UCSD or UC Irvine for pre-med studies?

POPPED
Sun, 06 May 2012 16:11:12 +0000

I can’t give you any input for UCSD, but the first year classes at UCI are meant to weed out students. You take biology and chemistry concurrently, and the biology class you need is only offered once a year. That means if you fail biology your first quarter, you can’t take bio in the winter, so you’ll either have to take two bio classes during the summer, or you’ll have to switch majors.

The bio classes themselves vary; you can either have amazing professors or terrible professors. Classes are graded with a curve (top 16% students get an A), so an A is very manageable, but there will be quite a bit of memorization involved.

Chem classes on the other hand seem to be what people are having the most difficulty with. The professors I have had were amazing, but there is a certain professor who is notorious for failing a larger than usual amount of students. Fortunately, UCI does offer free peer tutoring, and from my experience, students will be more than willing to help you. As for research, there are many opportunities. I’m not so sure about volunteer though, since I’ve applied to be a volunteer at a hospital, but I didn’t hear back, and other hospitals only accept applications during certain time periods. I’m sure if you keep trying you’ll be able to find something.

Pre-med advising is okay. We were required to take a class during the fall about requirements for med school and stuff of that nature. There are also counselors available who can help you, and there is a mentor program where you can have a doctor or researcher be your mentor.

As for why you should choose UCI over UCSD…I honestly can’t tell you. But I can tell you about a friend of mine who chose UCSD based on prestige and hated her choice. She called me crying one day and told me that she hated everyone there since no one was friendly. Granted this might have been situational, this did give me the impression that UCI students are much friendlier than UCSD since I’ve never had a problem when starting up a conversation with a stranger. So if you don’t want to pick based of prestige, you should consider visiting both campuses to get a feel for the atmosphere before you decide.

Good luck as a premed regardless of where you decide to go!