How to Succeed as a UCSD Premed
/Discover everything you need to know about premed at UC San Diego, including premed requirements, the best premed extracurriculars, and the UCSD premed acceptance rate
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Part 1: Introduction
As an undergraduate at UCSD, it can feel easy to fall in love with medicine and science. Not only do you share a campus with the UCSD School of Medicine, currently ranked 20th in the 2023 U.S. News and World Report Rankings, but you also have an abundance of other biomedical research facilities nearby, including the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, Scripps Research, and Salk Institute for Biological Studies. This cluster creates one of the densest groupings of biomedical research anywhere in the world. These institutions have combined forces to create incredible discoveries, including eight current Nobel laureates at UCSD alone.
It comes as no surprise then that many UCSD students ultimately end up applying to medical school. During the 2021–2022 application cycle, there were a total of 751 applicants from UCSD, making it the sixth-highest producer of applicants in the country, behind only UCLA and UC Berkeley within colleges in California.
Despite this high number of applicants, being a premed at UCSD is often challenging. As a highly rated undergraduate institution, your peers are likely to have been top of their class in high school, creating a competitive student body. When you add to this the demanding nature of curved premed courses, maintaining the high GPA necessary for admission to medical school can be an obstacle. Some students also report that finding volunteer opportunities working with the less fortunate can be difficult given the relatively affluent environment around the campus. Plus, if you’re hoping to stay in-state, either because you love California or desire in-state tuition, you may also face the steep competition that comes with getting into a medical school in California.
To succeed as a UCSD premed requires taking advantage of the powerful resources available to you, both at UCSD and at surrounding institutions, while also successfully navigating challenging courses and developing your extracurricular profile. To help you achieve this success, we created this guide, which combines our nearly 20 years of advising experience with first-hand insight from current UCSD students and alumni.
We’ll cover how to complete your premed requirements, along with the study skills and scheduling insight necessary to do so with your GPA intact, as well as when to take the MCAT and how to use your UCSD courses to help you prepare. We’ll also discuss ways to shape your resume through volunteering, shadowing, research, and other extracurricular activities that will be both personally and professionally fulfilling. Finally, we’ll look at the published data on UCSD graduates applying to medical school to get a sense of what you may expect when you apply. Altogether, this guide will be an excellent resource as you go through your career at UCSD and, ultimately, on to medical school.
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Part 2: UCSD premed requirements
As a premed at UCSD, one of your first priorities should be planning out your classes in order to complete the requirements for medical school admission. This can be a bit more complicated at UCSD than at some other schools due to UCSD’s quarter system (as opposed to the more traditional semester calendar). As a large school, it can also be challenging to schedule your initial premed courses as these can be some of the largest classes on campus. Plus, UCSD employs the Colleges System, which can create slightly different requirements for graduation depending on your placement.
To help with selecting your courses, UCSD’s Career Center offers a guide on its website that helps lay out the recommended premed courses at UCSD.We’ve also created the following table that provides suggestions on UCSD courses that will satisfy the requirements at the vast majority of U.S. medical schools. However, we encourage you to confirm with individual medical schools prior to applying that your coursework fits their policies.
| Biology: One year with lab | BILD 1, 2, and 3 plus 4 units upper-division biology laboratory (e.g., BIBC 103, BICD 101, BIMM 121) | BICD 100, BIPN 100 | ||||
| General chemistry: One year with lab | CHEM 6A, 6B, 6C plus CHEM 7L | |||||
| Organic chemistry: One year with lab | CHEM 40A, 40B, 40C plus CHEM 43A | |||||
| Biochemistry: One course | BIBC 100, BIBC 102, CHEM 114A, or CHEM 114B | |||||
| Calculus: Two quarters | MATH 10 or MATH 20 series | |||||
| Statistics: One quarter | MATH 11, PSYC 60, BIEB 100 or other department-specific statistics course | |||||
| Physics: One year with lab | One of the following sequences: PHYS 1A, 1AL, 1B, 1BL, 1C, 1CL PHYS 2A, 2AL, 2B, 2BL, 2C, 2CL |
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| College-level English/writing: One year | One writing course, plus one additional English, writing, or composition course | |||||
| Courses helpful for MCAT prep: | PSYC 1 SOC 70 |
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(Suggested reading: Medical School Requirements: The Definitive Guide)
Looking at this table, you may wonder what to do when you see multiple options for courses that satisfy a particular premed requirement.
