If you want to practice and live long term in California you do not have to attend medical school in California. It would be helpful to do your residency and or fellowship in California but even that is not necessary. California medical schools are extremely competitive due to a the large number of applicants/in state medical schools and a lot of highly competitive in state undergraduate Universities (UCB/Stanford/UCLA/Cal Tech/Pomona/UCSD/USCD etc)full of a lot of students who want to stay in California. Moreover about half of these California medical student positions are in some of the top medical schools in the country (UCSF/UCLA/Stanford/UCSD). Stanford and UCLA also do not give in state preference. Medical school admissions is also somewhat capricious. One of my current techs is applying to medical school with a 3.8 from a top UC and has had interviews at Stanford/UCLA and Pittsburgh etc. but no love from such schools as UCI/USC/UCSD etc. Thankfully she does have an admission. I will say that with everything being equal that your chances of admission to medical school in California are better coming out of Dartmouth than USC or UCLA as medical schools like diversity and there will be more than a 1000 applicants from UCLA/USC applying to California medical schools and a much smaller number from Dartmouth. Most medical schools want to limit to a certain extent the number of students they take from their own school. Do visit your choices to see how each environment agrees with you. Each of your choices is rather different, especially Dartmouth in size and culture. You do not want to go somewhere where you will not be happy.