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willowseeker394 said:
overall, i liked it, but I think the mixed messages are referring to the administration/current med students not being super present throughout the weekend. it seemed like they weren't trying super hard to recruit people to come but instead relying on the beauty of san diego to do a lot of that recruiting for them. the other people i met were super nice and great (other currently admitted students)
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I agree that there wasn't a ton of contact with the admin people (although I personally felt like I met quite a few MS1s), but I saw that as a plus. The unstructured time with other applicants really gave me a sense of who I liked and who was coming, which in my decision process was more important than anything the admin people could've told me. I understand the desire to be wooed if that's what other schools are doing, but I think UCSD's revisit really matched the vibe of their program: laid back, lots of open options, etc.
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Yo where did that one post absolutely dragging UCSD SOM go? It was refreshingly honest, and I have questions for you! PM me plssss
 
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Inspector Norse said:
Yo where did that one post absolutely dragging UCSD SOM go? It was refreshingly honest, and I have questions for you! PM me plssss
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I feel like I got 2 e-mails with the text of that post. I can't say I'd agree with the person on the drama with faculty, etc, but I don't think there is anything wrong with different perspectives.
 
Truth5254 said:
Re-posting this with minor edits. Deleted it temporarily because I felt bad for saying so many negative things about UCSD, but thinking it over I feel that people who are seriously considering attending here for four long years should at least be able to hear my honest perspective.

Hey all, as the deadline for choosing a medical school approaches, I just wanted to share some points about my experience at UCSD as someone who is about to graduate. I'm sad to say that I would strongly not recommend attending UCSD for medical school if you have other options, as the quality of education in my opinion is seriously lacking, especially in the pre-clinical years. I'm sure other schools may have similar issues, but I can only speak to my experience at UCSD which I must say is a poor one. To give context, I'm a student who performed well both on board exams and on clinical rotations, but I attribute my success solely to 3rd-party educational materials--certainly not UCSD's curriculum. Am happy to elaborate on these points and/or talk about clinical years later. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask.

A few points:
1) UCSD makes decisions against the best interest of students
My general impression is that UCSD cares more about faculty egos over doing what's best for students. Great example of this: at the end of MS2, there is a 2-week course which is supposed to help us review for Step 1 (Step 1 = big board exam, basically the MCAT for medical students, taken after MS2). In my year, <5% of the class attended the lectures because they were so god awful. Well, guess what--this year, the faculty thought of the brilliant idea to make attendance at these lectures mandatory, even though lectures for all other classes have been optional for the entire first 2 years. There's already an incredible amount of pressure to perform well on Step 1--if a student wants to skip lecture and study superior resources (e.g. UWorld, Pathoma) at home with the exam looming in <8 weeks, why not let them if you cared about the students? The reason they did this was because they felt bad for the faculty who would show up and lecture to an empty auditorium. Instead of asking the lecturers to "get good," their go-to solution is to force students to attend. I can think of so many more examples of this where instead of improving sessions that no one goes to because of their poor quality, they simply force students to come and threaten you with the metaphorical gun of putting "professionalism issues" on your academic record.

2) UCSD is flooded with low-quality educators
UCSD's curriculum is divided into blocks based on organ system, with each block running from 2 to 5 weeks usually. Each block can have more than 10 lecturers per block. In addition to having poor continuity from day-to-day given the sheer amount of speakers, the problem with this is that there is no way you can have that many high quality lecturers. I would say that 80% of the lecturers are straight-up bad, with eye-straining powerpoints, poor organization, and overall sub-par clarity in their explanations. 15% are serviceable, and 5% are good. Some MS1 blocks like immunology or microbiology were notorious among my class for poor teaching, and I would say most (~80%) of the MS2 blocks are very poorly taught. MS1 blocks like cardio and renal IMO have a rare fantastic course director/primary lecturer (although some don't like her because of her high difficulty). The general consensus is that Neurology in MS1/MS2 is actually pretty well taught (I personally agree that the teaching is above average, but I wouldn't exactly call it good).

3) The curriculum is too heavily based in inefficient small group learning, prime example of this being PBL.
PBL is a weekly small-group learning activity where students go through a mock patient case together, ask questions to look-up based on the information presented in the case, and then re-convene a few days later to teach each other after each student researches a topic pertinent to the case.

