<p>My S accepted
USC Viterbi (BME) + Presidential Scholarship Finalist (awaiting results) + Premed track
UCSD Jacobs - BME Bioinformatics + premed track - no merit award</p>
<p>The net cost of attendance will be similar if he gets a Presidential Scholarship as we are OOS at UC</p>
<p>What are the pros/cons of the two schools. Any advice would be great. </p>
<p>Just commenting on cost concerns. Oos UCSD tuition is $36,095 vs. USC w/Presidential tuition at $23,150 using current year costs. Just to be clear, it will cost you approx. $52K in tuition (total 4 years) more to attend UCSD over USC w/Presidential award. If it takes your son longer to graduate, which can be an issue at some of the UCs, that potentially could add extra cost to undergrad. SInce your son is planning to attend medical school, those undergrad costs may be meaningful. </p>
<p>Both are excellent schools. We’re truly big believers in the amount of opportunities at USC for research, starting freshman year, academic strength (FSH or TO are great programs for adding even more rigor), and individual attention from advisors as well as help to the next step, whether applying for Fullbright or other top programs, med school, etc. Did your son visit UCSD? How did he feel it compared to USC? </p>
<p>@madbean
Thanks so much for your advice. We have been to both UCSD and USC (twice - once last summer + exploreUSC recently). We are looking at cost as only a secondary factor. Merit awards are definitely a factor but is not the key determinant. The research opportunity set (access to Keck School for UG research vs UCSD med school) + the health advising programs are key for my S. He likes both schools a lot. Its the classic choice Great Public vs Great Private university.</p>
<p>The pre-health advising at USC has been great for my D (current junior who will be applying to med school in June). She has always been able to schedule an appointment within days of calling and the advice she has gotten has been useful --this is in direct contrast to the experience of her high school friends at other schools who have to wait weeks to see someone. There is a wide variety of pre-med clubs, pre-med activities, research opportunities, volunteer experiences all on the main campus and even more on the health sciences campus (Keck). There are SI (supplemental instruction) classes for all the major pre-med classes for extra help. You are welcome to pm me with any specific questions you may have about pre-med at USC. </p>
<p>@camomof3 thanks for your insightful reply. It helps to have a parent’s view on how their child is navigating the world of pre-med@USC.</p>
<p>Here is what we found comparing the two programs</p>
<h1>USC + Viterbi</h1>
<p>1) Highly Selective
2) Very flexible program. Can potentially look at BME major + minor of choice
3) Overall engineering school ranked high for grad studies
4) USC provides a great number of choices to students to create a custom program of study
5) Health advising, research opportunities seem very good.</p>
<h1>UCSD Jacobs + Revelle</h1>
<p>1) # 3 BME program in the nation
2) premed can be completed
3) Revelle has challenging GE requirement, great liberal arts exposure
4) Research opportunities are extensive at UCSD med school, but have to use a web based system to find opportunities.</p>
<p>For a BME pre-med USC seems to offer more flexibility.</p>
<p>Students at the Park Campus (where most undergrads are attending courses and live on or near) can catch the free shuttle to the Health Sciences campus (where the med school is) and back again. The shuttle runs regularly and is free for all USC students.</p>
<p>BME is part of Viterbi engineering school and has its own internship and placement office in its school. They get a good number of employers and firms at their career fairs, which are held regularly. This can be especially useful in getting a summer position and in case your D decides she wants to work in BME for some time. </p>
<p>Sorry, don’t know anything about the UCs. We are also out of state and USC with presidential was significantly cheaper than any UC, OOS (even before the recent tuition hikes at the UCs). Not sure how much tougher it is to get courses at the UCs. My niece and her BF took a lot longer to get their undergrad degrees at other CA Us because they couldn’t get their courses, which added many extra terms to their education–niece was studying elementary ed and BF was studying industrial design at different campuses, so not engineering and not UCSD. S & most of the kids we know who attended Viterbi got their bachelor’s in engineering in 4 years and if they wanted to get a masters, were able to get their bachelorLs and master’s degrees in 5 years.</p>
<p>@HImom: Thanks for the information about USC. My S task of choosing a final school got tougher over the weekend.</p>
<p>He’s now deciding between
<p>He is not applying for FA. We are OOS, so USC less expensive as @madbean pointed out.
