Should I attend UCR or reapply this season?

Applying to College
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Hi, I have a genuine question that I need some opinions on. I am first gen, oldest child and really didn’t know who to ask.
I applied last year as a graduating 2025 senior. Long story short, I ended up getting waitlisted at UC Davis (animal science) , accepted to UCR (neuroscience), CPP (animal science) , and rejected from UCSD (cognitive science), UCLA, USC, UCI, and pretty sure rejected from Davis in a few weeks.
I know college applications can be unpredictable but I am 80% sure the reason I got rejected was because my essays were inconsistent and unorganized. (Every essay I had revolved around a completely different major I thought had interest in). They also weren’t written well.
My high school GPA was 3.85 U.W. and 4.3 W. I believe I had a 4.4 UC W. I was very very involved in music and was in multiple ensembles with leadership positions. I also began a small business in 8th grade on Etsy and continued it. I sell handmade small animal products with the goal to support local animal rescues with the profits I made. I am also a regular volunteer at multiple animal rescues specifically for guinea pigs. I was also apart of a few other clubs with leadership positions and a few other extracurriculars. My activities were mainly surrounding guinea pigs and music (my passions).

I was considering applying as a transfer after cc (but with traditional asian parents, both them and my extended family insisted on me attending a UC and going pre-med). I really didn’t mind UCR in the beginning since I had multiple classmates and friends attending and I was really excited for it. However, after some treatment from the advising team and staff, it left me with mixed feelings and a broken heart. After being convinced and really really pressured by family, I settled with “pre-med” since I had some sort of interest. I do really want to give UCR a chance but my heart still wants UC Davis.
Do you think it’s worth the risk reapplying again as a freshman and taking a gap year (rewriting essays and fixing my application)? Or should I attend UCR and try to transfer in as sophomore standing? Or just reapply as a sophomore and transfer as a junior?

I apologize for all the rambling, thank you.

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If you do choose transfer after CC, Davis does allow TAG to the Animal Science major. TAG for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences requires at least a 3.20 GPA for all majors. Here are the specific course requirements for Animal Science: Major Requirements: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences | UC Davis

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I appreciate your reply :slight_smile: thank you

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UC Davis does not normally accept lower division Sophomore level transfers so if you want to attend UCR or a CC and transfer, you will need 60 semester/90 quarter units with completion of the major pre-req courses and a solid GPA.

California CC transfers have priority over UC to UC transfers, but if you do well at UCR definitely possible.

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Getting into medical school requires a strong commitment from you, rather than family pressure to do so. What are your true primary academic and professional interests?

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What do you actually want to do? Let’s suppose that you had been accepted somewhere as an animal science major. What would you intend to do with a bachelor’s degree in animal sciences?

I will admit that when I hear “animal sciences” two things come to mind. One is low wage people working hard to help animals. The other is veterinary medicine.

I do understand that it is common for someone starting university to not know the answer to “what do I want to do with my life”.

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If admitted animal science, I wanted to study veterinary medicine and become a veterinarian doing business as a side passion.

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Thank you for your reply. That’s a really good question.
My main academic interests surround veterinary medicine and behavioral sciences.

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One daughter just graduated a couple of months ago with a DVM. We have some experience with this.

This is a long path. Being a veterinarian does not pay as well as being a human doctor. Thus it is a good idea to avoid debt if possible, at least for your bachelor’s degree. If you can save some of your college funds for the DVM program that would be even better. My daughter has said that most of the students in her DVM program were taking on way too much debt, and that most did not want to talk about it. The minority of students who were taking on little or no debt also did not want to talk about it largely to avoid making the first group feel bad, but will be in better shape down the road.

This is a path that requires quite a bit of determination.

The required undergraduate pre-vet classes are the same as the required premed classes. UC Riverside has a good medical school and I would expect is very good for the premed / pre-vet classes. My daughter took a few optional veterinary specific classes and I do not know whether UCR has these.

