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The UC self-pity thread
I love you (mostly).
Blame the UC undergrad schools, which churn out some many highly qualified candidates. We have our fair share of them as well!
I always throw this out there to CA people: my old roomate was a CA resident who applied to MD schools 2 years ago and didnt get a single interview. He moves across country and becomes a resident of West Virginia working in a research lab in Morgantown. Applies with a very similar resume as before and this time gets into WVU and Marshall by Nov of that app cycle. His 3.55/30 goes from not even getting noticed to having both of his new state schools wanting him. Hell Marshall guarantees a interview for anybody with over a 3.5/26. Food for thought for all those in the CA region wholl do anything to do what they can to get into an MD school. Create your own luck.
But they don't want to ever leave sunny California!
And now you know why Northstate's just laughing to the bank despite doing their best St George/Ross/AUC US branch campus impersonation in terms of quality of their med school.
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Texas has plenty of sun!! And it's an awesome state for med school applicants!!
Edit: See the posts below for more detailed Texas info.
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Texas is not comparable to Cali lol. There is sun but in the hellfire and brimstone kind of way, not in the "woah let's go catch some waves bro after our Yelp-for-dogs (Dgly (TM)) valuation meeting bro".
In Northern California many places didn't have air conditioning. In Texas if you don't have air conditioning you will be faced with certain death either from the heat or from insanity which drives you to run naked into traffic.
Also the state government is certifiably insane, especially if you are an ObGyn or PCP here. Texas is great overall but I can't wait to leave honestly
I was being facetious about the sun lol. Also, I think it's difficult to establish Texas residency for the purpose of med school admission.
That said, it's still one of the best states for med school applicants.
But it doesn't have liberalism and beaches that aren't disgusting!
It definitely is. I still hold to the fact that it must be like twice as easy here than other places because I know many, many borderline stats people who get into an MD school in state on their first try as trad applicants with fairly cookie-cutter apps.
Austin is the best city in Texas though. Houston is aight but just because of the TMC and the fine arts scene (or the jobs if you work in energy). Houston might be better than Austin if you are rich though. Dallas is meh. The rest of Texas is written off as a Total Loss.
Hey, San Antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in the US and a huge tourist destination. It's definitely not a loss! (Might have some home city bias)
Right now 4,082 CA applicants get in nowhere. 1,528 have to leave the state. Two schools won't put much of a dent in either of these figures.
And @Lucca
Texas is not that great for med applicants. Sure they have 7 more schools to choose from which have lower tuition, but the average GPA and MCAT is the same as national averages and the acceptance rate is actually a little lower.
That's true, San Antonio is a pretty cool place. It can stay lol. Great mexican food.
And they are much less likely to be viewed as viable candidates for OOS schools.
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That dirt cheap tuition you get from so many of the state schools is a huge factor though. If you get into med school and are from Texas odds are you arent paying much to attend. That has to be part of the discussion for how "lucky" a state is.
That's true. It's not as big a downside for 99% of competitive applicants though since all of our in-state options are twice as cheap as any OOS option. My friends with stats/ECs in the stratosphere have not had any issues at the top 10 schools OOS though.
Yes, we know that they are not going to matriculate OOS (without a big incentive).
All 215 of them! That's why we don't interview them without these accomplishments/qualities.
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Well the national acceptance rate is 43% and for Texas its 38%. It's a trade off; not having OOS schools as a viable option makes things a bit harder but for those who do get in the tuition benefits are enormous. I personally dont consider it a bad trade off but that's in the eye of the beholder. The only people who might struggle in particular are the low GPA/higher MCAT types due to Texas's GPA emphasis.
In general though overall acceptance rates where you combine IS and OOS data for a state are bad predictors of how "lucky" they are. Really unlucky states like Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island etc have well above average overall acceptance rates. Lucky states like Nebraska, Louisana, Mississippi etc have pretty low overall acceptance rates combining IS and OOS apps.
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It's funny because 9/10 pre-meds applying I know want to leave Texas lol. The problem is, nobody can justify it. This is the Texas curse. It's the same story for undergrad too.
Thankfully, I'm a massive nerd and want to play around in a lab for four years before graduating from medical school so maybe I'll get to one of the coasts one day *stares dreamily into the distance*.
Floridas 9 med schools (soon to be 11) are always happy to be a sunny but much more humid home to transplanted Californians lol...
The dean of USF actually tours UC schools recruiting their students to apply!
I'm curious, how do y'all UC SDN'ers feel about your undergrads? At least here everyone has high opinions of all of the UCs. Curious to know what y'all think of them since I only have friends at Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford in Cali.
There isn't a bad one in the bunch. They are the best bang for your public education dollar in the country.
