Hello,
Regarding “(I particularly like how you teach art to different playlists),” I meant I post playlists where people then can learn art at their own pace (can’t tell if your making a dig at me tbh).
As for “Is this moving the entire household or her setting up a second residence so you can stay with her? If the latter, it is highly unlikely to be financially advantageous, and if the former, many areas near the universities will have very high costs of living,” my family is divorced, and she lives in an apartment. If I go somewhere too far, she’ll probably just leave.
For this, “Additionally, since you attend “a competitive, notoriously difficult” school, you definitely want to reach out to the guidance counselor. They may have additional context on any Scoir/Naviance data (like knowing whether a student was hooked by applying ED, a recruited athlete, a legacy, etc) as well as knowing where other students in your class are planning to apply.”: My entire school is all UC/ Ivy. Very little state schools, with a handful of UCR & CSU. The top 9% of my school will have minimum 3.9 uw and 4.4 w. We don’t have an avaliable class rank but I know I am not top 9%.
As for the college experience, I have no preference for the people there but I would prefer somewhere thats affordable, allows me to get a good GPA, is near a medical school, and not too humid or hot. The rest is fine with me! I want like 20k per year at max tbh.. Personal interests I have no issue with because I honestly get along really well with everyone, not shy at all lol!!
Thanks for such a detailed questions 
I’ll post more later (probably tomorrow), but I was totally sincere in my earlier comments…no dig intended!
Not all UCs have medical schools, and pre-med extracurriculars like volunteer or paid work in a clinical context and service to the disadvantaged can be done in places other than medical schools.
While CSUs have a common set of general education requirements, UC campuses and their divisions (or residential colleges at UCSD and UCSC) do vary in what they require.
Here are some transfer statistics to contextualize this vs CC:
For UC Davis:
92.4% of admitted transfer students were from California community colleges.
And for UCSD:
90.5% of admitted transfer students were from California community colleges.
If you look at all the links, these are in fact at the low end - most other UCs have 92-94% of admitted transfers coming from CA community college. Santa Cruz is over 95%. Bottom line is that if you do go to a CSU, you should choose one you would be happy to spend all 4 years at, because that is by far going to be the most likely outcome.
Hello,
I think I might just go with UCR and try to go to a better UC. UC ->UC have higher rates than CSU to UC, and even if I dont get accpeted via transfer, I’m sure UCR has great opportunities for premed. Thanks!
UC Riverside Medical School accepts a disproportionate amount of its incoming class from UC Riverside undergrad, making UCR an excellent option for premed.
However, UCR medical school has a particular emphasis on students from or with strong ties to inland southern California who are more likely eventually to practice medicine there.
Since the top 9% are likely to be applying to all the Ivies, that’s why I suspect spending the time and money on those applications (which tend to have numerous supplementals particular to each college) would be better spent on applications to other schools, as your odds of receiving an admission from one of them are probably extraordinarily low.
Is this what your family is able to pay or is it what you desire because you want to save money for grad school? Room & board at most California colleges (and other higher cost of living locations) will eat up the bulk of the $20k, meaning that you are looking for places where you can get a full tuition scholarship or where they consider your family’s contribution to be $20k. This means that it’s even more essential to run the NPC at schools to see if they will be affordable. NPCs aren’t always as accurate for students with divorced families, but you may reach out to a financial aid office to see if they can run an estimate based on your particular circumstances.
From your list, I would run the numbers at Case Western, USC, and Tulane and see what pops up. I’d also suggest running the NPC at these schools which tend to be quite financially generous but are not as competitive for admissions as some of the others on your list:
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Smith (MA): Women’s college of about 2500 undergrads in the 5-college consortium with Amherst, UMass, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire.
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Dickinson (PA ): About 2200 undergrads
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Lafayette (PA ): About 2800 undergrads
If none of those have an NPC (or estimate from the financial aid office) that comes back as affordable, then you are essentially looking at schools that would offer you a full tuition scholarship or you’re looking at living at home and attending a school that costs less than $20k (acknowledging that commuting also has expenses for transportation and such).
I’m going to push back gently on this. Med schools may indeed be doing more health-based research, but they also have med students and grad students in related fields who will be available for doing research. @WayOutWestMom can speak more to this, but med schools have relatively little interest in whether applicants have completed any research. They are interested in students having shadowed practitioners, had clinical experiences, time spent volunteering with underresourced populations, etc. And if you’re interested in research because you think you might prefer a research career over a med school one, almost all colleges will have research opportunities available.
(Caveat on research availability is that the current administration’s changes to federal research grants may be changing the picture across the country, and the effect may be quite widespread.)
AustenNut is generally correct in that clinical exposure, physician shadowing, community service w. disadvantaged/disparaged groups and leadership are all more valuable than research for premeds. For traditional pre-meds (those who go to college intent on premed and apply either directly after undergrad or up to 3 gaps year post graduation), there is an expectation that they will have a modest amount of research experience. A full time summer or 1-2 years of part-time research exposure during undergrad is plenty.
See p. 15 of this document: Using MCAT® Data in 2024 Medical Student Selection. It includes a survey of med school adcomms ranking what items they consider important when making decisions about which applicants to interview and accept.
