What did you think about Admit Day?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - San Diego
1

<p>I am sure the experiences varied, what was good, bad and the ugly about your trip?</p>

<p>I enjoyed:
the people in the booths along the library walk,
they seemed genuinely friendly and open about
their enthusiasm for their clubs.
the communications prof, who didn’t Pretend to
know all the answers but came off as a Human
being. The campus was clean and new, with the<br>
look of a modern research and learning institution.
The ocean was right there and the weather was fine.</p>

<p>I didn’t like:
driving 16 hours and standing in line for a half
hour for a dorm tour, only to be told we couldn’t
see the bathroom or the bedrooms. Hello, I know
what a hall looks like.<br>
finding out that other colleges had offerred
discount hotel rates to their students, but not ours.
That some students had recieved housing brochures
and had registered for housing but we hadn’t.
Hearing insipid questions that are clearly answered
on the website, and which should have been known
before you ever applied to this school.
“Are their required courses?”
I hated:
The feeling of being herded at the beginning into
the campus center for a very uninformative (if you
read the web site) and insincere meet and greet
~“I know I don’t have to mentioned how highly ranked we are, and how smart you all are, but we are highly ranked and you are smart.”
and then out (by rows to parade to the next
college event. I felt like I was in elementary school.</p>

<p>Overall, I thought the communications department came off looking good, as did biology. I don’t know about the others. The campus was clean, well maintained and looked very new. The dorm meals looked like you would be eating at the food court of any major mall in America, which means very limited vegan or vegetarian options. From what I saw, vegetarian meals looked like an after-thought. I wish I could tell you what a dorm looked like, the halls were narrow.</p>

2

<p>Just so you know, the dorms are pretty spacious in comparison to most other schools and they did offer a discount at the Embassy Suites.</p>

3

<p>Admit Day
Pros: Research explanation, bio portion, job/internship opportunities
Cons: Didn't talk about competition, gpa, avg # going to med school or certain grad schools, kinda dead campus i have a lot more opinions but i cant really think of too much now</p>

4

<p>Your daughter is at Marshall right Mr. B? I'm pretty sure discount rates were available because I remember seeing that somewhere and considering it.</p>

<p>Anyways, I only had a glimpse of a Marshall singles from the hallway, but from what I see they are much better than what I had expected a dorm room to look like. Quite spacious like leggomyeggo said, and I could imagine myself living in it. I wouldn't mind. </p>

<p>I thought the bathroom was kind of nice. I'm sure you have already seen this already, but just in case you haven't you can have a virtual tour of Marshall residence halls here: <a href="http://provost.ucsd.edu/marshall/residentiallife/rhtours.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://provost.ucsd.edu/marshall/residentiallife/rhtours.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

5

<p>Feel the Love
[ol]
[li]My parents were impressed with the facilities. My mom took a while to warm up to the place because it's too far. I'm sorry that you didn't get to see the dorms. :( I saw TMC's and they were pretty nice. The dorms weren't crowded and the lounge seemed homey. The guys' section of the "res. halls" (not dorms, according to our R.A., as the term refers to a floor of 28 people in 1 floor; UCSD's res. halls have 8 people in one floor)... freakin' hilarious. A mom's worst nightmare realized! If I decide to go through with UCSD, I have the option of taking an apartment with my friend on-campus, but I guess we have to turn in our SIRs ASAP, hm?</p>[/li]
<p>[li]The Biochemistry presentation... which one did you go to, Mr. B? Or his daughter... :) Not sure who started this thread. Anyway, the presentation also included the Biology major and I liked how it was informative and I felt a lot better that there are companies who are really interested in Biochem majors for internship opportunities. Because if anyone was @ the Biochem presentation @ 10:45 or so, I was the one who asked about the 7-year Pharm program. Wheee!!</p>[/li]
<p>[<em>]For the science majors who didn't have the opportunity to go, their department sounds really... really... strong. I was awed @ the companies that literally surrounded UCSD and they send e-mails to the Biochem department for available students for internships. Freakin' awesome.
[</em>]The shuttle system and the buses.
[<em>]OVT.<br>
[</em>]Students were very helpful. A lot of school spirit and @ least the ones I've met weren't faking their school spirit, so that was definitely a plus. The atmosphere was kick-back and I saw students studying. It didn't seem like it would be hard to form a network of support among our peers + finding people to form study groups with.
[<em>]That in our general ed classes, students are mixed with students from other colleges! :) I remember I commented that I didn't think it could happen like that, but it can so I was glad. I'm looking forward to having smart people from this message board in my calculus class. *evil laugh</em>
[/ol]</p>

