@xxyyzz00 If you decide on Texas A&M for engineering, biomedical engineering is a great option for pre-med if that is your plan. Their NMF package grants out-of-state students in-state tuition and an automatic $46,000 over four years. As for TAMU being a conservative college, that is pretty true, but my fairly liberal sister who goes there now loves it and the people, and I (also pretty liberal) have visited and plan to attend this fall. It is a great place, and I’d hope the political stances of students or the community wouldn’t put you off the school completely.
I will echo with @DiotimaDM on the pre-med school considerations. My DD has determined to be on pre-med track and is also somewhat struggling with the prestigious of schools like most kids. She doesn’t like anywhere south, so BAMA, UF, ASU etc were never on her list. So far the two available choices are OU and UMN, then possible USC
OU:
- NMF package covers full tuition, decent honor college, great support from scholar program office, should be easier to maintain good GPA than top schools, pre-med advising probably good considering they have BS/MD kind of program like MHSP
- Average medical school, even got into MHSP most kids applied out to other medical school. Medical school and hospitals are in the city, 20 miles from the main campus, could be difficult for shadowing opportunities. Big state party school, ranking in the 100+.
UMN:
- Academically great public school, ranking in the 60+. From my feeling, she is willing to tell her friends that she may go to Minnesota and probably be very quite on OU. Decent med school, #9 in Primary Care. Urban not no-where college town.
- NMF 10K, at best case another 10K for OOS to cover 75% of tuition. Very cold in the winter.
USC:
- Great school. Nice weather. Urban, could be too much, LOL
- Even with NMF half tuition, it can be a very expensive school. Everything in CA is very competitive, especially on pre-med. Maintain good GPA and finding shadowing opportunities are concerning.
When looking at ou please make sure you figure in the fees, depending on the class the fees can be more than tuition!
@netopspin I have an OOS grad student at UMN. Student loves the city and school BUT dealing with the car situation has been less than ideal. Once you move off campus, many apartments have street parking. When the weather is bad and the roads need plowed, there is some kind of alert given and you have to move your car to clear the street for the plow. Any cars not moved get towed.
@3scoutsmom You are correct about OU’s fees. I think they ARE more than tuition the first year. We toured the campus and liked it much more than we thought we would. There are lots of bright kids at OU. It is pretty high on my NMF’s list (assuming we get the letter next week).
@xxyyzz00 I don’t know much about the other universities other than UCF since either the location or scholarship wasn’t as appealing to me. I will be committing to UCF following NMF designation, so here’s my two bits.
Let me just say that you really should tour the schools. The campus visits were so helpful for me in deciding on a university and understanding the student body. Before visiting UCF, I was definitely a bit weary. I had never heard of the university and didn’t know what to expect. During our visit, however, I met so many amazing students that were just so involved on campus. I met students that were a part of the MEDD program (4 yr biomed+engineering degree), Burnett Medical Scholars program (8yr bs/md program- still time to apply if you are interested), volunteering and research. All of them were welcoming, intellegent, and showed school spirit. I really think that visiting the university puts everything into persective, including their ranking/prestige. Also, if the general student body is an issue, being a part of the honors college and towers 3 puts you in a more acedemically inclined subset of the university rather than with all ~60k students. I believe that I will come out after 4yrs at UCF being proud of what I accomplished at UCF; it’s what I do there, not the name that matters to me. As far as pre-med goes, I’ve heard nothing but great things about their advising. UCF does have a medical school and therefore likely more plugged in than other universities.
Texas tech also has a med program that is designed to get you out in three years instead of four. If you commit to family practice in the Texas tech area they will also pay for two of the three years. It’s a great deal look into it
@chercheur my dd16 is NMF at OU and loves it, just not sure we could have pulled it off since the increase in tuition and fees and current lower NM scholarship.
@3scoutsmom Only 16? Wow! She must be a smart young lady! Bravo to you for having 2 NMF! =D>
@chercher dd16 is high school class of 2016 just as ds18 is high school class of 2018! Yes I’m very proud to have 2 NMFs and hope that ds20 (high school class of 2020) will make the cut as well when his time comes!
Ha! Thanks for the lesson on the forum’s lingo!
@chercheur to piggyback, DD stands for Dear Daughter, DS is Dear Son, DH is Dear Husband.
Thanks @grandscheme!
@3scoutsmom you are right, OU fees are ridiculous high. The published out of pocket cost for NMF is $16,000 for the first year, which doesn’t cover personal and travel allowance. The COA of UMN is 41k which includes 3.7k allowance. In that comparison, OU is not much cheaper than UMN. School academic reputation wise they are like tier 3 vs tier 2. DD said she prefers cold than hot weather, I don’t think she really understand how cold and long Minneapolis winter is comparing with Missouri 
@netopspin as a graduate of UMN I will tell you it’s an amazing place. World class university in an exciting metropolitan area. Yes, the winters are cold, but you can actually get to and from class through the tunnel and pedestrian bridge system without ever going outside when it gets really cold. Otherwise, the winters are kind of fun for college students. They also have a great financial aid and scholarship dept. that helps with costs. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
@netopspin weather is really relative, OU is much colder for my DD being from Austin, TX she would laugh at OU being considered a “hot weather” school! Reputation needs to be considered by major, if you are looking at meteorology (like my DD) then OU is one of the top programs in the country, if you are looking at comp sci - not so much.
