<p>I have been accepted to USC and UC Berkeley as a biomedical engineering major, but have no idea which one to choose! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>UC Berkeley:
- Regents Scholarship = Priority registration, guaranteed housing 4 years, faculty mentor
- Cost = $21,000 / year
- I am interested in medical school, and I read that GPA is an important factor in medical school admissions (although it isn't the only factor). I heard that it is much harder to get good grades at UC Berkeley as opposed to USC. Is this true??
- More prestigious? </p>
<p>USC:
- Presidential Scholarship = 1/2 tuition
- Cost = $36,000 / year. More expensive than Berkeley, and especially if I decide to go to Medical school/grad school, I don't want to financially burden my parents.
- More diverse than UC Berkeley
- Smaller class sizes
- More grade inflation (not sure about this, see above comments!)
- If I decide medical school isn't the route I want to take, USC has a program where I can get my Bachelor's and Master's degree in 5 years.</p>
<p>When I went to a Questbridge conference at Stanford last year the founder mentioned that Berkeley had a pretty low acceptance to med school because the pre med courses were so challenging. I haven’t verified this though so definitely research some more on your own. I’m in the same position as you( accepted to both) though knew from the beginning I would choose USC over Berkeley because of what I was told, plus I like Los Angeles better. I would go where you think you will feel most comfortable with the students and environment. They are both amazing schools so good luck with your decision!</p>
<p>Regarding diversity, it depends on what diversity you are looking for. Berkeley likely has more economic diversity than USC – 36% of undergraduates with Pell Grants at Berkeley versus 19% at USC (Pell Grant eligibility is about the lower 40% of household incomes).</p>
<p>However, $60,000 over four years is a lot of money that a pre-med may want to save for medical school. As bioengineering is not the best paid engineering major, saving the money may also be desirable if not going to medical school.</p>
<p>^ I said I was skeptical…not that it was true. I’d need further evidence like the poster mentioned before “I would choose USC over Berkeley because of what I was told”.</p>
<p>What about my broader point that Questbridge steers students to partner colleges? Stanford and USC are partner colleges. The only public university partnered with Questbridge is UVA, and they don’t enroll many disadvantaged kids.</p>
<p>I would guess the no. of Cal students to med school in a particular year – remember, there are students admitted to m-school from previous years, not all admitted continue on to med school in the year they receive their bac degrees, with the longer distance from their graduation and their applying and evenutal acceptance to … dropping with the greater displacement of time – if this makes any sense – I’m way too lazy to edit – and apologize for the verbosity as welll as strange “experimentative” grammar – would be probably 400+, maybe ~ 450. I would guess USC’s to be at best 200, maybe more like ~ 150 or so. And a good 3.0 times more would not nearly be the factor of no. of undergrads at Cal compared to USC. Also note that USC has a large no. of undergrads for a private school, and has large classes also.</p>
<p>If you go to Cal, you’ll have more of a science-y student body, and you’ll have a much greater community of premeds to study with, etc. It’s a much more competititve atmosphere at Cal, absolutely, but the competition should bring your studies upward, and I’d think you’d be better prepped for m-school. And certainly, I wouldn’t think Cal’s acceptance rate to m-school would be lower than USC’s. </p>
<p>i would believe money is not an important factor, the school you like and reputation are more important. Because you can make more money in the future if become a Dr or other job.</p>