<p>Feel the Grudge
[ol]
[li]Some of the hotels need to start advertising their UCSD deals better. If ES was the only place that offered discounts (and the rates were not that impressive), then that's really dumb. Didn't the other hotels want people in their rooms? If we found a discounted room closer to UCSD, then I wouldn't have my Itchy Room story.[/li][li]The signs! Am I the only one who was unimpressed with the signs?! Why were they so small? My parents and I got so lost, but we found our way... oh, 30 minutes later. Good thing we planned to leave for the thing really early, so we had 30 minutes to spare.[/li][/ol]</p>

<p>Feel the Uglies
[ol]
[<em>]Parking! I know, I know that the LJ UCSD community warned us about it already, but to have it right in front of your face to see... It was bad. Horrible. The parking permit rates were ridiculous, too, for students who intend to bring their cars and the spaces aren't even that accommodating. So now I don't want to bring mine.
[</em>]Not meeting CC members + the people I planned to meet. It was so freakin' crowded and I could've called, but I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. Still, it would've been nice to meet some of you.
[/ol]
Overall, I loved it. There are other incentives for me to go, too, but as I plan to go into pharmacy and I got into a pharmacy advantage program at some other school, I really, really have to think about which school to pick. If I didn't have to reason the advantages and disadvantages out, my heart's already set on UCSD. Wish me luck that I make the right decision!</p>

6

<p>The ECE department presentation told us the average gpas, SAT scores, and how many ppl applied and were admitted. It made me feel special that i got accepted =]</p>

7

<p>Our housing info arrived after we returned home. I am getting the impression that mailings arrive in a helter skelter manner. I think depending on which presentation and which college program you went to you recieved different amounts and quality of information. I found the young man in the red shirt who spoke about APs to be well informed, my D thought the meetings she went to were okay, but had concerns about the general atmosphere. We all agreed we have seen happier looking students elsewhere. Exception the volunteers at the tables were quite wonderful.</p>

8

<p>Damn signs!</p>

<p>Even though I've gone to UCSD a couple of times, I still got a bit lost finding the damn parking!</p>

<p>And it's expensive to park there....</p>

9

<p>lol Hurricane, I went in front of JMC and it was free parking for the entire day lol, not to mention that there were a lot of spots left.</p>

<p>oh yeah, did they mention that UCSD well... Revelle has the highest Med school matriculation rate in the entire US?</p>

<p>then again, I looked up the stats, SD sent out 333 med applicants compared to 720 for UCLA and 530?(around there) for cal, so there can't be a definate comparision.</p>

10

<p>Yeah, for most of the questions asked at all of the presentations I would say a good 75% of them could be easily answered by their going to their website, or even by the various pamphlets that they passed out.</p>

<p>I was late, so I missed the big greeting thingies in the Price center, though from what has been said above, that's not much of a problem. I did go to Warren presentation, and I must say that the students who presented were a heck of a lot more exciting and perhaps even more informative than the adults. Unlike the Dean of something-or-rather who went on about how the school, and us by extension, is very special, the students were the ones who showed real enthusiasm about the school.</p>

<p>After that I went on a housing tour, which was nice even though we only went through the apartments and resident halls really quickly. Shame about them only guaranteeing on campus housing for the first two years. Looked in the dining hall, saw the overpriced food, and decided to go to the subway towards the center of campus instead. Does anyone have any suggestions about the other cafeterias on campus?</p>

<p>After lunch, then I went to the Bioengineering presentation, which was VERY impressive. The professor who talked about the various aspects of it seemed to be knowledgeable, and the various things the people were working on looked very interesting. </p>

<p>Unfortunately I was stuck in the group that had to stay with the group that did an hour long Q&A period before going to the specific presentations. It mostly consisted of people asking if it was too late to do pure bioengineering or biotech (YES!) and a lot of pre-med parents asking about various trivial statistics, which they didn't know, but was on the pamphlets which unfortunately were located in the foyer of the bioengineering building, which we could only get after the presentation. </p>

<p>Key points of the bioengineering presentations:
1. They do research
2. You really should do summer school to graduate in 4 years
3. they are one of the top ranked bioengineering schools
4. They do research
5. They have connections with companies to do internships (during the summer)
6. Did I mention that they do research?
7. Oh yes, and do plan to lay out every single course you need to take, because they're a lot of them, and even then you'll probably need to take summer school
8. Research.</p>

<p>And then after the Q&A we got a chance to go over to the bioengineering building, which was very impressive and modern looking, to hear some smaller presentations on bioengineering. Basically ended up listening to some graduate students talking about the field and their (gasp) research. It actually quite interesting.</p>

11

<p>did u like the feelin of ucsd?</p>

12

<p>It doesn't try for and so it is no surprise that it doesn't have the open quad atmosphere of many other larger Universities, like UCLA, Berkeley or Davis. It was more like UCSC with the colleges separated apart.</p>

<p>There were students in the library studying and some in lounges, but for the most part I thought the campus was overwhelmed by the visitors. The cafe area down by the PriceCenter was like any fast food court on a busy shopping day. The OceanView Terrace had some nice views of distant ocean over a sea of condo roof tops.</p>