Sounds pretty good on paper right? In practice, PBL is the one of the most useless time-sucks of the first two years. The problem with PBL is that no one knows jack about clinical medicine in MS1/MS2, so basically you have a group of clueless pre-clinical students trying to diagnose diseases which they haven't learned about yet. Imagine having to take an exam without studying any of the material, except you can take the exam with eight other friends who also didn't study the material--this is PBL. After the first day of wasting 2 hours flailing about, the second day is you listening to 8-9 students making boring powerpoint presentations teaching you stuff they literally just learned the night before. The most hilarious part is that the student presentations are actually preferable to the average faculty lecture, because at least they don't last an hour each and are thus more focused. I honestly can't think of one classmate I know that thinks PBL is useful. UCSD's curriculum is filled with tons of other inefficient and poorly taught small group session like this, but PBL will be the bread-and-butter. Small groups like this will take up 50%-60% of your weekly scheduled class time.

Anyway, not trying to totally dump on my soon to be alma mater but I just wish someone would have explained the downsides of UCSD instead of only highlighting the positives so I could get a complete picture of what I was getting myself into. I guarantee you that the opinions I wrote above are shared by many of my classmates and in the years below, although I doubt most would admit it in person to a wide-eyed prospective student. That being said, UCSD does have positive aspects but I'm sure you've likely heard about them from students at second look/interview day. Again, If you have specific concerns/questions please feel free to post them. I'd prefer if you would post in the forum if you have questions so everyone can learn the info but PMs are ok if you have specific questions only applicable to yourself.
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Honestly thank you for posting this. I’ve been torn between UCSD and another school, and this is important info.
 
Truth5254 said:
Re-posting this with minor edits. Deleted it temporarily because I felt bad for saying so many negative things about UCSD, but thinking it over I feel that people who are seriously considering attending here for four long years should at least be able to hear my honest perspective.

Hey all, as the deadline for choosing a medical school approaches, I just wanted to share some points about my experience at UCSD as someone who is about to graduate. I'm sad to say that I would strongly not recommend attending UCSD for medical school if you have other options, as the quality of education in my opinion is seriously lacking, especially in the pre-clinical years. I'm sure other schools may have similar issues, but I can only speak to my experience at UCSD which I must say is a poor one. To give context, I'm a student who performed well both on board exams and on clinical rotations, but I attribute my success solely to 3rd-party educational materials--certainly not UCSD's curriculum. Am happy to elaborate on these points and/or talk about clinical years later. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask.

A few points:
1) UCSD makes decisions against the best interest of students
My general impression is that UCSD cares more about faculty egos over doing what's best for students. Great example of this: at the end of MS2, there is a 2-week course which is supposed to help us review for Step 1 (Step 1 = big board exam, basically the MCAT for medical students, taken after MS2). In my year, <5% of the class attended the lectures because they were so god awful. Well, guess what--this year, the faculty thought of the brilliant idea to make attendance at these lectures mandatory, even though lectures for all other classes have been optional for the entire first 2 years. There's already an incredible amount of pressure to perform well on Step 1--if a student wants to skip lecture and study superior resources (e.g. UWorld, Pathoma) at home with the exam looming in <8 weeks, why not let them if you cared about the students? The reason they did this was because they felt bad for the faculty who would show up and lecture to an empty auditorium. Instead of asking the lecturers to "get good," their go-to solution is to force students to attend. I can think of so many more examples of this where instead of improving sessions that no one goes to because of their poor quality, they simply force students to come and threaten you with the metaphorical gun of putting "professionalism issues" on your academic record.

2) UCSD is flooded with low-quality educators
UCSD's curriculum is divided into blocks based on organ system, with each block running from 2 to 5 weeks usually. Each block can have more than 10 lecturers per block. In addition to having poor continuity from day-to-day given the sheer amount of speakers, the problem with this is that there is no way you can have that many high quality lecturers. I would say that 80% of the lecturers are straight-up bad, with eye-straining powerpoints, poor organization, and overall sub-par clarity in their explanations. 15% are serviceable, and 5% are good. Some MS1 blocks like immunology or microbiology were notorious among my class for poor teaching, and I would say most (~80%) of the MS2 blocks are very poorly taught. MS1 blocks like cardio and renal IMO have a rare fantastic course director/primary lecturer (although some don't like her because of her high difficulty). The general consensus is that Neurology in MS1/MS2 is actually pretty well taught (I personally agree that the teaching is above average, but I wouldn't exactly call it good).

