USC or UCLA for Pre-Med?

bluebayou
Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:06:35 +0000

So, your complain about Berkeley not being able to win more scholarships is largely due to its somewhat having a poor advising.



Not a complaint really, just stating an opinion. And yes, my opinion is that the UCs would do much better in national competitions if they had better advising.

(But they don’t and will not have in the distant future, primarily because the Regents and powers-that-be are not into merit, so that is why it is not a complaint per se.)



ike I said, I got plenty of advising time by at least 3 people during my undergrad years at Cambridge. I didn’t believe it was that helpful for me.



Not sure I understand the connection between advising at Cambridge vis a vis UC, but ok. And yes, I agree, ‘forced’ advising can be annoying. But personally, for my money, I’d rather have that situation that the sink-or-swim attitude pervasive at UC. When UC was dirt cheap, poor advising was readily understandable. But as the COA is climbing towards $30k, I’d rather spend my money at a private.



The Ivies and the other schools he listed tend to have more nationally based student bodies, so I don’t find it unusual that they tend to populate m-schools…



IMO, it is because such students are better test takers, on average. The Ivies self-select for top testers, who by definition will do well on the mcat/lsat. Since the test is ~50% of an interview, it makes sense to me that students from top schools will do well in the professional school lotteries.