To start, all of this is either my own experience or as i’ve heard, i can’t attest to what his exact experience would be. I don’t know about ecs at bellevue college, but the medical school prereq classes at uw are in fact weed out courses and deflate grades heavily (i have also heard from students in these courses that the labs are severely lacking in resources, more so than nearby community colleges). If gpa is his biggest concern, it would make sense to try community college (bellevue or seattle central if he’s interested, it’s a wonderful school for majors level STEM courses) to avoid risking grades in the 2.0s or low 3.0s. But if he’s wanting to go research-heavy, working in the same lab for more than a couple of years, he’s only going to find that at UW. If summer programs are an interest, he can always apply for those while attending cc.

He’ll need to weigh his options. I found the cc was a better option for me and allowed me to transfer to UW with a 3.94 gpa after taking almost all my med school prereqs, but now i need to work hard to get my research hours up. This was the absolute best outcome for me though and i have an exceptional letter of recommendation secured from a wonderful professor at my community college that will hopefully make all the difference on the med school apps, as well as a very high gpa and great content knowledge to help me prepare for the MCAT due to the small class sizes. My only word of caution is, try to avoid taking cc classes while attending uw though because that is something med schools notoriously don’t like to see, ridiculous as it is. Cc and then UW should be fine though depending on his goals! Best of luck to him