UCSF Applicant Q

Hi Pharmgirl,
I am applying for UCSF and waiting for their response after the interview. Quite anxious here!
In the mean time, I just want to find out some more info about the financial aid and housing.
After everything is filed (including FAFSA, CSS profile, and the school application), how soon will you hear back?
What does the award package look like?
Is there any scholarships or all loans?
About housing, how and where can I find a cheap but good place to live in SF? Would you recommend living on or off campus?
Thank you,

Hiya! I currently go to UCSF (first year). Congrats on the interview, and good luck with acceptance. I remember getting my acceptance letter around April 5th last year. The fin aid award letter was emailed to me May 25 (make sure to complete everything in the financial aid portal once they send you your pin code and everything!). It breaks down what loans you are offered, and you can either accept or decline them. It is different for everyone, but I received a pretty nice grant from them, so that helped. This will appear on your award letter as well.
As for housing, I live off campus (found a place on craigslist with my bf). To be honest, some of my classmates pay around 700 for their own room in student housing and share with 3 other people (each of the 4 has their own rooms, and there is a common room and bathroom and kitchen), and I think that is kind of expensive to share with so many people. I pay 825/month but I have a decent size 1 bedroom I just share with my bf. It can be pretty expensive to live in the city-I have seen places over 2000/month for just a 1 bedroom, and studios will run you over 1000/month too. So if you don't have anyone to share off campus, on campus is the cheapest way to go and you do get your own room...I recommend looking at the craigslist ads to get a feel for the prices and what you will get for them and then decide whether or not to apply for housing Also, apply EARLY for on campus housing! Also, many people live in daly city or east bay and take the BART in to school...they seem to like it just fine, and their rent is probably a little cheaper (but then again you have to take into acct transportation costs, which is why I chose to just live in the city!)
Sorry this is so long. Let me know if you have more questions

Why do you apologize?
The longer, the better. I really appreciate your informative reply.
Can you please pinpoint a couple of advantages/positive things about UCSF (beside the fact that it is number 1 school)? Compared to other schools, what does UCSF have that makes its students successful? As an insider, you probably know about all of its classes, materials, technology, and study aids... So please give me some insights about those.
Right now I got accepted to UCSD already, and am still waiting to hear back from UCSF. Both are good schools, and if I am lucky enough to get accepted by both schools, I am going to freak out because it will be hard to decide where to attend.
So now I am asking lots of people about their opinions and making a pros and cons list for both schools. Then I can compare and contrast to see which one will suit me the best. So your information would really help.
Thank you very much.

Hi Pyridoxal Phosphate-

I relocated your post thread to the new forum (was having technical difficulties with the last one that was set up). Feel free to re-register on here, or you can always post as a guest by entering your name in the username area when posting.

Thanks

Hi again

Sorry for the late reply, we are in finals week right now-ahhhh.

I think it is different for every individual-I personally got accepted to 3 schools in CA, and I chose UCSF because of a few reasons:

1. The tuition-I did not want to pay $200,000 PLUS for my education since I am financing it all by loans and the interest is going to be huge as it is. I felt all of my choices were almost even and the schools are all very good, so this was a big reason for me.

2. That being said, UCSF is unique in that it has a hospital right next door where students have numerous shadowing opportunities in the inpatient setting with many different clinical pharmacists doing different things in different fields! This was important to me because I want to work in a hospital one day. I also loved how involved the students were-there are many leadership opportunities and health fairs you can participate in, which is great.

3. Yes, some of the other pharmacy schools in CA have a hospital as well, however UCSF is well known for its clinical-focused program, which has proven to be great-I feel the professors are all very brilliant and that my money has been well spent at this institution-they are all involved in amazing research or areas in the field of pharmacy and bring a lot of wisdom and mentorship to you. They all want the students to succeed and are very supportive. I have spoken to some students at other schools that I will not mention here when I was applying and they admitted they did not feel prepared-this is very very very important to me and I feel UCSF has done a really great job ALREADY in my first year at preparing me for practice-especially useful for jumping into an internship right away! They use many different approaches (team based learning, role playing, etc) which are all really effective in learning the material.

The cons-I will be honest, and the most annoying thing about UCSF, or rather the San Francisco in general, is it is EXTREMELY hard to get an internship anywhere in a 45 mile radius or more of this city! Many of my classmates including myself are still having problems, and it is already March. If you can go back home or have connections with a retail store, GREAT! If not, be prepared for this...

Hope this is helpful-again it is personal for everyone, but I have been really happy with the education so far at UCSF. UCSD seems more researched focused, which may be a plus for some people, but there is research opportunities at UCSF as well-in fact, they even have a whole pathway for it