For example, in physics you have the option of taking either the Physics 1 sequence (1A–C) or Physics 2 sequence (2A–C), both with accompanying lab courses. The Physics Department provides a helpful guide to help you distinguish between these two courses here, but in short, the Physics 2 series uses higher-level calculus and is geared towards physical sciences and engineering majors, while Physics 1 employs more basic calculus and is geared towards life science majors.
Similarly, the Math Department offers both the Math 10 and 20 calculus series, with Math 10 being geared towards life sciences and Math 20 towards physical sciences and engineering.
Choosing the right path for you will involve balancing the requirements for your major with your individual preparation from high school and aptitude for the individual subject.
Once you’ve selected the classes you’ll need to fulfill the requirements for medical schools, you’ll then need to decide when to take each of these classes. Here are a few things to consider when planning your courses:
The availability of courses, especially when you don’t have ideal registration times, often as a freshman or sophomore
Course requirements for your major(s) and minor(s)
Whether you intend to take a gap year or study abroad
When you plan to study for and take the MCAT (we’ll discuss this more shortly)
Requirements for your specific college within UCSD, which can be found here (for example, there are different requirements to graduate from Revelle vs. Muir)
Prerequisites for some premed courses (consult the course catalog for specific requirements)
Avoiding unnecessarily challenging semesters by selecting easier courses to complement your more difficult ones
As a guide, here’s one potential quarter-by-quarter schedule for a UCSD premed intending to take the MCAT during fall of their junior year and apply to medical school without taking a gap year. In addition, the Career Center offers a four-year calendar available here.
| Freshman Fall | CHEM 6A MATH 10A English course |
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| Freshman Winter | CHEM 6B MATH 10B |
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| Freshman Spring | CHEM 6C CHEM 7L BILD 1 |
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| Freshman Summer | Session 1: PHYS 1A, 1AL Session 2: PHYS 1B, 1BL, BILD 2 |
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| Sophomore Fall | HYS 1C + 1CL CHEM 40A |
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| Sophomore Winter | BILD 3 CHEM 40B CHEM 43A |
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| Sophomore Spring | BIBC 100 CHEM 40C |
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How to maintain a high GPA as a UCSD premed
With a combination of large classes and competitive classmates, it can be tough to get the high GPA needed to apply to medical school from UCSD. In many of your premed courses, you’ll be graded on a curve, meaning that not every premed can earn a top grade. Your premed courses also include subjects not commonly taught in high school, such as organic chemistry and biochemistry, which can be formidable even for those who excelled in AP chemistry.
With these challenges, it’s easy to feel concerned about your GPA sinking your application to medical school, commonly referred to as being “weeded out.” This is a valid fear—applicants with low GPAs face significant obstacles when they apply to medical school.
Nevertheless, you will have a wide array of academic support resources available. The Academic Achievement Hub is a great place to find these types of services. In addition, here’s some advice for how to maintain your GPA at UCSD:
Use the resources that come with your courses. Nearly all of your classes will have opportunities for office hours or other types of review sessions. These can be great ways to learn directly from your TAs and professors and clarify difficult concepts. Attending office hours can also be a great way to develop relationships with professors that can translate into research opportunities, TA positions, or letters of recommendation.
Find academic support. Through the Academic Achievement Hub, UCSD offers a wide array of support services. These include individual tutoring and supplemental instruction for many of your common premed courses, including biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics. Individual meetings with a learning specialist are also available to help you optimize your study skills.
Pick the right professors and courses. When picking your courses, both for your major and for premed requirements, you’ll often have multiple options for courses or professors, often with significant differences in difficulty. Try to use resources like older students, the UCSD subreddit, and Rate My Professor to identify the courses and professors that fit your goals while avoiding unnecessary difficulty.