Does anyone have an opinion on how USC’s class size for freshmen stacks up with UC’s. Also for premed students can they start research as freshmen at USC. My S has prior Biomed research experience from past summer(s). How does premed advising at USC compare to the UC’s,</p>
<p>Also what is USC’s acceptance rate into Med School for students who have taken the MCAT. Is this info available anywhere. For UC’s the info is reported in the following sites:</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/medstats/national.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/medstats/national.stm</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://career.ucsd.edu/undergraduates/consider-grad-school/pre-medical-data.html”>http://career.ucsd.edu/undergraduates/consider-grad-school/pre-medical-data.html</a></p>
<p>Any guidance would be great.</p>
<p>These published rates should be taken with a huge grain of salt as those that publish them manipulate them in any way they choose. </p>
<p>1) Do they count just juniors and seniors applying to med school? Some schools count alumni up to 5 years post graduation in their figures while others don’t. These alumni will have more experiences (and possibly advanced degrees) to add to their applications to be successful-- which is why they probably waited multiple years to apply.</p>
<p>2) Does the school discourage students under a certain GPA/MCAT score from applying-- by denying or writing a less-than-enthusiastic committee letter?</p>
<p>3) Do they only count the med school acceptances of those qualified to apply (with some metric they themselves come up with)? ---- I was shocked that some schools manipulate their “80% acceptance rate” by doing this. IMO, this makes their number completely useless. </p>
<p>Anyway, you really shouldn’t care about these numbers because they are easily manipulated (you can confirm this fact by posting such a question in the pre-med forum here or google search).</p>
<p>All of these choices your S has are great and can lead him to med school. Now it is on him to earn the GPA necessary. </p>
<p>USC pre-med requirement classes, like the Chem series, OChem, Physics, Bio, are large lecture style classes. At USC, there will be about 100-300 kids per section (at least at the start of the class- there will be a sizable portion dropping out of Chem and Bio). There will be several sections of the Chem series and Bio series- which is great for flexibility and keeps the number in each section at 200-300 at the start. These two intro required series are the largest classes D has had and they didn’t seem too large at all since they are lecture classes. The lab classes associated with them are small (less than 20). </p>
<p>Forgot to add that FSH (Honors science) classes at USC are smaller than the regular Chem and Bio series classes. </p>
<p>Can Engineering students choose the FSH option? </p>
<p>I know that our friend’s S was a chemistry major at USC. He got into his 1st choice med school–our local University of Hawaii. He is now a pediatrician. He worked at the student health center at USC all 4 years plus did some research at the health campus (not sure on the details).</p>
<p>S and our friend’s S both were engineering majors at Viterbi and both did research on campus. S started in JR and continued SR year. Friend’s S worked from freshman year and I believe continued all 4 years. Both also did internships over the summer–friend’s S from freshman year and S after sophomore year. Both were offered several good jobs upon graduation. S was an author on several professional publications as a result of his campus research (for which he was paid). Friend’s S was able to get a bachelor’s in engineering, one in finance and a master’s degree from USC, all in 4 years + 2 summers. </p>
<p>S never gave me details about classes, but had no complaints over class sizes. One of the good things about USC is that students CAN switch majors if they choose, which does allow more flexibility. I believe the ability to switch at UCs is severely curtailed due to funding cuts and some overcrowding. We have another friend who switched out of Viterbi to get a bachelor’s degree in psychology and now after working for a few years is in law school. (He was able to keep his presidential award, as well as the rest of his FAid.)</p>
<p>My niece and her BF had a lot of difficulty getting courses when they were attending CA Us–different campuses but they felt it was strongly related to the budget cuts. It delayed their graduations and entry into the job market.</p>
<p>One other thing that was helpful to us when we had kids attending USC was being able to sign up for the payment plan for $40-50/semester. This allowed us to make 5 equal payments instead of one HUGE payment. It was available on-line and accepted credit cards at no additional charge; we paid off the CC bill in full as soon as the statement arrived. Have no idea if UCs have anything comparable.</p>
<p>Sadly, med school admissions seem very unpredictable and getting a good, well-rounded list seems crucial. I know lots of great kids who are rejected in their first round of med school applications and think med schools sometimes prefer the students do an extra year of research after they get their bachelor’s degrees, but don’t know for sure. Great grades, of course are important for med school applications, and engineering is a challenging field to compete for top grades.</p>
<p>FSH is for Dornsife science majors </p>
@BiomedFather, where did your son finally join?
Joined UCB and very happy.