Share your California State University success stories

So, I went to a UC. Graduated cum laude. Did well, the last two years. But you'll basically never be the smartest person in the room at a UC, unless you were always the smartest person in the room at every other level you were at. And even if you were, there's great odds you're not even close.

The competition is just that fierce.

And one thing I would do to make things easier is take the hardest classes at other schools over the summer. And it was always way easier than trying to compete with a bunch of med school hopeful valedictorians who did nothing but excel from kinder and spent their afternoons at Kumon anyway.

And as a transfer, some of the things that might matter to a four year student, like school pride and sports, just don't really translate.

Later on, I went back to school and met another guy reinventing himself. He'd dropped out of UC Berkeley. Floated around a bit. My buddy and I aced everything at JUCO, jostled for top of the class. Afterwards, I went straight into PA School, he went to CSU Fullerton. He was valedictorian there. I remember he was devastated being rejected from PA School, he only applied to one school figuring he was a shoo-in - and they actually wrote him a letter to say "Your research base is more appropriate at a medical school, and on those grounds we are rejecting you and encourage to apply to medical school."

So he does. Ended up getting into medical school at UPenn. Ended up hating the clinical aspect, dropping out and is now a CDC epidemiologist.

Meanwhile I don't have enough fingers to count the people I know who didn't make it in with a 3.2 gpa from UC.

The gist is this. If you can be a big fish in a big pond, great. But if you can't be a big fish in a big pond, it's better to be a big fish in a little pond than a medium size fish in a big pond.

/r/physicianassistant Thread