<p>Is it any good compared to that of say WUSTL, which has a top med school.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>No its horrible...im being sarcastic</p>
<p>I would urge you to remember that the quality of a place's medical school is not necessarily correlated to the quality of a place's undergraduate premedical track.</p>
<p>well I do know for sure that Washington University in St. Louis has a great pre-med. program. Just wondering if anyone knew anything about the quality of USC's.</p>
<p>Take the pre-med reqs and get A's...that is the best pre-med program you could ever wish for.</p>
<p>P.S. UCLA is better than USC (only because I go there and am staring at it from my apartment window)</p>
<p>UCLA is better than USC (only because I go there and am staring at it from my apartment window)</p>
<p>UCLA and USC both have an overall prestige that I think has developed from Sports. I know I'll get hounded for saying this, but UCLA and USC have decent pre-med programs, but getting A's in them will grant you really good med school options. Of course, a couple of other UC's have stronger pre-med programs than UCLA, such as UCI and UCSD. I know UCSD especially because they put about $0 into sports and all into academics. Just my 2 cents. Also, what does going to a school and staring at it tell you about how good it is compared to another school??</p>
<p>hay em yes, hay es du</p>
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Of course, a couple of other UC's have stronger pre-med programs than UCLA, such as UCI and UCSD. I know UCSD especially because they put about $0 into sports and all into academics.
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<p>That's not true. In some cases, name does matter. I don't have the time to go number hunting, but in some of the "higher tier" medical schools, there are either no acceptances from UCI or UCSD, or when there are, most of the time you can count off the acceptances with the fingers on your hand. UCLA does have a lot of applicants, but I would probably expect the same amount from say UCSD that has a reputation for having droves of pre-meds, yet UCLA students will still get more acceptances than UCSD (and UCI combined in most cases).</p>
<p>Well, I can pull up one old website from '98 (note, the chart is of those accepted, not those that matriculated):</p>
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but getting A's in them will grant you really good med school options
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<p>Not necessarily true either- grades aren't the cure-all guarantee. A person posted on the myucla board awhile ago about two of his friends that are sort of opposites: one had a 3.98 (somewhere around there) with research since his freshmen year (got rejected everywhere), while another had around a 3.5 with no research experience at all but had some service awards (at medical school).</p>
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<p>It's like that for almost every school. Top Tier schools only accept a few people from most schools....which yes you can count off with your fingers, and UCLA is not an exception. Find me the numbers and I will believe you.</p>
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<p>that was 1998, it is now 2006...that was almost a decade ago...</p>
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<p>Not NECESSARILY true, but are you telling me most people who get into medical school have 3.5's and those who don't get in have >3.8's? Obviously there are always those exceptions, but higher GPA will correlate to a higher chance of admission and you can't argue that. Of course other factors play a role (MCAT, EC's, etc etc).</p>
<p>I have no idea whether or not UCSD's program is better than UCLA's, but two of the easiest schools to succeed in as a premed are Duke and Stanford, both of which place a very high emphasis on athletics.</p>
<p>I mean, in the context of an overall university budget, I don't think a school like UCLA or USC is blowing everything on sports - not enough to impact their biology department, anyway. The main way I think sports harms a school is by lowering the quality of its admits, not by taking away money from faculty.</p>
<p>Well, it looks like the reason why UCLA sends so many students to medical school compared to UCSD is because they have twice the number of applicants as UCSD. (Percentageswise though, they are almost comparable):</p>
<p>UCSD's numbers for those who have a bachelor's or graduate degree and was accepted into a medical school:
<a href="http://career.ucsd.edu/sa/pmedhis.shtml#UGATMS%5B/url%5D">http://career.ucsd.edu/sa/pmedhis.shtml#UGATMS</a></p>
<p>Where's your proof that UCSD and UCI have stronger pre-med programs?</p>
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Not NECESSARILY true, but are you telling me most people who get into medical school have 3.5's and those who don't get in have >3.8's?
