If you haven't yet, you should talk to JT, the student admissions rep who sent you an email when you got an interview invite (if you lost her email, PM me). She also went to UCSD for undergrad. She similarly had a bad impression of the med school but then was surprised to find that it was such a different place than she imagined. I do not mean to be offensive, but I think UCSD SOM is more prestigious than UCSD undergrad (despite the undergrad being very strong). Thus, I think being sad about getting into UCSD SOM is slightly less understandable than the undergrad. Admittedly, I haven't interviewed a big chunk of my classmates, but I don't think that a lot of people here were disappointed about it. At any rate, JT loves it here and would be happy to talk to you about her experiences.
Again, I totally understand not being thrilled about UCSD because that's how I felt too. However, I know that I'm not just "coping because I have no choice" - like I said, there are many concrete, specific things about the school that I didn't even know about. For example, I didn't know that all the students who applied for research grants were able to get funding last summer; I didn't know that every class has a notetaker who is paid to write down everything the prof says; I didn't know about the wide variety of student groups; I didn't know how receptive the administration is to student input. The only thing that I was wrong about was that I didn't think I'd like a lecture-based curriculum (I originally wanted PBL); perhaps this is a case of "adjusting to my circumstances", but I'm really glad that we have little mandatory class time, and I like the balance of lecture vs. small group that we have here.
