What are the drawbacks of being a California resident?
When selecting a first year medical school class, admissions committees from state medical schools often consider only or mainly applicants who are residents of that state. In California, however, there is not the same kind of home-state advantage like there is in most other states. This is due to the large number of California resident-applicants compared to the number of medical school seats available in California. California has 36 million residents and only 8 medicals schools. This is approximately the same number of seats California had 30 years ago when the population was “only” 19 million. For example, each year there are approximately 4,000 applicants for 100 seats at UCLA while there may be just 400 applicants for 100 seats at the University of Arizona medical school. Consequently, California is a major exporter of medical school students to the rest of the nation. This means that if you want to go to a California school you have to have as close to a 4.0 GPA as possible and
