<p>Im sure everyone in here will say UCSD, but hear me out first:</p>
<p>I am planning on majoring in biopsychology or neuropsychology, and also doing pre-med. I know UCSD is better ranked and everything, but I got into the honors program at Santa Barbara, which allows personal time with the professors in special seminars. Is this intimate setting at SB significantly better, especially when I end up applying to med schools? As opposed to SD, where Ill always be just one person in a class of 700.</p>
<p>If you’re into psych then you won’t have any problems coming to SD and finding a psych/cogsci professor to research/TA for. The Cogsci department at least is more than welcome to accept student workers. Also if you get above a certain GPA in your core classes you can pursue the honors track here, too.</p>
<p>I’m also thinking that you can join an honors program later at UCSD. For example at Revelle: “If you are not invited for your incoming fall quarter as a freshman you may still be invited at the end of each quarter (once grades are posted) of your first academic year as long as you maintain a 3.7 GPA with 12 graded units in that quarter. This seminar gives you the opportunity to meet and mix with the other honor students.”
Also the mother of one local MD thinks that if her daughter had attended UCSD rather than UCSB the med school choices would have been better (who knows, just one person’s opinion and I don’t have any details about honors status is that case.)</p>
<p>The only grad schools that look at the prestige of the undergraduate program is law school. For others, ESPECIALLY for med, the only thing they care about is how good is your GPA, and specifically for medical school, how good was your MCAT.</p>
<p>If you are even slightly below average in either, the chances drop greatly to get in.</p>