<p>Please help quckly (3 days left for decision).
We are in San Jose, the Bay Area.
My son is admitted to UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, UCSD.
His major is pre-med, with med school in mind.</p>
<p>What school should he go to now?
UC Berkely: toughest/hardest, may ends up with lower GPA, but closest to home
UC Davis: may be less tough, closer to home
UC San Diego: great weather, biology programs, but far from home 400 miles.</p>
<p>We have a few days left to make the choice.
Any pointer is great.</p>
<p>The pecking order as far as academic reputation goes is Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and UCD. Most people would advise going to the school with the best reputation, as long as the other factors aren’t dealbreakers. It’s difficult to get a high GPA (3.5+) in pre-med anywhere you go, so it would be better to have that extra reputation bump to go with the med school applications. I would pick Berkeley over the other schools, or UCLA if your son likes SoCal.</p>
<p>I’ve seen statistics that show that Cal and UCLA students get very similar MCAT scores (probably innate to begin with) and then a slight drop at UCSD, and a big drop afterwards. Now, like I said, it’s probably not the school, but the student herself that is achieving the score.</p>
<p>Cal does very well with getting its grads into med school, as does UCLA. I personally knew three people last year who went off to Stanford, Harvard, and Chicago, so either I hang out with smart people, or someone goes to med school.</p>