3) The curriculum is too heavily based in inefficient small group learning, prime example of this being PBL.
PBL is a weekly small-group learning activity where students go through a mock patient case together, ask questions to look-up based on the information presented in the case, and then re-convene a few days later to teach each other after each student researches a topic pertinent to the case.

Sounds pretty good on paper right? In practice, PBL is the one of the most useless time-sucks of the first two years. The problem with PBL is that no one knows jack about clinical medicine in MS1/MS2, so basically you have a group of clueless pre-clinical students trying to diagnose diseases which they haven't learned about yet. Imagine having to take an exam without studying any of the material, except you can take the exam with eight other friends who also didn't study the material--this is PBL. After the first day of wasting 2 hours flailing about, the second day is you listening to 8-9 students making boring powerpoint presentations teaching you stuff they literally just learned the night before. The most hilarious part is that the student presentations are actually preferable to the average faculty lecture, because at least they don't last an hour each and are thus more focused. I honestly can't think of one classmate I know that thinks PBL is useful. UCSD's curriculum is filled with tons of other inefficient and poorly taught small group session like this, but PBL will be the bread-and-butter. Small groups like this will take up 50%-60% of your weekly scheduled class time.

Anyway, not trying to totally dump on my soon to be alma mater but I just wish someone would have explained the downsides of UCSD instead of only highlighting the positives so I could get a complete picture of what I was getting myself into. I guarantee you that the opinions I wrote above are shared by many of my classmates and in the years below, although I doubt most would admit it in person to a wide-eyed prospective student. That being said, UCSD does have positive aspects but I'm sure you've likely heard about them from students at second look/interview day. Again, If you have specific concerns/questions please feel free to post them. I'd prefer if you would post in the forum if you have questions so everyone can learn the info but PMs are ok if you have specific questions only applicable to yourself.
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Thank you so much for the info! This is really helpful to know. That being said, I feel like your concerns regarding the preclinical curriculum are true for many other schools as well. My understanding is that for the most part faculty lectures suck everywhere and students rely on outside resources... but because the schools have to make a case for the egregious amount of tuition $$ they ask from us they force these mandatory small group learning sessions. I’ve heard similar concerns echoed from students at other schools too sadly.

What is your opinion on the quality of clinical
education UCSD provides? Are there any major concerns you had there? Do you feel your schooling has prepared you adequately for residency?

Also could you speak to your experience finding faculty mentorship? And lastly does UCSD rank internally for residency? I heard some say there is ranking into three tiers based on clinical grades? Others say there is no internal ranking..? Would appreciate some clarification.
 
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While I definitely think that your complaints with UCSD's preclinical programs are valid, I agree with @realitysickness that many other schools (at least the schools that my medical student friends go to) have the same problems with poor-quality faculty lectures, PBL, and less-than-desirable mandatory programming (usually centered around wellness and starting at 8 AM when students would probably prefer to be sleeping). These complaints are similar across both private and public schools, high-tier and low-tier, M.D. and D.O, east coast and west coast.
 
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Truth5254 said:
Re-posting this with minor edits. Deleted it temporarily because I felt bad for saying so many negative things about UCSD, but thinking it over I feel that people who are seriously considering attending here for four long years should at least be able to hear my honest perspective.

Hey all, as the deadline for choosing a medical school approaches, I just wanted to share some points about my experience at UCSD as someone who is about to graduate. I'm sad to say that I would strongly not recommend attending UCSD for medical school if you have other options, as the quality of education in my opinion is seriously lacking, especially in the pre-clinical years. I'm sure other schools may have similar issues, but I can only speak to my experience at UCSD which I must say is a poor one. To give context, I'm a student who performed well both on board exams and on clinical rotations, but I attribute my success solely to 3rd-party educational materials--certainly not UCSD's curriculum. Am happy to elaborate on these points and/or talk about clinical years later. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask.