<p>I thought the menus looked fine but overpriced for college food. The vegetarian/vegan selection is pityful unless you want to run to different cafes each meal to find a special that you like. That is a pain when your friends want to go to dinner and you either have to eat a cheese pizza again or try to convince them to walk across campus to where the vegetarian meal looks edible. </p>

<p>Some of the statistics quoted by the administrative staff were misleading and wrong. One that comes to mind, "When you come to this school you will have beat out 20,000 other students." I have no idea how or where that number comes from but it clearly is not true by any statistic I have seen.</p>

13

<p>Mr.B, has your daughter decided on UCSD? If not, where else is she considering?</p>

14

<p>I liked my experience during Admit Day</p>

<p>I went with a frieind's family. They already have a daughter at UCSD, so they knew exactly hwere to go and where to park and all those little things. We skipped the welcome session and got here right when the college sign holders were going out. I left with hte Warren group and got to the warren lecture hall. Fun stuff here. The adults were boring as hell. But the student speakers were great. I especialy liked the guy in the green shirt 9duno his name). I had to elave early to attend the engineering sessions though. So I went..</p>

<p>Engineering session was GREAT! I was highly impressed with hte speakers. Though the MAE speaker was a bit boring nad stupid... THe SE speaker was great! Young and energetic speaker. He made me consider switching to SE major from my AE major lol. </p>

<p>I like their internship programs..the whole team idea wiht multi discipline majors togther... that's just excellent. I reeally want to see that bomb explosion simulator thing. Sounds pretty cool.</p>

<p>After, we went for food. I ate at Price center (Wendy's) with friends. Saw some more friends in the food court. Pretty crowded there. THen I went on the engineering tour. FUN FUN! I saw so much hands on stuff. We interrupted a couple of senior groups who were working on projects lol haha. And the tour guide put them on the spot to explain what their doing. FUn! </p>

<p>I talked to some of the seniors there. THey told me things contradictory to the what the guide said...he said that what he is saying is the bare real truth. The guides have to say things from a marketing viewpoint. Found out that most engineering majors dont finish in 4 years... </p>

<p>And I found out more info about hte BS/MS integrated major..sounds fun!</p>

<p>After that I went with my friends to walk around a bit.. had a housing tour (NICE!). Though the res halls were MESSY! Considering the fact that they were aware we were coming...yah... wow. I think my room will be like that. I was able to see everything in the rooms. </p>

<p>I didn't get a chance to check out the food places or the canyon view...It looked really nice from afar though. HIKING TRIPS!</p>

<p>Library walk was great! So many interesting things. I had my health insurnace questino answered. Unfortunately I didn't talk to financial aid :(</p>

<p>Anyways...fun day. I'm giong to UCSD!</p>

15

<p>dstark the only other UC she is considering is Davis, where she liked the access to the town, the friendly nature of kids that she met and the vegetarian/vegan choices at the food area. I think she felt the Davis crew was less pushy and wasn't trying to impress with statistics as hard. Academically Davis isn't that far behind San Diego in the statistics and access to the State Capitol may be more valuable than the scripts institute for her. As far as the UCs are considered it is Davis verses SD. It is her call, I am just here to witness and counsel.</p>

16

<p>Damnit, I left the MAE tour before they got to the Aerospace part (for the cliffs tour)</p>

<p>Can anybody fill me in?</p>

17

<p>Parent newsletter came today 4-12 to let us know about admit day 4-9. More info on how highly ranked they are and how smart the students are.</p>

18

<p>Mr B., sounds like you like Davis better. Davis does have a lot going for it.</p>

19

<p>I like both schools but have felt like a second tier citizen at UCSD, their housing brochure came late, parents were carrying it around at the admit day. I would want better communication in the future. In the end, my daughter will decide based upon where she feels she fits best.</p>

20

<p>
[quote]
I thought the menus looked fine but overpriced for college food. The vegetarian/vegan selection is pityful unless you want to run to different cafes each meal to find a special that you like. That is a pain when your friends want to go to dinner and you either have to eat a cheese pizza again or try to convince them to walk across campus to where the vegetarian meal looks edible.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Oh yeah. It's either I'll get housed in the apartments with my friend (TMC allows the noobs to go in apartments) or I'll be stuck in the res. halls, but will have friends in apartments. Either way, I'll be using those kitchens very well. It'll be a waste of those meal plan thingies, but stir fry for $4.50 (just some random price) is ridiculous when I can cook it myself.</p>

<p>I still haven't gotten my brochure either, Mr. B. I thought it might be because NorCal people get theirs later than those in SoCal, but expecting their mail to come in punctually isn't asking for much. It's been 3 wks. since their admission notices came out and supposedly, those brochures were mailed out "a few days later". Where the heck is mine? I'm just frustrated with this housing issue, too. But being an optimist, things can only get better from here.</p>

<p>...I hope.</p>