It's funny for how many med schools FL has how low the acceptance rate for the state is. 20% IS matriculation rate is well below average. Just way way too many pre-meds in Fl applying and many of the FL schools are actually pretty small.
Fl is kind of like the UCs you bring up; everybody wants to stay their and go to med school there but only 1/5 people actually get to.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf
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Except for Merced amirite. ... jk, low blow
Their applicants have actually been quite strong.
I liked UC Davis a lot, and I felt like a got a good education there. I imagine it would have been similar at most of the other UCs. I also attended at a time when they were much more affordable. I believe they produce a good product for the price. What's funny is now that I am in AZ, people here view the UCs in much higher regard (which is a good thing I think). People here actually know more of the UCs and respect them highly.
That being said, I did my post-bacc at a CSU, and my classes were no more than 25 people. At UCD, my science lectures were 300-500 people. I learned, a little too late, that I do better in smaller classes with more professor interaction. The UCs are massive, and it just didn't work with my learning style. It works well for many though.
Galveston beaches are gross, but Padre Island National Seashore/Corpus Christi area beaches are pretty darn nice.
As OOS California applicant you will probably be viewed like any other OOS applicant. If you are an OOS from Texas evidence shows that you are much less likely to receive an II. If you want to leave Cali, you have the better deal as a Cali applicant. If you want to stay in Texas then you have the better deal overall as a Texan. If you want to stay in Cali or leave Texas you are going to have a hard time.
I just knew when I saw the title to this thread that there would be some vitriol for Texas. Don't hate because you ain't!
But I definitely am and I still hate lol
Hahahaha didn't read the last part of your comment... Maybe one day we will overthrow the hateful tea baggers who have hijacked the place and we can both bask in the awesomeness.
If you are trying to get into CA or TX, you can look at OOS matriculation at the schools that consider them. If you add the OOS matriculants from all the non-mission based CA schools that consider them (exclude LL,UCR, UCD), there are 202 OOS matriculants/844 available seats or 24%. By law, TX publics can only seat 10% or less. In TX, 167 OOSers matriculated over 1585 total spots or 10.5%.
Sampling the number of OOS applicants for private vs public in the two states: Stanford got 4420 OOS applicants for 90 seats, UCSF got 3730 OOS applicants for 165 spots; Baylor got 5128 OOS applicants for 185 total seats (of which it could legally fill 37 with OOS) but UTSW only got 1147 OOS applicants for 23 total OOS seats.
Baylor actually filled 38 seats with OOSers! I guess they will cut back next year!
UTSW seated 33/232 OOSers or 14% which leads me to suspect that the 10% rule may apply to the UT system as a whole and not to a given school. Or maybe they let the school consider total enrollment...
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I liked going to school at UC Santa Cruz but in retrospect I wish I'd applied to Berkeley. Actually I wish I just hadn't gone to college until I knew what I wanted to do, altho lord knows I *cherish* my degree in poetry, and world famous banana slug affiliation.
That said, none of the UC med schools are in the kinds of locations that made California lovable (to me). Aesthetically, the cities are starting to feel more and more like endless Whole Foods parking lots.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
That said, none of the UC med schools are in the kinds of locations that made California lovable (to me). Aesthetically, the cities are starting to feel more and more like endless Whole Foods parking lots.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
Great advice! I'm not from CA, but the state I grew up in has one of the lowest acceptance rates for in-state applicants. I have below-average stats, and was rejected from my state schools the first time around. Before re-applying, I moved to a state with better results for in-state applicants, changed my residency, and was accepted to an in-state school on my first try here. Definitely a strategy worth considering for those with below average stats or those in highly competitive states!
Just curious, why do so many people bash CNU when they don't go there? The people who endlessly criticize the school for reasons like "for-profit" and "no federal financial aid" don't go to the school, so how would you all know the quality of the faculty, the curriculum, the clinical skills etc? I believe only students there can adequately critique the school.
I don't love or hate CNU, I have no opinion on the school. I just think all the hate is a bit unfounded.
I don't love or hate CNU, I have no opinion on the school. I just think all the hate is a bit unfounded.
As someone who was born in Galveston and knows those beaches pretty well, I can attest to their Gulfy grossness. Never went to any of the nicer beaches.
I haven't noticed much of a difference between them outside of the competitiveness for grades. They all seem to have similar access to resources and qualities of education. For example, Irvine uses the same physics book for their "physics for bio majors" course that Cal uses for their "physics for scientists" course.
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
I've never met the faculty at SGU either.
The distaste is not directed at the students.
Do you like NE more than Texas? Or has it been a while since you've lived in the Lone Star State?
There's good and bad about both. I wouldn't mind living in either, but will probably stay in the northeast because this is where all of my connections are.
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