<p>My understanding is that the UC’s look at you in context with the other kids in your school. So at the school you are at an 1600 on the SAT might be the top score at there school and at another school 1600 might be an average score. So the kid that 1600 at their school is the top will most likely get in and the other kid will not. Also until this year UC’s had the ELC program which probably allowed acceptances of kids that otherwise would have not made it.</p>
<p>I know I think my results were a little wacky. Accepted computer engineering, UCSD, UCSB, Cal Poly SLO but waitlisted at UCI.</p>
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<p>That is illogical. Approx 25% of a typical private college’s entering Frosh are premed, most of which are science majors. At some colleges like Hopkins, its 33%. Few of those come close to even applying to med school. Call it what you will, but they do get off the premed track. Do publics give out more low grades, such as Cs and Ds? Sure. But one can still graduate in Chemistry with “low gpa”. (They are not forced out.)</p>
<p>Thus, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.</p>
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Cal weeds out a lot more applicants in the sciences than the private schools who are much more invested in keeping students in their chosen fields <a href=“with%20the%20exception%20of%20some%20pre-med%20programs”>b</a> ** to justify the private advantage.
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<p>How can that be? The pre-med pre-reqs are often the same classes as the early STEM classes. They’re all taking classes like Gen Chem, Cal, Bio, Physics. It’s not like the privates say, “hmmm…that kid is Bio, but not pre-med, so we won’t weed him.”</p>
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<p>The schedule indicates 230-260 for courses common to both chemical engineering and chemistry that are normally taken by freshmen and sophomores (Chemistry 4A, 4B, 112A). After chemical engineering and chemistry split, required courses in each major seem to be about 130-150, and in-major electives seem to be about 30-60, based on the schedule.</p>
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<p>Class sizes get smaller at the upper division level because several majors that share common lower division courses split off of each other to take their own upper division courses.</p>
<p>Yes, some schools maintain small class sizes for common freshman level courses instead of teaching them “in bulk” like big state universities do. But the disadvantage would be less instructor time available to teach upper division courses, which is why some schools offer many upper division courses only once every year or once every two years.</p>