Wondering if @cueless has any acceptance that is out of state beside UCs?
I do, but these are my choices
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As long as your family is on board with the costs…pick the one you want. And please thank your parents. This is a fabulous gift to you. Some parents wouldn’t do this even if they could afford to. So…please thank your parents for making this all possible for you!
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Then, clearly, it means UCD is in play for real, no problem for your parents, and you really want it, considering it IS a great university, well, go for it.
(If it were about OOS, you may want to pick another, cheaper university, and since that’s not on the table…)
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Then if you are serious, know that you CAN absolutely make UCD or UCI work for you med school admissions-wise. 100%.
But take it from a double UC grad (UCLA/UCSD) married to a UCLA undergrad/NYMC physician spouse: prepare thine butt.
UCs are VERY competitive atmospheres for premeds. Extremely competitive. Go in day one knowing that you will be competing against very determined classmates who are ready to fight for every last point in the weeder classes. This is as true at UCD/UCI as it is at UCLA and Cal.
You gotta hit the ground running day one. You gotta be ready to nail your coursework day one. Like I said above, the average admit to an MD program in the US starts out with a 3.75 GPA and a roughly 90th percentile MCAT. That’s table stakes. You will see innumerable threads on sites like this talking about the horror of 1st/2nd year weeder classes. Believe them. They’re real.
And as a California native who’s lived in both NorCal and grew up in SoCal, I’d consider that your life will be VERY different at the two programs. Irvine is suburbia personified. Davis is a neat NorCal agricultural town. They’re very different in terms of character, landscapes, weather, and personal character.
I lived down the street from UCI for years, my wife did residency there. Orange County has its charms for sure, but it’s definitely its own thing. Visiting is one thing, living there is another entirely.
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OP – just confirming that you have visited both UCD and UCI?
Is UMich different?
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I know some Cali families believe the pre-med internal competition is worse at Cals due to a disproportionate scarcity of in-state med school slots.
I don’t know if there is any good way to test that theory, and I am sure it is at most a difference in degree and not kind. But I have definitely seen a lot of people over time with that view.
Edit: I don’t know if this is proof, but it looks like all six Cal med schools made this list of the 16 med schools with the lowest acceptance rates:
Of course this can feel like splitting hairs given how low these are across the board, but serious pre-meds are often used to competing within such narrow margins.
Having only attended a UC for undergrad, I can’t say for certain in 2024, but I can say that the discourse among many UC-based med school hopefuls is that the weeder atmosphere is brutal. There was a commenter on here in the long ago (along with me) by the name of sakky who often pointed out that the experience at Cal was notoriously brutal. My wife’s experience at UCLA mirrored this. There are demographic differences at UCs and Michigan that produce very different student bodies and different cultural expectations. Having lived in multiple states and countries, I can say that California has its own cultural notion of competition that differs from other parts of the US and world in general.
Michigan’s own med school accepted 56 Michigan undergfrad students in 2023: https://medschool.umich.edu/sites/default/files/2023-11/Class%20Profile%20-%202023%20FINAL.pdf. UCI accepted more (17) from UCLA than from UCI (11): MD Programs Admissions | UCI School of Medicine
UC med school competition is BRUTAL. Doesn’t mean you can’t get into med school from a UC (obviously), but you can see in California that UCLA, Cal and to some degree UCSD dominate UC med schools admissions in multiple programs: https://medschool.ucsd.edu/admissions/PublishingImages/Pages/default/Entering%202019%20Profile.pdf
Now, to be clear, you can easily go out of state for med school, but as the spouse of someone paying off private med school loans, it’s not preferable.
Most pre-med in CA schools know they will likely need to go OOS for Med School. They just want to get in. Anywhere.
The sting is less now that UC Professional Schools (med, law, business) costs almost as much as some OOS schools. But when it used to be 1/3 or 1/4 the cost, the complaints were fierce.
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For what it’s worth, there are non-UC med schools like Kaiser, but even that currently “unranked” school had a median MCAT of matriculants of 517! 94th percentile! That’s several points above the median nationally for successful admits.
When you have a state full of engaged and competitive students it’s easy to just pull from some of the best even if you’re a relatively new program.