However, you mentioned you want to attend a top tier med school. Most top tier med schools are “research -intensive”—meaning there is an expectation that applicants not only have hundreds to thousands of hours clinical experience, community service, leadership experiences and at least 50 hours of physician shadowing (including some time in primary care specialties), but they also have very significant research exposure. Hundreds to thousand of hours of research, that should include positions of responsibility in the lab and/or an independent research thesis as senior. Med schools want to see not just hours, but productivity in lab–which mean publications, leadership roles in the lab and very strong LORs from lab PIs.
NOTE that research needn’t be done at a med school. (In fact, given the current state of research funding in the US, med schools are being seriously hurt by a massive decline in funding.)
Why do you need to attend a top tier med school?
Physicians, regardless of where they graduate from, all get the same starting salary. Entry into highly competitive specialties is not determined by where you attend med school, but by things like USMLE scores, clinical grades earned during hospital rotations during MS3-4, LORs from clinical preceptors in the desired specialty, away rotations performance, interview performance and mission fit at individual residency programs. Some specialties expect (indeed require) research & publications in the specialty applied to. (Neurosurgery, orthopedics, ophthalmology, etc.)
As a high school student you have no clue what specialty you may be competitive for or interested in for 8+ years from now.
Good choice. S24 is attending UCD currently. Some of his HS friends were picking UCR for pre-med over higher tier UCs accepted them. Their main reason was less competition for high GPA, and hospital was available for intern opportunity. But keep in mind, you should still apply for other UCs and CSUs, since no extra effort is required. Nice to have choice on May 1st. Good Luck.
A couple of comments on your plan
For a medical school application, AMCAS/ACOMAS will calculate two different GPAs. One is the cumulative GPA which included every college course you have ever taken (including dual enrollment classes in high school). The other is a science GPA that only includes biology, chemistry, math and physics coursework.
Of the two, your sGPA is far more important and the one that med school adcomms place more weight on. This means that fluffing your cGPA isn’t going to help you as much as you seem to think it will. (Also adcomms read a lot of transcripts and they generally dislike students who “pad” their GPA by taking easy classes to artificially inflate their GPAs.)
Adcomms will read your transcript in context. When you apply to med school, AMCAS/ACOMAS will reformat your transcript to list your courses by year in college with each year listed on a separate page. If you take a lighter than typical course load, this will be easily apparent to adcomms. This is something that has a negative connotation to adcomms. Med school is equivalent to taking 24-32 hours of nothing but science classes each semester. Adcomms are looking for students who can handle a heavy course load and still do well. There are no “reduced course load” pathways in med school.
This simply isn’t true. It’s incumbent on the student to find their own volunteering opportunities. No university, especially not any of the UCs, is going to find them for you.
Typically, the “lighter” semesters you’d be allowed would be the first (college transition) then whenever you take Organic Chemistry. The others should show 15-16 (+) credits - or whatever’s equivalent if your college is on quarters or trimesters or any other system.
If you attend a large public University, what you want is being outstanding compared to the other students in your cohort, so that you stand out among hundreds and professors know who you are.
Therefore your choice has to balance resources+peer quality&educational challenge (in case you don’t get into med school) with affordability and being in the top 25% applicants.
Delineate several paths (through UCs, residential CSUs/Humboldt, commuter CSUs/Pomona, private colleges).
CA is a very very tough state to be premed.
This absolutely true.
UCB alone graduates enough premeds every year to fill every single public and private med school seat in California and still have applicants left over. 2/3rds of the California pre-meds who do manage to get a med school acceptance will attend an OOS med school. (And 58% of California med school applicants get no acceptances at all.)
Might it be worth it for CA premeds to find a State where instate status is conferred to those graduating from a college that state and/or working there during their glide year, so that they’d avoid the difficulties inherent to being a CA premed?
Isn’t that similar to pre-med failure rate overall (assuming this is counting those who applied)?
The main issue that California pre-meds seem to face in this area is that, for those who do get into a medical school, medical school will likely be much more expensive for them than for those in some other states (e.g. NM, NC, TX), due to the large percentage who go somewhere other than an in-state public medical school, and because in-state public medical schools are not as discounted as much as in some other states.
Many California premeds do this. However, this can complicate things if they hope to do their medical residency in California. (Per MSAR, > 35% of ALL graduating med students–not just California residents–want to do their residency in California.)
Also because except for UCD and UCR, CA public med schools do not offer any in-state preference in admissions.
Even for UCD and UCR, isn’t this preference limited to students with connections to the immediate surrounding area? Or maybe I’m confused and thinking about UCM’s new program.
Yes, UCD and UCR have preferences for students with strong connections to the Sacramento Valley and the Inland Empire respectively. Neither school offers a preference for California residents from outside their service areas.
UCM’s program is a BA/MD program that’s limited to San Joachim Valley residents. Accepted students do their undergrad at UCM, then complete their 1.5 years of pre-clinical coursework at UCSF before transitioning back to the San Joachim Valley to complete their final 2.5 years of clinical training at UCSF-Fresno’s hospital.