A few points:
1) UCSD makes decisions against the best interest of students
My general impression is that UCSD cares more about faculty egos over doing what's best for students. Great example of this: at the end of MS2, there is a 2-week course which is supposed to help us review for Step 1 (Step 1 = big board exam, basically the MCAT for medical students, taken after MS2). In my year, <5% of the class attended the lectures because they were so god awful. Well, guess what--this year, the faculty thought of the brilliant idea to make attendance at these lectures mandatory, even though lectures for all other classes have been optional for the entire first 2 years. There's already an incredible amount of pressure to perform well on Step 1--if a student wants to skip lecture and study superior resources (e.g. UWorld, Pathoma) at home with the exam looming in <8 weeks, why not let them if you cared about the students? The reason they did this was because they felt bad for the faculty who would show up and lecture to an empty auditorium. Instead of asking the lecturers to "get good," their go-to solution is to force students to attend. I can think of so many more examples of this where instead of improving sessions that no one goes to because of their poor quality, they simply force students to come and threaten you with the metaphorical gun of putting "professionalism issues" on your academic record.

2) UCSD is flooded with low-quality educators
UCSD's curriculum is divided into blocks based on organ system, with each block running from 2 to 5 weeks usually. Each block can have more than 10 lecturers per block. In addition to having poor continuity from day-to-day given the sheer amount of speakers, the problem with this is that there is no way you can have that many high quality lecturers. I would say that 80% of the lecturers are straight-up bad, with eye-straining powerpoints, poor organization, and overall sub-par clarity in their explanations. 15% are serviceable, and 5% are good. Some MS1 blocks like immunology or microbiology were notorious among my class for poor teaching, and I would say most (~80%) of the MS2 blocks are very poorly taught. MS1 blocks like cardio and renal IMO have a rare fantastic course director/primary lecturer (although some don't like her because of her high difficulty). The general consensus is that Neurology in MS1/MS2 is actually pretty well taught (I personally agree that the teaching is above average, but I wouldn't exactly call it good).

3) The curriculum is too heavily based in inefficient small group learning, prime example of this being PBL.
PBL is a weekly small-group learning activity where students go through a mock patient case together, ask questions to look-up based on the information presented in the case, and then re-convene a few days later to teach each other after each student researches a topic pertinent to the case.

Sounds pretty good on paper right? In practice, PBL is the one of the most useless time-sucks of the first two years. The problem with PBL is that no one knows jack about clinical medicine in MS1/MS2, so basically you have a group of clueless pre-clinical students trying to diagnose diseases which they haven't learned about yet. Imagine having to take an exam without studying any of the material, except you can take the exam with eight other friends who also didn't study the material--this is PBL. After the first day of wasting 2 hours flailing about, the second day is you listening to 8-9 students making boring powerpoint presentations teaching you stuff they literally just learned the night before. The most hilarious part is that the student presentations are actually preferable to the average faculty lecture, because at least they don't last an hour each and are thus more focused. I honestly can't think of one classmate I know that thinks PBL is useful. UCSD's curriculum is filled with tons of other inefficient and poorly taught small group session like this, but PBL will be the bread-and-butter. Small groups like this will take up 50%-60% of your weekly scheduled class time.

Anyway, not trying to totally dump on my soon to be alma mater but I just wish someone would have explained the downsides of UCSD instead of only highlighting the positives so I could get a complete picture of what I was getting myself into. I guarantee you that the opinions I wrote above are shared by many of my classmates and in the years below, although I doubt most would admit it in person to a wide-eyed prospective student. That being said, UCSD does have positive aspects but I'm sure you've likely heard about them from students at second look/interview day. Again, If you have specific concerns/questions please feel free to post them. I'd prefer if you would post in the forum if you have questions so everyone can learn the info but PMs are ok if you have specific questions only applicable to yourself.
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Did you feel supported by the academic communities? Which electives did you pursue, if any?
 
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Anyone hear back about merit aid yet? I know this has been asked already, but wondering if there have been updates
 
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willowseeker394 said:
anyone hear anything now? would be useful before april 30th...smh
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called AGAIN and the admissions office said "you'll hear sometime between now and the end of the month. you'll know before you have to make your decision."

this is ridiculous honestly
 
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I called yesterday and the office actually said all of them have been sent out...
 
