I need help eliminating possible university choices! Who wants to help?!?

Question

major: premed/biomed engineering
well here are my guaranteed safety schools through ELC: UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego

I also applied, but not guaranteed: UCLA and UC berkeley

so what would you choose between these choices if i don't get into either UCLA or CAL:
UCSD vs UCI why?
UCSB vs UCSC why?

Answer 1

overall i would guess you are going to get into UCLA or Cal, they tend to accept over 50% of tlc students. But between the other 4,
-UC Irvine is a good school, with great academics, but is unfavorable due to it having a large commuter population. Its also in a boring location.

-UCSC, I live in Santa Cruz and it is the most chill city in California. Great college campus, a lot of social options, its a beach town. But it's not as prestigious as some of the other UC's.

-UCSD, is located not even in San Diego. Its located in La Jolla, which makes it kind of isolated. It doesn't have much of a college feel either, but is a good academic university.

-UCSB. If I was you I would definately choose UCSB because its in an ideal location, and has a great party scene. But also it has the 3rd most nobel prizes out of all the UC's, and 91% choose to return back for sophemore year, showing that pretty much all the students enjoy it enough to stay.

Good luck with it all, and congrats on being an elc student

Answer 2

I have no idea. It depends on what you want.

Do you want to be so far from home that you can't make it home every weekend, but when you need to be home, you don't have to fly ... are food and dorms important to you ... which ones have the best programs ... which ones are the most prestigious - meaning, have good networking possibilities and have a name that means something on an application, have the best doctors and scientists ... is having friends there important to you, do you have friends already going to one school ...

It sounds like if you got into UCLA and/or UC Berkeley, one of these would be your choice. When you have to make your final choice, put all the schools on small pieces of paper in a hat and draw one out. If your heart sinks - you don't want to go to that one. Keep doing it. In your heart, you'll know, if you don't already, where you want to go and where you definitely don't. When people need help making a choice, it's often because they have a preference and need support for it. Good luck.

Answer 3

San Diego is the center of biological sciences and would offer a lot of off-campus opportunities--there are over 600 biotech firms in the area. You have some at Irvine, but nothing like San Diego.