Thanks for taking your time providing me the information! It's very helpful! Are you going to participate in the interview events?
I went to the CVS interview event. The other interview events haven't happened yet. I will most likely look for internships myself, as well as go to the events as well.
For current students- is a car necessary during the first year? How is off campus housing like? far? close? price? neighborhood safety? how was the interview process for you all? any tips and advice? why did you all choose to study pharmacy?
thank you!
For cars, it kind of depends on where in the city you live. If you live in school housing at Parnassus, you don't need a car to go to school. There's a bit of grocery stores here and there in the parnassus/inner sunset area. It definitely would be convenient to have a car, but living in parnassus, I'd probably only use it once a week or once every other week. If you live off campus, it really depends on where you live. In terms of just getting to and from class, a car isn't totally necessary for most parts of the city. You can probably get by using muni, but again, a car might help. Parking near campus is pretty atrocious, however. I'd say out of everyone in our class, I'd say the majority of the class does not have a car because they live in campus housing, can use ucsf shuttle service, or can use muni without it being too inconvenient.
Off campus housing can be anywhere you want it to be in the city. Most people that don't live in campus housing live in inner sunset/outer sunset area. A lot of people who live in campus housing live in Mission Bay housing, which is a UCSF owned dorm-ish kind of complex that's very far from campus. Those students usually rely on ucsf shuttles to get to and from campus.
Again, neighborhood safety depends on where you live. In parnassus housing, it feels generally pretty safe, although there has been a few reports of mugging here and there in the parnassus area and inner sunset. I'm not really sure about mission bay. I've heard mission bay itself is pretty safe, but the immediate area outside of it isn't.
For price, parnassus area is definitely the most expensive. There's both campus housing and non-campus housing in parnassus. On average, campus housing is about 850 including util for a single. Noncampus housing in the parnassus are seems to be about 1000 on average for a single, and maybe 1200 or so for a studio/1 bdrm apt. It depends though, there are definitely people who get good deals in teh parnassus area. For inner/outer sunset, it tends to be cheaper (maybe about 800 including util). I live in teh parnassus campus housing, and I pay 999 for my single, but that's because my room is about 2.5x a normal single (about 300 sq ft).
I've told this story many times, but I didn't feel that my interview at SF went very well. I stumbled a lot, hesitated on a lot of questions, didn't articulate well, etc. I definitely didn't prepare as much as I could have for the interview (because of poor time management, midterms that I took the few days before the interview). If there was one redeeming quality to my interview, I'd have to say it was that I was completely honest and genuine. Because I didn't have time to prepare my answers, every answer I gave to my interviewer was pretty much the complete, genuine truth. I feel that after the whole application process, the schools I got into were the schools I said exactly what I felt at the interview. I'm not telling you to not prepare for your interview; that'd be bad. But honesty goes a long way, and at the end of the day, I feel like that I got into a school, that for whatever reason, actually wanted me.