Is anyone who got a merit scholarship planning to withdraw lol
 
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Truth5254 said:
Re-posting this with minor edits. Deleted it temporarily because I felt bad for saying so many negative things about UCSD, but thinking it over I feel that people who are seriously considering attending here for four long years should at least be able to hear my honest perspective.

Hey all, as the deadline for choosing a medical school approaches, I just wanted to share some points about my experience at UCSD as someone who is about to graduate. I'm sad to say that I would strongly not recommend attending UCSD for medical school if you have other options, as the quality of education in my opinion is seriously lacking, especially in the pre-clinical years. I'm sure other schools may have similar issues, but I can only speak to my experience at UCSD which I must say is a poor one. To give context, I'm a student who performed well both on board exams and on clinical rotations, but I attribute my success solely to 3rd-party educational materials--certainly not UCSD's curriculum. Am happy to elaborate on these points and/or talk about clinical years later. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask.

A few points:
1) UCSD makes decisions against the best interest of students
My general impression is that UCSD cares more about faculty egos over doing what's best for students. Great example of this: at the end of MS2, there is a 2-week course which is supposed to help us review for Step 1 (Step 1 = big board exam, basically the MCAT for medical students, taken after MS2). In my year, <5% of the class attended the lectures because they were so god awful. Well, guess what--this year, the faculty thought of the brilliant idea to make attendance at these lectures mandatory, even though lectures for all other classes have been optional for the entire first 2 years. There's already an incredible amount of pressure to perform well on Step 1--if a student wants to skip lecture and study superior resources (e.g. UWorld, Pathoma) at home with the exam looming in <8 weeks, why not let them if you cared about the students? The reason they did this was because they felt bad for the faculty who would show up and lecture to an empty auditorium. Instead of asking the lecturers to "get good," their go-to solution is to force students to attend. I can think of so many more examples of this where instead of improving sessions that no one goes to because of their poor quality, they simply force students to come and threaten you with the metaphorical gun of putting "professionalism issues" on your academic record.

2) UCSD is flooded with low-quality educators
UCSD's curriculum is divided into blocks based on organ system, with each block running from 2 to 5 weeks usually. Each block can have more than 10 lecturers per block. In addition to having poor continuity from day-to-day given the sheer amount of speakers, the problem with this is that there is no way you can have that many high quality lecturers. I would say that 80% of the lecturers are straight-up bad, with eye-straining powerpoints, poor organization, and overall sub-par clarity in their explanations. 15% are serviceable, and 5% are good. Some MS1 blocks like immunology or microbiology were notorious among my class for poor teaching, and I would say most (~80%) of the MS2 blocks are very poorly taught. MS1 blocks like cardio and renal IMO have a rare fantastic course director/primary lecturer (although some don't like her because of her high difficulty). The general consensus is that Neurology in MS1/MS2 is actually pretty well taught (I personally agree that the teaching is above average, but I wouldn't exactly call it good).

3) The curriculum is too heavily based in inefficient small group learning, prime example of this being PBL.
PBL is a weekly small-group learning activity where students go through a mock patient case together, ask questions to look-up based on the information presented in the case, and then re-convene a few days later to teach each other after each student researches a topic pertinent to the case.

Sounds pretty good on paper right? In practice, PBL is the one of the most useless time-sucks of the first two years. The problem with PBL is that no one knows jack about clinical medicine in MS1/MS2, so basically you have a group of clueless pre-clinical students trying to diagnose diseases which they haven't learned about yet. Imagine having to take an exam without studying any of the material, except you can take the exam with eight other friends who also didn't study the material--this is PBL. After the first day of wasting 2 hours flailing about, the second day is you listening to 8-9 students making boring powerpoint presentations teaching you stuff they literally just learned the night before. The most hilarious part is that the student presentations are actually preferable to the average faculty lecture, because at least they don't last an hour each and are thus more focused. I honestly can't think of one classmate I know that thinks PBL is useful. UCSD's curriculum is filled with tons of other inefficient and poorly taught small group session like this, but PBL will be the bread-and-butter. Small groups like this will take up 50%-60% of your weekly scheduled class time.