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Of course not (which is why I listed the other details and not just the GPA). You're saying that just getting a high GPA should give you plenty of medical school options, which is not true.</p>
<p>Those samplings are both pretty incomplete. With that said, however, if UCSD and UCLA have an identical percentage (take 2003, where UCSD has 47% and UCLA has 49%, both of which strike me as substantially too high), then that does imply that UCSD's program is stronger.</p>
<p>Again, remember that I am assuming the percentages to be equal, which they aren't quite. Also, we have no information on which medical schools, what the average grades and MCAT scores are, and how many freshmen enter each school as premeds. This last number is not available for any school that I know of, so that's not a unique problem to the UC's.</p>
<p>UCLA has, on average, higher strength incoming students - so if their outgoing percentages are the same, then it means UCSD is doing a better job.</p>
<p>The average incoming GPA's and SAT scores are not that different for both schools so that does not mean that UCSD is doing a better job (especially if your reasoning is because they don't put money into athletics). UCLA has a ton more applicants, yet they are still doing on par if you look at the percentages (if you look at the numbers, UCLA would trounce UCSD and UCI combined). Neither schools have some mechanism to prevent individuals who stand close to no chance of any acceptances, so both schools, especially at UCLA, have their pool of lower strength students. Why more UCSD students don't apply, I don't know (In Fall '99, since I'm assuming those students make up most of the 2003 applicants, UCLA had 3733 students who declared their intent to register while UCSD had 3469 so their admit differences would not account for that radical of a difference).</p>
<p>And the percentages are around expected, since about half of all med school applicants don't make it anywhere.</p>
<p>Yancy,</p>
<p>First, the athletics argument is clearly ridiculous. You and I are in agreement.</p>
<p>Second, I do not believe one way or the other regarding whether UCLA actually has more applicants - they might simply do a better job reporting. I am skeptical of all the numbers provided. At UCSD, the number of applicants is quite certainly dramatically too low (read: underreported), while both percentages strike me as intuitively perhaps moderately too high given my personal experiences with UC Berkeley (admittedly, not the same thing, so the comparison is indirect) as well as the admissions process itself. I can make a mechanical argument for this as well, which sakky and I have discussed repeatedly. (He and I are in disagreement about how large an error this causes; I readily concede that sakky is usually right about most things.)</p>
<p>Third, UCLA's SAT scores are nearly 100 points (out of 1600) higher on average, a difference I would not consider insignificant. Their GPA is a quarter of a point higher, a difference I would also not consider insignificant. I argue that UCLA is working with a higher-talent pool, so if the results are the same - not by any means a conclusion I feel comfortable with - then it means UCSD is doing a better job.</p>
<p><a href="http://ugr8.ucsd.edu/sriweb/profile2003.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://ugr8.ucsd.edu/sriweb/profile2003.pdf</a>
<a href="http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/FrSel.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/FrSel.htm</a></p>
<p>I didn't know the difference was that much- ok, I agree that entering UCLA students are stronger than UCSD students. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I can also say that because UCLA has almost twice the number of applicants as UCSD has, and therefore (since percentages are about the same) twice the number of successful applicants, that UCLA has the much stronger pre-med program.</p>
<p>See, yancy, I think the UC's in general have problems of underreporting - I'm just not convinced there's enough information to make any analysis reasonably powerful (statistically speaking).</p>
<p>The underreporting tends to be more from those that don't make it anywhere since they have little inspiration to report their lack of success, so it would probably make a school look worse than its actually revealing. arahopee is going off of pure speculation that UCI and UCSD have stronger pre-med programs, but I'm looking at the numbers and it's showing that UCLA prepares more students and gets more successful students.</p>
<p>You're right that any underreporting would probably make a school seem better, and UCSD is almost certainly more underreported than UCLA. This I agree with.</p>
<p>I'm just saying that I don't feel quite comfortable reaching any conclusions. (How did we get to SD vs. LA from USC vs. WUSTL??)</p>
<p>That's a good question. (in a pitiful attempt to go back on topic: ) Well USC is known for its strong counseling and support for all the money you're paying them- make a post in the USC board to get more feedback if you're just looking for USC information.</p>
<p>Does jyancy go to ucla?</p>