<p>So after nearly a month of deliberating and visiting colleges, I'm completely stuck. Heres my dilemma:</p>
<p>UCSD:
+ Regents- little bit of money, priority enrollment, and most importantly, the research program for Regents scholars that I can participate in freshman year
- A bit far, a bit lacking on the "prestige" factor asian parents care so much about.
-campus interlaced with roads. Feel a bit spartan.</p>
<p>Berkeley:
+Great campus, close yet not too close to home
-I've been hearing horror stories about the competition. This would be extremely detrimental to my GPA.</p>
<p>NU:
+Private school campus. Beautiful.
+Private school attention.
-No pre-med committee.
- Expensive. At 50k, its twice the cost of a UC.</p>
<p>Any other pre-med hopefuls have any advice or just students who can comment about the schools in general would be awesome! Any Help would be great!</p>
<p>LOL on the "prestige" and Asians factor.</p>
<p>Berkeley and UCSD are about the same in premed competitiveness, Berkeley being a little bit harder, but both are tough schools.</p>
<p>Personally, I think the private school option might be better. Smaller campus enrollment = smaller classes = more time with profs = kick-ass letters of recommendation. The deal gets better if they have good premed advising to boot. </p>
<p>I think you could afford to go to NU (or find ways to finance it), as you are living in Cupertino, after all.</p>
<p>Yes, though I am surrounded by kids who drive mercedes and bmws. I'm not one of them. We rent an apartment and they're only here for the school, so money is somewhat of a factor. =/</p>
<p>After talking to some MV grads, I've gathered that Cal is slightly harder than MV while UCSD is quite a bit easier. If you had a rigorous schedule at MV, you should be more than prepared for either school. However, you'll have competition at either school, so it depends on how hard you will work.</p>
<p>Since you intend to go to medical school, it doesn't matter where you get your undergraduate degree. Coupled with the fact that money is a factor for you, UCSD seems like the logical choice.</p>