Anyway, not trying to totally dump on my soon to be alma mater but I just wish someone would have explained the downsides of UCSD instead of only highlighting the positives so I could get a complete picture of what I was getting myself into. I guarantee you that the opinions I wrote above are shared by many of my classmates and in the years below, although I doubt most would admit it in person to a wide-eyed prospective student. That being said, UCSD does have positive aspects but I'm sure you've likely heard about them from students at second look/interview day. Again, If you have specific concerns/questions please feel free to post them. I'd prefer if you would post in the forum if you have questions so everyone can learn the info but PMs are ok if you have specific questions only applicable to yourself.
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Truth5254 said:
With regard to clinical education, this is extremely hit-or-miss based on the rotation and also based on the residents/attendings you work with, so it's hard for me to say overall good or overall bad, but as a whole I had fewer "wow this school straight up sucks" moments during clinical years. What I can say is that the vast majority population of patients you will take care of will generally fall into 2 categories: 1) Homeless, lower-income population (Main UCSD hospital + community hospital in downtown SD -- lots of infectious disease, drug/EtOH abuse, HIV/AIDS,) and 2) Veteran/military population (many of our rotations are at the veterans affair hospitals, a few at the Navy hospitals). So if you're interested in these patient populations, you'll have very good exposure to them. One downside that I did notice is that if you don't speak spanish, you'll get less out of certain rotations, given the large undocumented immigrant patient population at the main UCSD hospital. UCSD boasts about the new Jacobs Medical Center (which IS indeed beautiful and top-of-the-line) to prospective students, but in reality most of my classmates probably did around ~4-6 weeks there, maybe 8 weeks at most during your core clerkships (I personally did 4 weeks there total during 3rd and 4th year). Yes, I feel prepared for residency.

In terms of specific rotations themselves, there is 12 weeks internal medicine, 8 weeks surgery, 6 obgyn, 6 psych, 8 peds, 4 neurology, 4 electives. If you are interested in internal medicine, I personally felt that this was by far the strongest rotation in terms of teaching both on the wards + didactic lectures. I was highly impressed with this rotation as many of my attendings/residents would teach me various topics in a 1-on-1 setting at a fairly high frequency. Didactics/teaching in obgyn, psychiatry, and surgery I thought were unfortunately not great (surgery for example has dedicated 8-hour long days of mind-numbingly bad lectures), and most attendings at least in my experience didn't bother to teach medical students. Neuro/peds were in the middle of the road.

For faculty mentorship -- this is very easy to get for everybody. I've never been denied a request to meet a faculty member to chat or talk about research projects.

For internal ranking -- yes, there is. There are three tiers that students are ranked by when you apply to residency, based on clinical grades. The tiers are approximately 25% bottom, 50% middle, 25% top, but these change slightly year-to-year. Your tier is clearly listed when you apply to residency. A downside related to this is that UCSD tends to unfortunately have less grade inflation than other schools of similar reputation. A little over half of students every rotation will typically get a "pass" about 25-30% will get "honors," with the rest getting "near honors". From what I understand, this is a harder curve than peer institutions. Another thing to highlight is that there is no AOA honor society, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how strong of a student you are. There is something called the gold-humanism society however which residencies seem to look favorably upon, downside is it's determined by class voting so it's a bit of a popularity contest in practice.



The academic communities in my opinion are mainly useful during MS1 year during the transition to medical school. You'll be introduced to a "big-sibling" who will give you deets of each block, and the faculty mentors for each academic community are pretty good for the most part. I didn't necessarily feel supported by the community in general -- most of my classmates found that we weren't closer to the peers in our community than students in other communities, however consensus is that big-sibs and the faculty mentor are helpful. I'll decline to say what electives I pursued for anonymity sake, but most of the class (probably around 75%) participates in the UCSD Free Clinic elective.
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Can any other current students, especially upperclassmen, comment on this student's impressions? Is this really a commonly held experience by students? All the current students I met on interview day and second look seemed genuinely stoked on the school, which was definitely not the impression I got meeting current students at several other schools.
 
