Washington University in St. Louis or UCLA?!?!?!

Hello SCOOTER’s (Super College Obnoxiously Obsessed Teens Envisioning Reality)! Aside from spending my time coming up with anagrams, I have been applying to colleges the past year, and I have recently been accepted to UCLA and WashU, my top two choices, which is great! Except, they’re my top two choices, and I was accepted to both, and now I have to choose, which is NOT great! So I’m desperately begging for your help, support, love (and money). Please make my important life decisions for me and help me choose!

Some Facts about me:

I live in Springfield, Illinois. This means I will have to pay OOS for UCLA. I also will probably be paying for ALL of it because financial aid doesn’t care about me. This means LA will cost 58k, where WashU will probably cost 50k.

WashU is obviously closer to me than LA, but to me that’s a bad thing. I’ve always wanted to live in Cali, but I don’t know if I should make such a big move from home. I don’t get homesick or anything, but I’ve also never lived away from home by myself for more than a month. Should I move to such far away lands?

I am majoring in biochemistry with a pre-med focus wherever I go. Which is better in that regard??

Does the fact UCLA is the size of a small country affect anything?? Does it mean more opportunities or more confusion and less direction? Will I have a better experience at the smaller, private WashU?

I don’t have anymore questions right now, so I think I’ll end this awfully long post. If you made it this far, congrats! Please help a stressed high school senior with your insightful input!

Love, Claude

UCs don’t have financial aid for OOS students. There are also classes that are 600 students large. You will spend two years in huge classes. Go to CA when you graduate. You will get a much more personal experience at WashU and likely much more access to undergraduate research. My daughter said there was no comparison between the small size private and the large reputable state college she went to grad school and TA’d at as far as access to profs. It is a luxury experience to get to go to a top private. It isn’t necessary, but there are benefits.

WashU will definitely offer more resources per student than UCLA.

The top state schools are good value propositions for in-state kids. Not so much for OOS without scholarships/aid.

If you’ve always wanted to live in cali, go with UCLA. At similar costs, you might as well go where you would rather live for four years.

For pre-med intention and paying full cost, WUSTL will provide you more care and feeding - and better value for your money.

I went to Wash U for undergrad and Berkeley for grad, so not UCLA but similar system. I’m kind of torn on how to advise you, but will give you a couple of points. First, at Wash U you will have much smaller classes (you’ll have a few big ones, but ‘big’ will be like 150 top, whereas at the UC schools it could be a lot more and there will be more of them). You’ll have much more access to professors. Also, as a private school, you pay at the beginning of the year and there’s no nickel and diming for little things. The student body will have kids from all over the US. The UC schools are huge and kind of impersonal and you have to advocate for yourself a certain amount. The majority will be from CA, although ethnically and financially probably more diverse than Wash U.

Here’s my suggestion: take a little time to look at some med schools in CA… other than UCSF I’m not at all familiar with what’s any good here, or how competitive they are. If you can convince yourself that there are some good med school options in CA, I would say do Wash U as an undergrad with the idea of moving here for med school.

That said, if you are dying to move to CA, UCLA is an excellent school. There’s a heck of a lot more going on in Los Angeles than in St. Louis, although that might be a negative factor when you are trying to study. (When I went to Wash U we’d have one or two days in the spring that were just ‘too nice to work’ where everyone would skip class and hang out outside. When I started at Cal the first couple of weeks every day would have fit into the ‘too nice too work’ category in St. Louis and I realized that I’d have to work even when the weather was beautiful).

This isn’t even a close call. You got into Wash U so that means you are exceptionally bright. UCLA on average does not have the same type of student. Wash U has close to 90% of students scoring over 30 on the ACT and UCLA has about 50%. You will find a similar relationship with the SAT. UCLA is a lifestyle choice Wash U is a career choice. Don’t dilute yourself.

@dadstressed, for a pre-med, I’m not sure having a higher proportion os smart kids around in weedout classes is actually a positive, but WashU will offer more resources (not as sink-or-swim) and UCLA will have a ton of smart competitive pre-meds as well just because of sheer size (and also reputation).

Another aspect is for pre-med you want to have a high GPA. Which would let you keep the highest GPA? Which would not be competing against other supersmart kids?

UCLA would have plenty of super-smart kids, BTW. Half of UCLA is still more than twice as many undergrads as WashU.

@BrownParent As a UCLA 2014 alumnus, I have never seen or heard of a class 600 large. At most, they taper to a little above 300. There wouldn’t even be a lecture hall large enough to sit 600.

@washugrad In addition to UCSF, we have Stanford and UCLA. In fact, all of the UC Medical Schools are highly coveted.

Relatively, I see the cost to be a nominal difference in the grand scheme of cost of attendance over four years. The price gap isn’t huge, but living in California can be a dream come true for you. In your case, I think it’s worth it.

Moving to such far away lands can be exciting yet daunting. But it’s nothing to worry about, as many other students move even farther, move away from their home country, and thrive. You’ll be able to find many peers for support.

