August 18, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR LESLIE WAITE IN CA
Hi Yeseul;
Good for you for not limiting yourself before you are ready!
University is an excellent place to take advantage of knowledge in
several very different fields, something that will be tougher to do
once you are out of college.

As for Universities in California that offer both biomedical sciences
and architecture:

Virtually all of the UC schools (Berkeley, LA, Santa Barbara- all the
schools that have an abbreviation of UC something) will have some
biomedical science programs.
UC Berkeley and UCLA both have programs in Architecture that would
allow you to get courses in both of your fields of interest.
Some links that might help you see what each school offers are below.

For biomedical sciences:
at Berkeley:
http://www.berkeley.edu/academics/departments/b.html

at UCLA:
http://www.lifesci.ucla.edu/

For Architecture:
at Berkeley:
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/

at UCLA:
http://www.arts.ucla.edu/

Both Berkeley and UCLA have courses in Urban Design, which could be
worth looking into if you want to become a real estate developer for
commercial real estate (store, office and apartment buildings for
example).

As for becoming an MD, you will need to meet the requirements for
medical school. These generally include a fair amount of math and
science. Virtually all campuses have an office where people
interested in medical school can go to get guidance about med school
requirements and how to best prepare yourself. At Berkeley (as well
as most schools), this advisor is in the career center, and a good
link for information about premed requirements as well as contact
information for the premed advisor can be found here:
http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/undergradprog/premed.html

At UCLA, similar information is here:

http://www.career.ucla.edu/gradschool/health/md.asp

One piece of advice I can give you is to seek out architects, real
estate developers, and physicians in your area and contact them. See
if you can talk with them about their jobs. Find out what they do on
a day-to-day basis, what they love and what they hate about their
jobs, what they wish they had known before they went into the field,
what kind of training and background you need to break into the
field, etc. Frequently it becomes easier to choose your direction if
you can speak to someone who can tell you first hand what your future
job might look like. This can help you decide if that job will be
satisfying for you, or if there might be a better professional match
for your personality and goals.

Good luck!