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adding to that ^ can current students comment on the student community? all the M1s said it was very chill and everyone was super nice, but i've heard from upperclassmen that their classes are intense/competitive...
 
willowseeker394 said:
adding to that ^ can current students comment on the student community? all the M1s said it was very chill and everyone was super nice, but i've heard from upperclassmen that their classes are intense/competitive...
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Not a current student, but this is probably due to the fact that first 2 years are P/F, so there's no need to be overly competitive. However, during 3rd and 4th year it switches to H/P/F and a good handful of people who want to enter competitive fields need honors in their clerkships, hence the increase in intensity. Just my .02
 
medicalmusic said:
Can any other current students, especially upperclassmen, comment on this student's impressions? Is this really a commonly held experience by students? All the current students I met on interview day and second look seemed genuinely stoked on the school, which was definitely not the impression I got meeting current students at several other schools.
Click to expand...

Hi! Current MS1 at UCSD! Speaking only for myself, I have really enjoyed going to UCSD for med school and I wouldn't regret it for a second! But I also do see and agree with some of the points addressed. Some blocks have been very poorly organized and the small group learning (PBL) can be a little frustrating at times. However, I'm not sure that my frustrations with the curriculum would change if I went to a different school (hard to say because I don't have any experience with other schools' curriculum). Every med school is going to have issues with some of their professors and some students are going to like things (PBL, small group, TBL) that other students will not. It is really a matter of opinion.
 
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willowseeker394 said:
adding to that ^ can current students comment on the student community? all the M1s said it was very chill and everyone was super nice, but i've heard from upperclassmen that their classes are intense/competitive...
Click to expand...

In terms of the student community, all I can say is that the MS1 class is pretty chill, and we all seem to gel well together and enjoy spending time together. However, it really is a case by case basis, so some classes may have very competitive people and other classes may not - it really depends!
 
Those who have withdrawn their acceptance, how did you do so? I can't find a withdraw button on the portal...
 
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sunnysideup220 said:
Those who have withdrawn their acceptance, how did you do so? I can't find a withdraw button on the portal...
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I replied directly to the somAdmissions email I received when I was initially accepted. Brian responded promptly after confirming my withdrawal.
 
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Am I remembering correctly that UCSD will reach out to applicants for updates and interest?
 
Still haven't received that continued interest letter. Is it a problem on my end or are there other people in the dark as well?
 
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DarkBisounours said:
Still haven't received that continued interest letter. Is it a problem on my end or are there other people in the dark as well?
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I’m in the dark too! I re read the waitlist email and they did say they would email us.
 
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Same. Stay strong folks, who knows what can happen over the next month?
 
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Hmmm....no contact this AM regarding waitlist interest. I will bet they do not reach out to us until Friday morning.
 
For the benefit of future applicants looking back at these threads, waitlist contacted this afternoon to determine continued interest! Yay!
 
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Anyone knows when the most movement from the waitlist usually happens?
 
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For those planning to attend UCSD, do we need to do more than hit plan to enroll on amcas?
 
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If we have an acceptance somewhere else but need to commit soon, should we contact UCSD about this?
 
mickymick said:
If we have an acceptance somewhere else but need to commit soon, should we contact UCSD about this?
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I don’t think you are supposed to . . . I imagine a lot of people (including myself) are in the same boat. I believe that either you accept or decline the waitlist and have to deal with it accordingly. It seems like they set it up this way so that people won’t send them emails about it.
 
Anyone brave enough to call to see when we start finding out?
 
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Last year's thread was a week after waitlist updates were requested (May 8). So maybe Friday?
 
Does anyone who is accepted know when the last day to commit is?
 
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gsimitian said:
Does anyone who is accepted know when the last day to commit is?
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Would love to know the answer to this as well. Will help out with being in the dark at the moment on this waitlist.

thegoatis11 said:
I dunno but my waitlisted ass needs a new pair of pants :O
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It may be a mid-afternoon dip in my blood sugar, but I honestly have no idea what this means.
 
NakMuay33 said:
Would love to know the answer to this as well. Will help out with being in the dark at the moment on this waitlist.



It may be a mid-afternoon dip in my blood sugar, but I honestly have no idea what this means.
Click to expand...

Notification scared me :)
 
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