My daughter and I both think that her experience was a big part of what got her accepted to several DVM programs. Part of this was experience in a veterinary office. There almost has to be veterinary offices somewhere near UC Riverside where you could volunteer. However, part of this was large animal experience. I am not sure how you would get this at UC Riverside. Some of her large animal experience involved volunteering on a farm when she was in university. However, some of her large animal experience came after graduating with a bachelor’s degree and before applying to DVM programs. I am not familiar with Riverside and do not know whether there are farms in the area. It would be possible to take a gap after graduating with a bachelor’s degree and take time to get the relevant experience.

I do not think that I have answered your question, but hopefully these are at least some things to think about.

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You applied to UCR. Why did you apply if you had no intent to go ?

UCR is no less a school than Davis. In fact, it’s a fine school, respected nationally.

Do you want to sit out a year or go to a CC?

I assume you want the four year experience.

Of course you should go to UCR.

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The area around Riverside is quite rural and there would be a fair number of farms, ranches and animal rescue/sanctuary facilities.

Probably not as numerous as Davis (nor as close to campus) and the OP would need to research if there are openings for volunteers or paid workers.

Davis is of course very well known for its pre vet emphasis. I was a Zoology major there many years ago.

Both are great schools!

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If UC Davis is in your heart and you really want to go there take the CC route. Based on S25’s admission this year ( not for the majors you are intending to apply) it is not very clear to me exactly what UC Davis looks for in their admission apart from the usual 13 point admission criteria for UCs. It is my personal view that a gap year seems risky with the sole purpose of getting into UC Davis.

On the other hand, I also feel UCR is a fine school and I have personal experience of my S22 attending the school.

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What happened? If I may ask?

Nope, I don’t agree.
If this student felt a weird vibe from staff and it made him uncomfortable, then I would think that his/her feelings need to be taken into account and validated.

You can’t go where you don’t fit.

What about CPP??
I know your parents don’t want you to go to a community college but it’s your chance for Davis.

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Long story short:
Staff accidentally marked me absent for orientation leading to them rescheduling my advising session. They let me know it was too late to rejoin my original advising date and that I had to wait until 4 weeks later to register for classes. I immediately reached out to orientation staff who told me to reach out to another team (who told me to contact another one and it kept going on until the last one told me to reach out to the orientation team who I contacted originally). After multiple conversations, they let me know they accidentally switched my name with another students’, removed my absence, and rescheduled my advising session back to the original one.
Fast forward to advising session, the head counselor called me out in the middle of the the zoom session (in front of the other students) that I was ineligible to register and would have to attend another session. I politely explained my situation and that my absence was already removed. Instead of a reply, she sent me to a breakout room with another counselor who asked me “What question did you have?”. Both of us were clearly confused about the situation. After explaining what happened, she let me know I was good and should be fine for registration.

I know this is probably not the typical experience for most students but the lack of support and treatment I received really impacted my impression of UCR. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable with reaching out.

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Thank you for your reply!
Ahh I was considering zoology as a major! How was your experience at UC Davis? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thank you so much for taking time to reply. I’ll definitely look into it!
We do have a few veterinary offices nearby and a couple farms. I’ll keep your advice in mind and try to gain experience in those specific fields.

Thank you for this. The salary, tuition, and debt is also something I’ve been thinking about

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I’m sorry you were sent on a wild goose chase at your advising session.

I do want to gently suggest that this mistake could have happened at any large university. There are too few people managing too many students (I say this as a parent of a rising senior at another UC—bureaucracy and its ridiculous mistakes are part of the deal).

Put another way, if this string of errors and confusion had happened at Davis, would you feel the same way?

I hear in your story your continued sadness for the Davis situation. And it does suck not to be able to go to the school you really wanted to attend. But I wonder if you gave UCR a chance and tried it for a couple of quarters, you might settle in? Perhaps you will have some great professors, or meet new friends in your dorm. Maybe you will find a pre-vet club full of guinea pig lovers. But if you just don’t want to do that, then I think you should have the difficult conversation with your family and choose the CC route. This will also be a chance for you to make clear your intention to be an animal doctor and not a human doctor.

