<p>There are letter grades. UCSC switched over around 2000ish. You still get narrative evaluations from professors (if they turn them in) but the primary grade is on a 4.0 scale. Youc an also take up to 1/4 (i think) of your major’s classes Pass/No Pass but that doesn’t look good if you plan to go to med school or grad school.</p>
<p>As of right now, you have no major. You are not locked into any degree and you are not denied any lower division biology/chemistry classes. You will declare your major when you reach 90units, but that will be in about 2 years, depending on how many credits you transfer in (from APs or community college).</p>
<p>The Health Sciences Major is a full 4 year program and the main differentiation between it and other pre-med programs is the Medical Spanish requirement, which is super useful for CA and southwestern US health care.
HOWEVER, it still does not fulfill the requirements for medical school. Medical schools require 1 year of English, the writing requirement in the degree (130L and 189) will not count (the english classes need to be taken outside of the biology department). Also, if you take the ochem 108 series, make sure to take the 108c class as you need 1 year of ochem.</p>
<p>I would recommend visiting both campuses and seeing which one you like better. UCSC has a slightly better reputation compared to UCR, but it’s not as big a difference between, say, UCSC and Berkeley, so the ‘prestige’ of the universities and the programs aren’t going to play a big role in any future schools’ decisions. If you want to go to med school, do really well in you classes and do a lot of outside volunteer work, ideally with patient contact.</p>