If the only reason that you want to go to UCLA is because you want the possibility of specializing, then that may not be the right choice. While I did previously mention that UCLA is more of a 'specializing' school, that wasn't entirely accurate.
While a majority of students here do go on to specialize (and thus you can see why they have very high Board I scores), you have to realize that in fact it does make it more difficult to go to a school where EVERYONE wants to specialize. For instance, if you have 20 other classmates who are applying for ortho programs, unless you have better scores than a majority of them, you will likely not get an interview. The reason is that schools with ortho programs will not want to interview 20 students from ONE school, EVEN if they have better scores than students from other schools. I heard that this has been a problem at UCLA. Basically, you are competing against not only people around the nation but people at your own school. So unless you plan on being a top student WITHIN UCLA, then you will likely end up in a GPR program (which I later found out counts as 'specializing' --> counts toward boosting UCLA's stats of sending students off to specialty programs after graduation).
So as you can see, it is not as simple as saying that you want to go to UCLA just because you want the option of specializing. The school is tough! Even with pass/no pass, it is still a very competitive environment.
Btw, I told my interviewer at the UCLA interview that I wanted to go to UCLA because of the high average board scores and he told me that it has less to do with the program and more to do with the students that they accept. He said that wherever their students would have gone, they would have gotten just as high scores elsewhere.
With all this said and done, the reason I chose UCLA is because of top-notch faculty, prestige that comes with the name, facilities (they are upgrading right now), cost of tuition, and being surrounded by some of the smartest students in the nation.