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It’s advising at a large public. May be good. May not. May be no different at Davis or anywhere else. There’s good- and not good. Most are overworked and stretched. OP kind of acknowledged this.

This is now adult life - and these kids are treated as such - and changing schools due to an advisor would, in my mind, be foolish and the same thing can happen.

And advising is that- an occasional, not regular thing.

Sure, OP got off on the wrong foot perception wise - but when you go to a huge public school with multi levels of advising, this is a possiblity.

But advisors are just that - and he won’t deal with them again for months ahead of the next schedule.

It’s like the person who didn’t love a school before hand but loved the admissions tour. That’s great…but that’s once in a blue moon, if the school doesn’t fit, the tour isn’t a reason to attend.

If I’m OP, UCR and UCD are substitutes - and one has given me a chance while the other didn’t.

It’s a big risk and crazy to think - well my advising session went awry - therefore i’m going to go find another overcrowded, underfunded public advising sesion.

If advising is important, then the student should find a small CSU campus. I don’t know - but perhaps they’ll have better advising.

Hardly the reason to move schools after you committed - is my point.

I don’t want to seem unsympathetic - but this is the least of the lack of issues the student will have during their four years - anywhere.

Kids have to grow up quickly in college…this is the first example.

If kids left college due to poor advising or situations like this handled poorly, many of the colleges in America would be half empty.

You get registered, even if you end up in not the best schedule, and you move on…and crush the experience and get a better schedule next semester. Or you take the bull by the horns - and get to campus for a 1:1 and get it fixed in person, on the spot.

With Professors giving waivers the first week, etc. with a little hard work, persistence, and 1:1 help (which if they reach high enough they can likely get), all can probably be smoothed over in time for the 2nd week of class, if not sooner.

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I just want to echo this. There are upsides and downsides to various college options. Larger colleges tend to have a wider variety of departments, greater depth in particular subjects, larger range of clubs, a bigger mix of students, meaning that almost any “type/vibe” of person attends the school, etc. But they also have their cons, and bureaucracy tends to be one of them. When there are a lot of departments/offices, then people can be pushed from one to another, and additional persistence is needed to find a resolution.

You need to decide if this kind of experience is a dealbreaker for you. If it is, you may want to look at smaller campuses (Sonoma State, Cal Poly: Humboldt, and Cal State: Monterey Bay are a few possibilities).

Community college, depending on which one, could also be a smaller and less bureaucratic environment. If you’re wanting to go away to college but still try a CC->UC route, there are schools like College of the Redwoods that have dorms where you can possibly still do a TAG situation (that’s something you’d need to look up…I don’t know the TAG rules). Just know that once you get to a UC (probably any UC, with the possible exception of Merced, which has 8400 undergrads), that you’re likely to have to deal with bureaucratic issues like this.

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My undergrad years at Davis were really great. Good friends, opportunities for growth and I loved the town and area.

That said, I would likely have had that amazing experience at many schools. So although Davis was the location, it was more what I myself discovered and pursued.

I don’t want to make this one of those “I walked uphill in the snow for miles” stories, but for me and many of my HS peers, choosing and heading off to college was so different than what my kids experienced. And vastly different than much of what I read on CC.

I applied to Cal Berkeley and Davis. That’s all. Accepted to both. I chose Davis to have the opportunity to move away from home and escape a rough family life. When I was dropped off at the dorm, it was the very first time I had seen the school or the area.

I do not remember any advising or counseling. We chose our classes via a large course catalogue. Like many UCs, it was big and at times hard to find your way through the administrative process.

There is so much more support for students now. Is it perfect? Definitely not. But when my middle kid complained to me about her academic advisor at he CSU, I laughingly said, “Wait! You have an advisor?!”

Only you (and your family) can make your decision. But I can tell you that much of college is what you make of it. Not the location. I grew in so many areas: academically, socially and even in my ability to navigate an imperfect and confusing world. And what I remember most fondly about Davis is my newly discovered independence and confidence.

In my opinion this is what college is about.

Good luck! :blush:

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