<p>Congrats, GA2012MOM!! So excited for you and your daughter! It’s been great being on the roller coaster with you and learning from all the great folks here, too. </p>
<p>Looking forward to feeling that sigh of relief mojo soon! Just received a FA award package in the mail from one of my son’s schools and I think I’m pretty happy for him, even if it is a little confusing. If anyone can steer me towards some Medical School FA information that would be great. It seems simple enough, just want to be sure.</p>
<p>Offer should look something like your undergrad one, just less on the item lines for credits. So no Pell, no workstudy, no SEOG…just any merit awards, unsubsidized loans and institutional grants.</p>
<p>Put along side tuition, fees, room, board, health insurance, books and supplies. Then subtract. Fun, huh?</p>
<p>Yes, the numbers are quite, um, numbing! COA can be a daunting figure. Very pleased to see the concise break-out, just had to figure out what some of the awards/loans were as they are different than either of my kids in undergrad. Thanks, Kat. (*I pm’d you, too)</p>
<p>^I’d definitely recommend talking to current students about COA. At least at my school, COA is very generous. If I took out loans for entire COA, I’d have lots of money leftover! I know my COA includes estimates for pricey things like health insurance that my parents still cover and huge books/supplies allowances (I’ve probably spent…$250 on books and $175 on a stethoscope total this year). For what it’s worth, my COA (state school in the midwest) is easily $15k less than what they quote. Makes it…a little better, I guess.</p>
<p>Congrats to both GA2012MOM and CapeCodeLady8 for your children’s great achievement.</p>
<p>As regard to FA, I think I did not pay attention to the details last year. I only looked at the big picture, which is the difference between the tuition/fees and the need-based (or merit-based) scholarship (if any for the school you may attend.) I think, unlike in UG, only the luckiest ones may have a “negative” number for the difference between the tuition/fees and the “free money” because of the so-called “unit loan” for most med schools. </p>
<p>When the student chooses a school located in a city where the cost of living is high, e.g., in a larger city on either coast, the student can not do anything about the cost of living here, unless the student is willing to compromize the location.</p>
<p>That is the reason why I mostly only compare the “out of pocket” tuition and fees. And also keep an eye on the cost of living of the city where the school is located at. Everything else seems to me not very relevant: you pay it either with your income or asset (if you can afford it – I mostly can not) , or with the student’s future income (i.e., the loans.)</p>
<p>In general, you need to pay attention to the sum of tuitions and the fees, as the fees for some school could be rediculously high. (Is some California school like this?) So the number about the tuition only may be misleading.</p>
<p>As regards to the loans, not all loans are created equal. The deals for some loans are better than others. But the major subsidized Federal loans (subsidized Stafford) will disappear starting this summer, so the students need to pay (most likely accrue) interests while still in school.</p>
<p>Thanks, Kristin and MCAT. Definitely things to consider from what everyone has said. Something weird happened yesterday at one of my son’s schools when we went to look up FA summary. It said he had already exhausted all qualifications for federal loans! What? Anyway, we need to look into that, and it’s not true, just something must be mixed up. Another school had them in the package, so it must be something with either our submission to them, or their accounting. Kind of a wild thing to see when logging on however! Hoping my son can square it away soon.</p>
<p>Ring the bells and fire the cannons 'cuz… The lil sis got in!!! Got the call this morning. What a relief…the goats are dancing. My kid says her sorority lil sis is just “numb”. </p>
<p>I had mentioned that during her “after the season conversation/review” that the admissions folk told her that “You just applied too late. You should have been admitted based on this app.” Well, maybe that “look” did the trick because she will be a med student. She really wasn’t looking forward to a re-app. Heck, I wasn’t looking forward to a re-app. TAMU, we love you! (But your sports teams still suck. ;))</p>
<p>^Congrats to your D’s little. Girls around my D. are getting engaged and married, the last one was her sorority sis., one of the closer ones. Let’s hope that they have heads on their sholders for few more years…so far they have proven so…