Make use of old exams and problem sets. Many professors will provide both problem sets and/or old exams as study aids. These types of questions offer insight into the concepts the professor wanted to emphasize as well as their individual style of testing.
Consider studying ahead of time. If you know that you struggle with a particular type of course, consider getting a head start on studying prior to the start of the quarter. Try to find the syllabus for your upcoming course and study from the recommended textbook or, if possible, gain access to prior recorded lectures of the class from an older classmate.
Consider adding courses during the summer. Being on the quarter system, the pace of classes can seem relentless. Adding courses over the summer allows you to spread your courses out over a longer period of time, allowing you more time to focus on each individual course.
Don’t take an excessively challenging course load. The quarter system at UCSD has the advantage of letting you potentially finish more courses, but also can create very intense individual quarters. Avoid the temptation to add too many courses to an individual quarter, which can create unnecessary difficulty and adversely affect your GPA.
Work hard. Even with all the guidance and support, there’s no substitute for hard work. Your courses will be challenging, but they will also provide you with excellent preparation for the MCAT and, ultimately, medical school.
(Suggested reading: How to Study as a Premed)
What’s the best premed major at UCSD?
Choosing a major can be one of the most challenging decisions you’ll make during your undergraduate career. This is especially true as a premed, with the constant concern that one major may put you at a significant advantage compared to another.
In reality, when we look at the data, this appears to be a myth. Students from nearly every possible major have successfully applied to medical school and, in general, there isn’t one overall best major for premeds.
At UCSD, this leaves you with over 140 different majors to choose from! Despite this wide array of choices, premeds at UCSD, like premeds nationally, tend to cluster in the life sciences. These majors tend to fulfill the interests of many premeds with their focuses on discovery and applications to living systems. These majors also have significant overlap with your premed requirements, decreasing the overall number of courses you’ll be required to take.
Other common premed majors include chemistry, engineering, and some programs specific to UCSD, such as the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science or the Global Health Program.
Choosing your major comes down to answering a few questions:
What are my biggest priorities?
What are my academic strengths and weaknesses?
What problems am I passionate about solving?
Can I complete my degree and my premed courses?
Can I maintain a high GPA?
When should you take the MCAT?
After choosing your major and planning out your courses, your next major decision will be when to take the MCAT. There are several factors to consider when deciding when to take the exam, including your test preparation strategy, when you’ll take courses on tested subjects, whether you’ll take a gap year, allocating time for dedicated study, and your overall goals in terms of score.
As an example, let’s take a UCSD student who doesn’t intend to study abroad or take a gap year and will apply at the end of their junior year. For this student, we’d recommend taking the MCAT in the fall of their junior year. Taking the exam then would allow ample time to complete many of the courses tested on the exam while still ensuring that they can retake the exam if necessary without having to delay application submission.
In preparation for the MCAT, it’s also important to consider what subjects are tested on the exam and how to best use your coursework to prepare. Here’s a list of courses at UCSD we’d recommend completing prior to taking the exam.
CHEM 6A-C, 7L
BILD 1-3
Physics 1A-1C, 1AL-1CL or 2A-2C, 2AL-2CL
CHEM 40A-C, 43A
BIBC 100 or BIBC 102 or CHEM 102
In addition to completing the courses listed above, it’s critical to complete dedicated preparation for the test. You should utilize test preparation materials even for the courses you’ve completed, as formal courses often do not cover every possible detail tested on the exam. You will also want to review subjects you’ve taken since it may be over a year between the end of your course and your exam date. Finally, dedicated test prep is important so you can see the style of questions that the MCAT asks, which can differ significantly from the ways you were tested in your courses at UCSD.
Outside of this material, there are additional subjects tested on the exam, including sociology and psychology. You can consider taking formal courses in these subjects, such as Psychology 1 or Sociology 70, though these courses are likely to contain significantly greater detail than is required for the exam. In general, many students opt to self-study this material, as opposed to taking a formal course.
