she got into Rice and decided to go there.
Since that time, the political landscape has become more fraught, the sticker price of Rice has risen steeply, and the acceptance rate has dropped quite a bit, so the 2023 version of my kid would probably be weighing UCLA vs. UCSD… and it would be a tough decision! My D preferred the “vibe” at UCLA (and was somewhat swayed by the perceived prestige and by friends who were committing there), but the Regents perks at UCSD were pretty compelling. She was applying for CogSci, and that department at UCSD is very robust and top-notch - similar, in a way, to what’s been said above about the strength of UCSD in your daughter’s area of interest.
Between the huge research opportunities (both the massive amount of research at UCSD and the research mentoring for Regents) and the other benefits of a Regents offer (priority registration is honestly huge at a large public U - the ability to pick and choose classes and profs means that the opportunities you chose the school for will actually be yours for the taking, not dangled just out of reach), I’m “team UCSD” here based on the info provided. But this is the kind of choice where the “road not taken” will sting a bit no matter which one it is.