Well, I have to say that I did not expect to have my wish granted so quickly: unfortunately, I found myself feeling no love for UCSD. While I do love the weather, P/F curriculum (in comparison to say, UCI’s H/P/F second year) and integrated electives, I didn’t feel a…pull, if that makes sense. The students there seem really happy, and extremely chill and relaxed (in fact, if I didn’t know that I was interviewing at a med school, I would’ve assumed they are all undergrads). Even so, I found myself not really clicking with the student body, though it might be because they all just got back and are still in “summer mode,” so they didn’t really take the initiative in welcoming us or sharing their experiences. I’ll try to write about this experience as thoroughly as possible, so here goes!
After budgeting 3 hours of commute time, just in case of potential morning traffic, I found myself dropped off at the UCSD campus about 1.5 hours before the admission center opens. After walking around campus for a bit, I huddled inside the lobby of the medical library for about 30 minutes avoid the morning chill. At around 7:15am, I walked over to the MET building and was able to meet a few other interviewees. Club Med, the school cafeteria, opened at 7:30am, and we all went in for a healthy dose of caffeine to get through the day. At 7:45am, the admissions office opened and we all started lining up to check in and pick up our folders before gathering in the conference room.
UCSD hosts 32 students per interview day, who are then split into 2 groups of 16 for the MMIs. Each MMI section has 8 stations, and 2 sections happen at once in 2 different halls. After we all oriented ourselves, Dr. Kelly came in and briefly welcomed us to UCSD and asked if we had any questions for her. About 2 weeks before the interview date, interviewees were emailed a link to a private Youtube video which talks about life at UCSD, its affiliated hospitals, curriculum, and student-run clinic. The purpose of the Q&A then is to answer any student questions, which is a bit more engaging.
About UCSD’s curriculum: redesigned in 2010, UCSD offers a 2 year (or is it 1.5? it wasn’t specified in the handout) true P/F preclinical curriculum, which is supplemented with a longitudinal clinical foundations course and electives. UCSD boasts an integrated curriculum through its elective courses, which allow students to customize their education; in fact, students are required to complete 15 elective units by the end of MS2, which is easily done by taking one 3 unit course per quarter. In the clinical foundations course, students take a longitudinal ambulatory clerkship (usually with a PCP) to strengthen their clinical skills while gathering weekly in their academic communities to patient cases. At the end of 2nd year, student receive 2 weeks of organized systems review and 6 additional weeks of protected Step 1 study time. During 3rd year, student rotate through their core clerkships, which can be done at any of UCSD’s network of affilated hospitals, and are time for 2 2-week clinical selectives (one of which must be surgery-related). These clinical selectives allow the MS3s to test drive and explore specialties such as derm, ortho, or radiology before they apply to residency. The fourth year, in turn, is almost completely elective, so long as students complete their Independent Study Project (worth 2-3 months of full time involvement or longer part time involvement).
While not as flexible as say, Vandy’s curriculum (which I am wholly in love with), I do appreciate UCSD’s attempts to provide opportunities for students to really control their education. We received a list of electives in our folders today, I already found myself interested in about 10 of them, haha! Additionally, courses are taught through a mix of traditional lectures (which are recorded) and PBL, which I really like. I’m someone who is both a visual learner and one who enjoys studying with others, so I like aspects of both teaching methods. A hybrid program, like UCSD’s is likely to be ideal to me, although the 2 year preclinical seems a bit long in comparison to the 1.5 curriculums at other schools.
In addition to the brief overview of UCSD’s curriculum, there was a heavy emphasis on the Student-Run Free Clinic Project, which actually blossomed from a ISP years ago. The clinic is fully functional and comprehensive, and has grown to include subspecialties, legal counseling, social work, and dentistry. Like Vandy’s Shade Clinic, students here receive a lot of clinical experience as they work directly with attending physicians to examine the patient, form a diagnosis, and create a treatment plan. As with any free clinic, there are inefficiencies, but UCSD tries to control that on the students’ end by require that they take a free clinic elective course (for credit) before they can start working in the clinic. I found the gesture super thoughtful! Unfortunately, since clinics are done the evening before interview days, I wasn’t able to tour the free clinic myself. I wish UCSD had integrated the tour with the rest of its day; for something that’s such a big part of the school (they spoke about it more than they did about their curriculum!), I would expect that they make the time for it.
After the Q&A, the first MMI group (myself included) were escorted to Professional Development Center to begin our interviews. Due to the Confidentiality Agreement that I had signed, I am not allowed to discussed any details of the prompts, but I will say that my opinions of MMIs had not really changed: they can be stressful, require you to think on your feet, and don’t really allow you to gain control of the conversation. I’ve had stations where I really enjoyed talking to my interviewer, and I’ve stations where my interviewer was completely stone-faced and nonresponsive to anything I said. Oh, and 8 minutes is a long time to just fidget awkwardly if you have nothing to say. I assume that my answers were be evaluated after everyone rotates through the station, and that our performance will be summarized by a cumulative score or something, but how UCSD will work with these scores, I honestly don’t know. (e.g. Is there a straight numberical cut off for acceptance? Is it by percentile in each interview cohort?) Overall, I wished interviews would be a mix of traditional and MMI, such as having 8 interviews each asking a tradiational interview question or something. Regardless, the ordeal took 1.5 hours, and after the interviews, I felt a rush of adrenaline which left me wide awake, haha!
While waiting for the other MMI group to start, a couple interviewees and I grabbed snacks and chatted outside. We all marveled the beautiful weather and recounted our experiences at the different MMI stations. We soon delved into weather we wanted to stay in California, and I definitely felt like an odd duck when I expressed that I wouldn’t mind attending a school out of state (in fact, of the schools I interviewed, my favorite ones are out of state). As I’ve told anyone who asks, I love California, I do, but I don’t want the only things keeping me here to be in-state tuition and weather. There’s fit, or curriculum, or this desire to explore living in a different place. At the end of the day though, I hope that I’ll have enough options to even consider these factors. It’s too soon to think about it now!
At around noon, we all gathered for lunch in the conference room and chatted with the MS2 students. Unlike the students at other schools, the med students here were more…laid back? They answered our questions, but made no effort to sway us to come to UCSD, if that made sense. Even my tour guide didn’t seem to make an effort in showing us around; she didn’t have a lot to talk about UCSD, and spent most of her time asking if we had questions instead. (To be fair, we didn’t have many questions, since we were all still reflecting on our MMI experience!) We did manage to peek into the lecture halls, which are gorgeous, as well as one of the academic community student lounges. Like many other schools, UCSD sorts its class of 125 into 6 academic communities, which are organized by color and led by a faculty mentor (“like a PCP!” Dr. Kelly said this morning). This helps make UCSD feel smaller for its students, though I did notice that there wasn’t a strong bond among student within a community. The way our tour guide described it made it seem like the mentality was, “We’re sorted. Cool.” In addition to communities, there is a family “big/little” system, must like a Greek system, which I appreciate.
Following the tour, we gathered for about 15 minutes of closing remarks. We will likely hear decisions on October 15th/16th by emails, and can be accepted, waitlisted, or rejected (WHAT). No updates unless requested. At this point in the game, stats “essentially don’t matter” and applicants are judged almost exclusively on the MMI, activities, and letters of rec.
In other words, BYE BYE UCSD (seeing how I left 3/8 stations feelings horrible). I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I receive good news in October, but I won’t hold my breath.