(Suggested reading: How to Get a Perfect MCAT Score: Strategies From a 528 Scorer)
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Part 3: UCSD premed extracurriculars
At UCSD, the opportunities available outside the classroom can feel nearly limitless. As of 2022, there are well over 500 different student organizations available on campus. These include many activities you’d expect—Greek life, a cappella, club sports—but also many things unique to UCSD through which you can express your individual passion, whether that be for wholesale shopping in the Costco Club or hunting ghosts with the Paranormal Society.
With this abundance of options, what extracurriculars should a UCSD premed pursue? Answering that question involves weighing several different factors.
First, it’s important to find things that you truly enjoy. This will help keep you balanced as you go through the often challenging times you’ll face as a premed.
Next, be sure not to stretch yourself too thin. Overcommitting yourself can prevent you from succeeding in any one activity and can even hurt your GPA.
Finally, find something you can put a significant amount of longitudinal effort into. Medical schools are often less interested in the number of activities you’ve been involved with than your degree of involvement. Pursuing something to the highest level will allow you to make quantifiable change and pursue leadership roles that will make your application profile truly stand out.
To help you identify options for extracurriculars, we’ve provided a list of some common groups that premeds at UCSD have worked with. This list is by no means exhaustive, so we also encourage you to consult the UCSD Center for Student Involvement Database, which tracks all the different organizations on campus. If you’re still not finding what you’re looking for, you can also consider expanding your search beyond campus to the wider community in San Diego or your hometown.
(Suggested reading: How to Choose the Right Extracurricular Activities for Medical School)
USCD premed clinical and community volunteering
The UCSD Career Services office provides a list of potential options for clinical volunteering opportunities here. For more general opportunities, the UCSD Office of Community Service is another great place to start.
In addition, here’s a list of other opportunities for volunteering at UCSD:
USCD premed shadowing
Shadowing is another crucial aspect of your medical school application. Not only has shadowing become a de facto requirement for applying, it also allows you to see the realities of practicing medicine, ensuring you come into your future career with reasonable expectations.
Here are some hospitals near UCSD where students may be able to find opportunities:
If you’re still looking for shadowing opportunities, we suggest you reach out to hospitals in your hometown for opportunities during break. You can also consider reaching out to physicians in private practice, both in San Diego and in your hometown. It may also be helpful to use any personal connections with physicians you or your family have to find additional shadowing opportunities.
(Suggested reading: How to Ask to Shadow a Doctor)
USCD premed research
One of the biggest advantages about being a premed at UCSD is the availability of research. UCSD is a powerhouse when it comes to research; the university took in over 1.4 billion dollars in research funding in fiscal year 2020, putting it in sixth place amongst all universities nationally.
Beyond UCSD, the nearby Scripps Research, La Jolla Institute of Immunology, and Salk Institute offer many opportunities for student research. Scripps Research is particularly impactful, as it was ranked in 2017 by the Nature Innovation Index as the #1 most influential research institution in the world. All of these institutions are also within walking distance of campus, making it significantly easier to find time to work in the lab.
When it comes to finding a lab as a UCSD premed, your first stop should be the Undergraduate Research Hub. This office provides a large number of resources to help you connect with faculty that have positions available in their labs. The Research Hub also administers several programs for undergraduates to get involved in research:
The Faculty Mentors Program allows faculty to connect with undergraduate students interested in research to complete a project while earning course credit.
The Genentech/UC Scholars program is a 10–12-week-long summer research program that gives students an introduction to research and provides a stipend to assist with living costs.
There is also the TRELS program, which allows students to apply for sources of funding from UCSD for research projects throughout their time at the university.
Finally, the Undergraduate Research Scholarship program is another potential source of funding for the pursuit of research over the summer.
In addition to the advice on the Research Hub’s website, here are a few additional pieces of advice to help in your search for a research project:
Meet with your professors. Office hours are a great way to talk to your professors about the possibility of working with them in research, especially if you’ve built a relationship over the course of the semester. Even if the professor doesn’t have a position in their lab, they also may be able to put in a good word for you with one of their colleagues who does.
Use your connections. Many research positions get filled through word of mouth rather than formal postings. Talk to your friends, other premeds, and advisors to identify potential openings that may be upcoming.