I think the problem for med school admissions might not be that UCs are “brutal.” Maybe it’s more that there are simply so many CA residents applying as medical school students.
I am not sure if CA residents can compensate by attending an OOS school, as you mentioned. Here is a thread that I found interesting, where @WayOutWestMom mentioned that regardless of the undergrad school attended (OOS or IS), a CA student is still a CA student, with the disadvantages of applying from a state with a very large number of med school hopefuls. I don’t know if the reverse of that might be true for an OOS student attending a CA school.
As far as this other comment,
My son who is currently attending Cal has wondered if this “notoriously brutal” reputation is fully justified, as he really isn’t seeing a Hunger Games-like atmosphere in lower level math and sciences.
Do you happen to have experience with UMich to compare? That was my question.
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The UC average for in-state of $45K or so a year is a darn sight cheaper than most other options in the $50-55K range. Never mind private med schools costing $65K+.
Not to complain too hard as it all worked out for us, but the reality is that it’s still a good deal.
As a mostly (minus 7 years spent abroad or in NY) lifelong CA resident, my experiences talking to folks here from other states and places is that CA has a specific character. I can say for sure as a parent of two kids here in NorCal that there is a degree of rat-racing in NorCal that didn’t even exist in OC.
It’s also possible that your son is very exceptional. When you’re on the right side of the curve, it’s easy to wonder what’s going on with everyone else.
Edit: also, we would have to see state-by-state data to tell if Californians need higher scores to get in to med school.
Note: edited comment to reflect community standards. Apologies for any offense on my part, my intent was not to harm anyone. I will do better moving forward.
Isn’t curved grading, or grade bins adjusted to produce a similar curve, used in many lower and mid level science classes taken by premeds at many universities? It’s certainly not unique to the UCs.
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Sure, but student populations and the goal of the curve change the nature of how that curve feels. Being in a room of hyper competitive people fighting for a limited resource (As) often makes a curve harder for the individual.
Put another way: UC med school hopefuls are often starting out ready to fight for those grades. Perhaps Michigan is just as bad, but when you know in CA that you’re among a tough cohort you start tough.
My wife noted that her actual grading was more stressful in undergrad because you were fighting for points on the margin for As than in med school where even though there was more work and learning, P = MD. She was on a curve in med school too, but since she didn’t care about AOA, the curve actually worked in her favor as she could just hug the middle and focus on preparing for STEP 1/2/3.
But anyway, your point is that it’s nothing special and Michigan will likely be just as bad? If so, then this person still needs to steel themselves. My point still stands, even if it’s no longer comparative per se. Med school admission is arguably the hardest of all professional schools.
I have just noticed many people on CC and on reddit complaining about the tough environment at their own flagships, perhaps because they are most familiar with the level of competition there. (Have you talked to students at UW-Seattle, for example?)
I think it is common for people in CA to have this perception of the UCs, but I would use caution comparing to other schools if you don’t have experience with them.
I honestly do not know what UMich is like for premeds, which is why I was asking the question.
I should underscore I have no direct experience with any of this, so these are basically just questions I am basing on things I have repeatedly heard.
But, in addition to the cost difference difference, wasn’t there also a CA resident preference at the Cal med schools? Maybe I am misremembering, or it has changed, but I thought that was another form of benefit that was seen as limited to the Cal med schools and thus scarce.
All that said, all this is definitely just based on the fact apparently many, many people from CA want to apply to med schools. OOS and private options may help provide some relief, but it at least still seems plausible to me that CA residents at Cals would feel the need to compete harder for the chance at one of those Cal slots.
Or not, again for me this is just a question of what I have heard.
My wife had med school classmates from a number of other programs, including Ivies and UW-Seattle. One of our best friends did undergrad at UW and is now a urologist. His undergrad did not sound nearly as fraught as I had expected. One of our other UW friends was preternaturally chill. Different cultural vibe. I’ve noticed the same spending time in Redmond (gaming, after all!)
The more competitive UCs were often considered among the toughest for weeders.
Perhaps it’s all just bias, yes, but I think at a point reputations are at least somewhat true. Like I said: culturally NorCal is a FAR more competitive place emotionally than SoCal. Places have culture, and that includes schools.
For specific questions like this, I would need to defer to someone who knows more about med school admission like @WayOutWestMom.