Keck School of Medicine of USC — Attraction in Los Angeles

Let’s call it what it is: UC Davis churns out a lot of over-polished, under-tested pre-meds. Their applications look airtight — GPA, shadowing hours, research blurb, club titles — the standard pre-med trophy shelf. But what’s on paper at Davis is often inflated. The metrics look strong because the environment rewards appearance far more than competence.

A lot of students there learn how to look accomplished without ever being pushed to become capable.

They learn to: • Network strategically instead of growing intellectually • Parrot “correct” answers instead of forming original thought • Treat research as a résumé ornament, not an inquiry • Perform empathy, not practice it

It creates students who seem impressive until they have to think for themselves.

At Keck (USC), that becomes obvious quickly.

USC isn’t impressed by the Davis-style aesthetic of pre-med perfection. They’ve seen enough applicants who can recite every ethical framework on cue yet crumble the moment they aren’t being graded on memorization. In MMI rooms, in essays, in real conversations — the surface confidence collapses because there’s no internal scaffolding holding it up.

Meanwhile, applicants from smaller, less “pre-med branded” schools tend to show: Actual clinical maturity Real problem-solving under pressure Independent judgment A sense of self not built entirely for approval

And that difference is glaring.

Yes — every cycle, a handful of Davis students still slip through because some applications are polished enough to mask the hollowness underneath. That’s admissions reality. Optics sometimes win the short game.

But the long game? Training always reveals who was prepared versus who was performing.

At USC, the shine wears off fast. Substance stays. Image breaks.

In fact ucd professors tend to retaliate when they face students who did not do a theatre act but...

Completely atrocious services. Saw Dr Hatch for a second opinion on revising a surgery that he specializes in. Was looking to transfer my care to him. He ordered CT scan and x-ray (which I paid hundreds out of pocket for). I got the exams done and scheduled an appointment. One of his minions calls me 3(!) days before the appointment (scheduled a month prior) and says he won't be able to see me because he referred me to another surgeon (he DID NOT, and it was the same surgeon I was looking to leave because he botched my surgery in the first place!). When I ask him to confirm, because that's not what my conversation was with the doc, he condescendingly said that he will and would call back in a couple of days. I never heard back from him and my appointment was cancelled. This happened again in 3 months - scheduler is nice and polite, schedules appointment, then his idiot minion calls, talks down to you and cancels it with 0 actual reason provided. Meanwhile I'm out hundreds of dollars in tests that THEY ordered and have wasted months with this worthless practice while I could've undergone corrective surgery and...

As a recent MBA graduate, they ruined my credit score for 7-10 years. I received a notification from Credit Karma saying my score had changed, and when I logged in I saw it's from USC sending two medical bills I never even knew about to a collections agency.

After speaking with the collections agency and USC, they say USC sent the two bills to an address I had since moved from. When I asked why they didn't call, they said they did, so I asked them what number they called. It was off by a number because someone didn't input it correctly.

The result? Not one, but TWO derogatory remarks on my credit score because they submitted TWO bills that I never knew about to the collections agency. These bills totaled less than $500: clearly not something I'm dodging.

I asked both if they could do anything about removing the derogatory remarks and they just said they tried contacting me, and they can't do anything about it. Way to set your graduating students out on a...