@netopspin What do you mean by tier 3 vs tier 2?
OU’s NMF OOS COA is $37,016 for 4 years according to their website
http://www.ou.edu/content/admissions/nationalscholars/national-merit-scholarship.html
You stated your COA to attend UMN OOS is around $41,000 per year which is $164,000 for 4 years.
https://onestop.umn.edu/finances/cost-attendance
That’s around $127,000 difference!
COA quoted to us for Oklahoma as OOS was 16k first year 13k for 2-3 and 10 k for senior year. The total expected cost was $52k. UMN COA is 164 without any aid. NMF are generally granted the Gold scholarship which is 10k a year and thats without adding in any other departmental scholarships. I think you would have to have the offer sheet in front of you to make a realistic comparison. I’m not saying UMN wouldn’t be more expensive, I’m just saying each case is unique.
Yes, I typed it in wrong. OU is $52,000. So with the Goldwater, COA at UMN is more like $124,000 plus possibly a departmental scholarship? Still a hefty difference, IMO. I’m sure your daughter would be happy at either one.
Oops, that was supposed to say Gold Award ^
OMG - I need to quit staying up and watching the Olympics … sorry for the errors, everyone!
@DiotimaDM, @FSUdad93, @thehauntedmattress, @netopspin, @sewin2music, @Phlipper, @chercheur, @3scoutsmom: Thank you all very much. I truly appreciate all these great insights.
@DiotimaDM: I agree that I should pay more attention to GPA , fundamental research opportunities, shadowing/clinical experience, pre-med advising quality, and community volunteering opportunities. Thanks to you, I’ve decided to make a table to evaluate my options. Here are the variables and their subjective weights.
- COA (after all the scholarships deducted, out-of-pocket-expense): weight=10
- Ranking/prestige: weight=10 (other people/potential employers care about the prestige, that is why it is important to me)
- GPA (how hard/easy to maintain a good GPA): weight=8
- Fundamental research opportunities (how easy/hard to get involved in a research projects): weight=8
- Shadowing/clinical experience: weight=6
- Pre-med advising quality: weight=5
- Volunteering opportunities: weight=3
- Location: weight=5
- Weather: weight=3
- Level of the students at the honors college (as measured by average ACT/SAT): weight=8
- Level of the students at the university-at-large: weight=6
- Overall quality of the honors college/program (how much they help you, availability of specific honors courses, how many regular/honors courses etc); weight=8
- Medical school quality: weight=6
- Backup option quality (in the event of a major change, are there reputable majors): weight=10
- Dorm quality: weight=2
- Food quality: weight=3
- Weed-out ratio (the ratio of the number of MD applicants to incoming freshman class size of the traditionally premed majors such as bio, neuro etc. This should measure weeding out) W=8;
- Acceptance rate of the medical school applicants: weight=9
I should probably readjust the weights so that some dimensions don’t dominate the overall score.
Are there any other parameters of importance?
For instance, my marks for UCF out of 10 are:
COA: 10
Prestige: 3
GPA: 4
Research: idk
Shadowing: idk
Pre-med advising: idk
Volunteering: idk
Location: 8
Weather: 8
HC student level: 7
Student level: 4
HC quality: 8
Med-school quality: 5
Backup quality: 3
Dorm: 9
Food: idk
Weedout ratio: idk
MD success rate: idk
If I multiply them with my weights, I have 1010 + 103 + 84 + 85 + 65 + 55 + 35 + 58 + 38 + 87 + 64 + 88 + 65 + 103 + 29 + 35 + 85 + 95 = 658. I will probably change my weights, but for now I assumed as above; also idk=5 for now.
I have to populate this table for all schools including UCF, TAMU, UMN, UTD, UNM, OU, Texas Tech, ASU
@FSUdad93: I hope the FL senate passes it in time so that we can catch this amazing opportunity. Thank you very much for the update and the tweet. Maybe we should all urge the senators so that they can speed up the process.
@thehauntedmattress: I wouldn’t decline a school because of political stance of the student body. I’ll know when I visit if it is a good match for me. TAMU is a little unclear about what they provide to NMFs. I still couldn’t figure out how much out-of-pocket expenses my parents need to pay.
@netopspin: Thanks for the info. Last year, the case for OU was clear. This year, COA is about $16K/year. If UMN isn’t ~full tuition, it is not under consideration for me. I couldn’t get the full-scholarship from USC, so it is out of question for me. Otherwise, it’d be an easy decision.
@sewin2music: It appears that you already made your decision. I’m curious how you reached this decision. It’d be enlightening to us as well. What is the OOS tuition for the med school at UCF? I saw vastly different numbers ($26K vs $56K). Have you looked into how easy to establish residency for tuition purposes in FL?