17 days count down…to MS2, the hardest exam yet to take</p>
<p>I was talking with D1 this morning and she was telling me the fellow they just elected to be the class rep to the admission committee APPLIED TO MED SCHOOLS 6 TIMES before he was finally admitted. (As D1 said, he certainly has plenty of familiarity with the med school admissions process.) He’s also turned out to be one of the top students in her class.</p>
<p>WOWMom, there are admissions stories similar to that on sdn. I just have to assume there is an interesting back story to go along with the 6 attempts. My kid’s year there was a gal on sdn on her attempt 5, and she made it. </p>
<p>Knowing how defeated and fatigued this girl felt after one seemingly un-successful attempt, I was worried whether attempt number two was going to be as “inspired” as it needed to be. Thankfully, we won’t have to find out.</p>
<p>Curm, regarding the gal on sdn who attempted 5 times, I do not know whether the one you referred to is someone I saw on SDN: She was the one from Texas who got into one med school in Arizona first and eventually got into a med school in Texas (I forgot which one). She was so “experienced” that she was kindly helping many SDNers applying in the same year. (I think she was originally graduated from northern texas with BS and then MS and had several years of working experiences with UT-SW.)</p>
<p>A few years back, one guy from Cal with two majors (HAAS UG Business and Biochem or Molecular bio?) had applied 3 times before he got in (UT-SW, not too shabby at all.) The problem was he did not show enough commitment to medicine due to his choice on a vocational track major and summer intern job. (His MCAT and GPA were good enough in his firsat attempt. And after he got stellar MCAT (37 or 38?), UT-SW “forgave” his “poor” choice of the vocational major and (more importantly) extensive intern/working experiences and took him.</p>
<p>^ I have never seen one (the gal you referred to) who has had such a “fighting spirit” in attempting to get into a med school. If DS was like her, he might give it up in the first trial or two!</p>
<p>I think she started from a very low MCAT (very low 20s?) and slowly built up a good enough MCAT over many years. I think her growing-up environment may have something to do with this. (I think she was from a new immigrant family from central America and both of her parents likely barely spoke English when she was young. I wonder what her SAT score was in high school.)</p>
<p>The above is a proof that your application better match your Med. School list unless you love to postpone the Med. School, have few years break, do something else. Some people might have adrenaline fun applying over and over. We are way too old for that, sent D. to kindergarten ahead for this reason, no gaps, she made sure that her application is a good match to her list, but she also had a backup in her program anyway. Whatever the route, if ultimate goal is achieved, that is the only thing that counts. More life stories…</p>
<p>^^You know Miami, not everyone grows up with the kind of supportive parenting your D received. Some people come from disdvantaged backgrounds, receive NO encouragement for post high school education (if that, ~65% national high graduation rates anyone?) from family or other support systems, attend underperforming public schools for elementary and high school, cannot afford to attend college full time (or at all) due to family obligations/situations, are ESL learners, feel the call to medicine later in life. Lots and lots of other reasons too.</p>
<p>Would be great if everyone had the advantages your D had, but the long & short of it is that they don’t.</p>
<p>They are many different roads to med school. In the end, they have the same job and same responsibilities.</p>
<p>Personally, I find the journeys that some of these re-applicants and non-trads follow to be both inspiring and informative. They wanted to be a doctor so badly they were willing to put in years of effort and sacrifice to get there.</p>
<p>Woohoo, happy dance for Curm, lil sis and the goats too! You don’t have any more coming this upcoming cycle, do you? I’d hate to think you’d have to go through it for a 3rd year in a row.</p>
<p>Loving daughter sent me a new one last night. From her UG lab and her sorority. Right now I’m just supposed to comment on her app list. That didn’t take long. I told her it looked like someone threw darts at a map. Maybe I can make her mad early and she’ll fire me. ;)</p>
COA can be a daunting figure. Very pleased to see the concise break-out, just had to figure out what some of the awards/loans were as they are different than either of my kids in undergrad. Thanks, Kat. (*I pm’d you, too)</p>