<p>Hi, I'm applying to UCSD for fall 2012 and planning on majoring in Human Biology and going with a pre med path. I looked at 6 colleges there and I narrowed my choices down to Warren and Revelle. I know that Revelle has the most GE requirements and is the one pre meds usually go to due to the overlapping courses, but I've heard there are alternatives to choosing a different college and still going down the pre med path. I was thinking that if I chose Warren which has much lower GE requirements, I'd be able to use that extra/free time to take courses outside the major requirement, so as to show med schools the variety of classes I've taken.</p>
<p>So, which one would be the better college choice as preparing me for med school after college as well as increasing my chances of getting in?</p>
<p>^Ha ha. You beat me to it. I don’t know all the pre-med requirements exactly, but I also don’t see how Revelle can have the most overlapping courses either. This is really my big problem with the college system. It leads to too much unnecessary confusion.</p>
<p>To answer your question though, I honestly think any college will equally prepare you. You’ll be taking the same biology, chemistry, physics, ect classes as everybody else in your major. The only real differences are the GEs you have to take. So what I would do is look at the requirements for each college and find the college that has the most overlap between class you have to/want to take.</p>
<p>Here’s where you can find each college’s requirements. And if anything is confusing, which it inevitably will be because some things still confuse even me, then just ask.</p>
<p>Honestly, any college is good for pre-med or any other major. You will find pre-meds at every college. You should pick the college based on which one fits you better (what is the school’s philosophy, how are the dorms, how are the people, location, writing classes, etc).</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter which of the 6 colleges you choose for your major; you just have to pick the right major for pre-med and you will understand how to shape your schedule around it.</p>
<p>I disagree with people who say any college is good for pre-med. You should pick the one that allows you to focus most on your pre-med coursework/Biology major courses, instead of having to juggle numerous GE classes that you probably don’t care for. Sure you can be a bio major in any school, but if you want a streamlined pre-med experience, pick a school like Muir, Marshall or Warren that has more flexible, relevant GE requirements as opposed to say, ERC, which has lots of writing/humanities requirements. What KingsElite suggested is a really smart thing to do and I wish I had done that before ranking colleges on my application. Compare the GE requirements and it will become pretty apparent to you which college to aim for. I already told you the three “better” schools (Muir is probably the best) so if you’re super pre-med-minded, I think the decision is pretty clear…</p>
<p>^If you want to get that detailed in your premed drive, you should look into a number of other things.</p>
<p>Analyze the English series at each college and see which one you’d succeed in most for that year of required english. This means also looking at old grade distributions to see which professors of which english series specific for a college dish out the most A’s. </p>
<p>Also, realize which GE’s you are good at and which ones you are not. Personally, I factored this in when choosing my colleges and I did NOT want Muir because it had a foreign language requirement. Foreign Language was my worst grade in HS so I knew this would be a disaster in college. If you hate ethnic studies, don’t go with Marshall. So to maximize your success as a premed, you’d have to analyze the course material of the GE’s per college instead of the QUANTITY of them. </p>
<p>Another factor that may cause you to stray from a Science-only schedule is the section on the MCAT that is the stopper of alot of premeds: Verbal. If you can’t read literature or humanities articles efficiently, it may be a good thing to take classes that deal with humanities and heavily reading based. The section is really THAT BAD if you aren’t good at active reading. </p>
<p>If you are smart enough to make it into medical school, then none of what people are telling you should matter and that you should be ready to take on almost any class, honestly.</p>
<p>Side note: Bambi probably just thinks revelle is more prestigious based on the “harder load”, in which if you think that medical school discriminates based on colleges within UCSD, then you are sadly mistaken. A muir student with w 3.8 looks way better than a revelle student with a 3.5 anyday (basing it on GPA alone). Medical schools don’t even bother knowing the differences between the 6 colleges to be quite frank.</p>
<p>Muir, Marshall and Warren are probably your best choices in terms of GE requirements and/or location. There’s no college that’s “better for pre-med,” that’s a complete myth.</p>