Take an upper-level course. Upper-level courses are often significantly smaller than your intro courses and can offer the ideal opportunity to develop a relationship with a faculty member. Upper-level lab courses can also add to your lab skills and demonstrate your ability to succeed in independent research.
Send cold emails. If you’re still struggling to find a research position, the next step is to send cold emails to professors who you’d be interested in working with. It often takes a large number of these emails to be successful, but with persistence many students have found research opportunities through this method.
(Suggested reading: How to Write a Great Research Assistant Cover Letter)
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Part 4: Getting into medical school as a UCSD premed
As you prepare your application to medical school, the support provided by the UCSD Career Center will be invaluable. The Center offers formal advising for premed students throughout their time at UCSD, which will help answer questions on many common topics, such as scheduling, MCAT prep, and extracurriculars. These sessions can be scheduled through Handshake.
In addition to these formal sessions, there are also opportunities for drop-in advising, though be sure to check before you go as hours may change. UCSD also offers the Premedical Advising from Medical Students (PAMS) program, which connects UCSD medical students with premeds as advisors. UCSD also occasionally offers a formal seminar course all about the medical school application process for students in their first to third years called FMPH 198: Medical School Prep 101.
As you begin to prepare your application, it’s important to be aware that UCSD does not provide a committee letter. Therefore, you will be submitting individual letters of recommendation to the schools that you apply to.
While the advisors at UCSD can be an excellent resource, completing your application will still require a significant amount of time and effort on your part. To become a successful applicant, you’ll still need to draft a strong personal statement, compile your AMCAS Work & Activities section, gather your letters of recommendation, submit your transcripts, and complete secondary essays.
(Suggested reading: The Ideal Medical School Application Timeline)
UCSD premed acceptance rate and admissions statistics
After all the hard work that comes with being a premed at UCSD, how do the large number of UCSD premeds ultimately do when they apply to medical school? UCSD provides some public statistics that can give some insight into this question.
Looking at the most recent year for which statistics are available (the 2019–2020 application cycle), we can see that of the 568 applicants from UCSD to allopathic medical schools, 240 were accepted, for an overall acceptance rate of 42%. This is nearly identical to the national acceptance rate that year of 41%.
If we compile the data available for the last five years, we can see that, overall, 976 of 2,448 applicants were accepted from UCSD, yielding a 39.9% acceptance rate. This is comparable to the national rate over the same time period of 40.7%.
Overall, it seems that UCSD premeds perform at about the national average when they apply, though it is difficult to compare directly, given that GPA and MCAT statistics for UCSD applicants are not publicly available.
For osteopathic medical schools, we can see a relatively similar trend: students at UCSD matriculate at about the same rate as the national average. In the most recent application year, 40% of UCSD applicants matriculated at an osteopathic school compared to 35% nationally, with similar trends holding true over the last five years.
Getting into UCSD School of Medicine as a UCSD premed
Students at UCSD often wonder whether being a premed at UCSD will increase their chances of getting into UCSD School of Medicine. While full data on the number of applicants from UCSD undergrad to UCSD School of Medicine is not available, we can look at the most recent data published by UCSD School of Medicine on its incoming class.
Here we can see that, for the entering class of 2019, UCSD sent the second-largest number of matriculants of any undergraduate university, second only to UCLA—20 students, or about 15% of the total class, were UCSD premeds. This suggests that there may be an admissions advantage to being a UCSD undergraduate. However, without knowing the overall number of applicants, the evidence is inconclusive as it is also likely that USCD premeds apply in high numbers.
Regardless, if you hope to stay at UCSD through medical school, the school’s average GPA and MCAT of 3.83 and 516 will necessitate hard work in order to achieve high academic marks.
Final thoughts
UCSD is among the largest producers of premeds in the country, and for good reason: it combines top-notch academics, widespread availability of research, and a rich history of scientists and physicians dedicated to the advancement of our understanding of health and disease. By using the many resources we’ve laid out in this guide, as well as the careful advice of the Career Center and your mentors, you will no doubt find yourself on the path towards a successful application to medical school.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
