Sat Nov 21, 2026: From PreMed to DGSOM UCLA Medicine: Medical Students Share How They Made It

Birdie Atwater is an MS1 in the PRIME-LA program at UCLA. She completed all but one of her medical school prerequisites at community colleges in the East Bay.
Birdie decided to pursue medical school after moving to Oakland and seeing that there needed to be more people with skills both to render aid to those who had been unhoused and leverage institutional power to change the political and financial systems that push people into the debilitating medical circumstances of not having a safe home. After a career in game design and theater, she made it to medical school as an older, disabled, and transgender student with very little money and no family support.
Birdie is less interested in listing her accomplishments than in elevating yours. She has seen how the path into medicine places a heavy and growing burden on students to prove their worthiness, often through a hidden curriculum no one explains and with demands of time and money that most people do not have. She wants to share what she’s learned about overcoming those hurdles so you can enter this field, both for yourself and for the change you can make in lowering the barriers for those who come after you.

Vanessa Alvarado is a first-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley and Antelope Valley in SoCal, she is a first-generation college student and former community college transfer student whose path to medicine was shaped by navigating higher education without a traditional pre-med roadmap. Before medical school, Vanessa worked extensively with underserved and medically complex communities in Los Angeles and held several leadership roles with MiMentor, a non-profit organization that seeks to make mentorship accessible to underrepresented pre-health students. She is passionate about increasing representation in medicine and hopes to encourage students from nontraditional backgrounds to view community college not as a limitation, but as a meaningful and valuable part of their journey.

Maritza Campos was raised in San Jose, California by her two loving and hardworking parents from San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico. Despite the difficult realization that she could not afford to attend a four year university after high school, she remained ambitious to continue her education. Thus, she independently navigated community college while working full-time to afford school after transferring. As she took two years of classes at community college, De Anza College, during the pandemic, she also worked full-time as a Pharmacy Technician and Immunizer, developing her interest in medical science and patient care.
Maritza transferred to UCLA in 2022 and graduated in 2024 with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and a Minor in Chicana/o Studies. During her time at UCLA, her passion for health equity and community medicine blossomed as she volunteered with the Latinx/Chicanx for Community Medicine through student-run health fairs, mentorship events, community service, and pre-health conferences.
After college graduation, Maritza took two growth years as she worked on her medical school application. During the first year, she helped connect college women to scholarships and provide support with their applications. Afterwards, she worked as a Program Coordinator Lead at Community Health Partnership, where she worked with a team of community health workers to conduct Know Your Rights community education and health coverage outreach.
She is proud to share that she is now a first-year medical student in the PRIME-LA Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. As a medical student and future physician leader, she is committed to advocate for equitable systems that honor the dignity and humanity of every patient, especially for immigrant and mixed-status communities. Along her journey to medicine, she is also passionate about giving back through mentorship to increase the representation of health leaders from minority communities because we are stronger together, and change requires multi-generational efforts. She is endlessly thankful for all the support of her family, friends, and community, as well as programs like the UC Davis Prep Médico, UCLA MEDPEP, and Mi Mentor MSR programs who’ve provided invaluable mentorship and guidance along her journey! Please feel free to reach out if she can be of support in any way! Remember that no dream is too far; you too can accomplish anything you set your mind and heart to!

Brynn Norby is a nontraditional student from El Cajon, California. She comes from a working class family, identifies as having a disability and is currently engaged to the love of my life, whom she met during her second year at community college. She started community college in spring of 2018 after a few years of working and volunteering in childcare in the US, Mexico and Denmark. She didn’t get much guidance regarding pursuing college in high school, as she ended up attending three different schools and never took the ACT or SAT, so pursuing this goal has been an uphill battle she can imagine many of you may relate to in your own ways. She worked several jobs during her time in high school and undergrad to help support herself, and if it wasn’t for programs like this, she wouldn’t have been able to gain mentorship or the community that helped me when pursuing applying to med school. She is hoping to connect with you and get to know you all as someone who was once in your shoes. A bit about her trajectory: she transferred from Grossmont College in El Cajon to UC Berkeley where she majored in Molecular and Cell Biology and took a minor in Global Poverty and Practice. She spent her 3 gap years working as a Clinical Research Coordinator at UCSD, and is happy to answer any questions about that role as well. She discovered she wanted to pursue this career while working alongside a pediatrician who came monthly to care for babies and toddlers at an orphanage she lived and volunteered at in Valle de Las Palmas Mexico. For around 3-12 months a year for 5 years she spent time caring for babies there, and saw how this pediatrician used her education to care for those most vulnerable in her community. Brynn dared to dream and eventually saw herself being really excited about pursuing a career where she could do the same. Luckily the orphanage was only an hour and a half away across the border from east county San Diego, so she was able to continue dedicating all her time outside of school there until the orphanage closed in 2021 and she transferred to Berkeley that fall. Lastly, she is really passionate about gender affirming obstetrics and gynecology, has a 3 year old dog with her fiance, and loves to travel, craft, make tea, sing and be in nature.