UCLA is a very busy place, but it does not take up a huge area. It’s in fact the smallest UC by area. That means it’s very productive with a lot of opportunities. As others have assumed, it does impart a sink-or-swim mentality sometimes. That’s nothing to worry about. It just means you have to know what you want, and go get it. There’s no hand-holding because college is time to explore on your own and make a name for yourself. That said, UCLA has great faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and a lot of helpful counselors and people willing to give advice when you ask for it.

Go for fit. These schools are peers.

Both WashU and UCLA have excellent medical schools. So you could do excellent research at either university.

I agree with the others that WashU will probably provide you with more resources. What you need to ask yourself is how important those resources are to you. Will you crumble in a sink or swim environment or will you thrive in it? If you don’t know, I’d pick WashU as the safer choice.

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a class being 600 students large at UCLA. But the same classes that are that large at UCLA will probably be anywhere from 150-300 students at WashU. That isn’t significantly more personal imo. We have to remember that we’re talking about research universities here, not LACs.

I have a friend who was UCLA pre-med (class of 2010) and she said her intro biology class was definitely around 600 students. The lecture hall had two overflow rooms. A glance at the UCLA schedule of classes doesn’t necessarily support that, though. Spring quarter 2015 shows two sections of Organic Chemistry II: one at 212 (capped at 235) and one at 230 (capped at 263). Organic Chem I from Fall 2014 was only 177 students. Physics for Life Sciences Majors had four lecture sections at 173, 184, 182, and 181, and the laboratories were capped at 30. General Chemistry had classes that were about 230 students deep. Introductory Psychology did have two sections with over 300 students each. Strangely, I can’t find the biology class listings.

Anyway, personally I would choose Wash U over UCLA - slightly cheaper, and you get the more personalized attention without sacrificing prestige/quality.

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I am majoring in biochemistry with a pre-med focus wherever I go. Which is better in that regard??


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Out-of-state students should not go to UCLA for premed

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Here’s my suggestion: take a little time to look at some med schools in CA… other than UCSF I’m not at all familiar with what’s any good here, or how competitive they are. If you can convince yourself that there are some good med school options in CA,


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Oh good heavens!

All US MD schools are excellent!

However, since there is a huge glut of premeds in California, no out-of-state student who is premed should go to a UC

@juillet Biology at UCLA is coded as Life Science. The introductory Life Science classes max out at 360. I have to reiterate that there is no such lecture hall large enough to sit 600 students. No class is 600. Not even 400. I find the notion ridiculous. No professor could handle that load. Two “overflow rooms” as it has been called may refer to two separate lectures that total 600 students. With that said, when this happens it means the two “overflow rooms” are two different professors (or the same professor teaching at two different time slots), teaching two different classes in two different rooms, for two different enrollments of students. This is actually referred to as two “lectures.” For example, LS2 for Cells, Tissues, and Organs has two lectures for Spring 2015. Discussion sections are the smaller parts of the class for discussion/review with a teaching assistant. These sections max out at 24 students. A student enrolls in one lecture and one discussion for a particular class.

Is that 8k per year or across all 4 years? If it’s the former, than WashU has the same prestige and a great academic offering for a cheaper price. I think UCLA is a great school, but WashU definitely would be a bit more personal and the advising system/flexibility at WashU is pretty great. I am from pretty close to where you are and I definitely wanted to go far for college. I actually ended up liking staying relatively close to home (my travel costs using Amtrak were far, far cheaper than if I had to book flights). If I wanted to see my family it was much easier than if I had gone to a farther state. That said, go for the school you think you would do best at. I think you’ll also find WashU has plenty of people from across the world. You may not be going to a far off land, but you’ll be learning with peers with very different backgrounds, from Kenya to the Netherlands, which I think does provide a good growing experience.

Unless those classes are being taught at Pauley Pavillion, I’ve never seen a lecture hall large enough to handle that amount of students. The largest lecture hall I’ve seen is probably the Humanities building which is close to 300 - 400 students. Most of the lecture halls are smaller than that, and probably handle less between 100 - 200 students. UCLA has pictures of some of its lecture halls here, presumably for filming purposes.

http://uclaevents.com/image-gallery/ucla-film-and-photography-locations/lecture-halls/

If you get a chance, I’d actually be interested in hearing from your friend about which lecture hall is capable of handling ‘600 students.’ Although I went to UCLA, naturally, there’s a lot of the campus which I did not see. Particularly in South Campus (i.e. the part of the campus which focuses on STEM.) One place in particular was 3420 Boelter Hall (the room where “the internet was born.”)

@beyphy According to some documents floating around the web from the UCLA Graduate Student Resource Center, the largest lecture hall on campus is Moore Hall (Moore 100?). There’s no way it’ll fit 600 students. I’ve been in pretty much every large lecture hall in South Campus, and there isn’t anything that would fit 600.