Pros and Cons of doing pre-med at UCLA vs. UCB. vs. maybe USC??

Colleges & Universities University of California - Los Angeles
13

<p>USC all the way, and I say that as a UCLA alum. Next is UCLA, and dead last is Berkeley. Your daughter’s GPA at USC will be at lease 0.2 or 0.3 higher than were she to graduate from UCLA, and 0.3 to 0.4 higher than were she to graduate from UCB. As you may know, med school adcoms don’t do much adjusting or normalizing of GPAs between colleges (or between STEM, Social Sciences, and Arts/Humanities), so raw GPA is what matters. On top of that, the pre-med advising (which starts with course selection and finishes with individual letters of recommendation from the advisory committee to the admissions committees at med schools) will be superior at USC. USC simply has more budget to apply to the pre-med advising office.</p>

<p>I had a conversation this morning with a young man who is in a post-college, pre-Med school program. There are undergrads participating as well. He is a recent graduate of UCSD, where he was middle of the pack among the voracious premeds there. He is at the top of this class, competing against mostly USC seniors and post-grads. </p>

<p>His impression is that the competition is so much fiercer at UCs that when UC grads compete openly and fairly against private school “pampered kids”, they blow their doors off. The private college kids simply aren’t prepared for true competition a la UC style. I have read the exact same comment about UC Berkeley grads who were borderline admits to their med schools due to lower GPA, and typically end up in the top 10% of their Med School classes against kids with higher GPA’s coming in from HYPSM and other Top 20 private grade inflated schools.</p>

<p>Since your daughter’s objective, presumably, is to get into Med School first try, and since raw GPA is king, I suggest USC affords the best opportunity to graduate with a 3.7+ GPA.oops, misplaced a sentence. The sentence at the end of the second paragraph is meant to be at the end of the last paragraph. If, however the objective were to do medical research, and not med school, than I would suggest the reverse order.</p>

<p>You may have seen this thread on the Berkeley board, but in case not: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/911500-warning-all-student-considering-premed-berkeley-please-read-first.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/911500-warning-all-student-considering-premed-berkeley-please-read-first.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;