Hey I’m a high school senior who has just finished the application process. I have a 95 GPA and 30 ACT. The schools i applied to are Johns Hopkins(I’m not expecting to get in, just testing my luck), Brandeis, BU, Northeastern, GW, Suny Binghamton and the Cuny Macaulay program. As of now i plan on going to medical school but that could change and wanted to know if it is worth it to go to one of the pricey private schools i listed if i get accepted over the state and city universities. i don’t think i will qualify for much if any financial aid but would still have to take out significant loans for private colleges and am really conflicted costs of these schools. I have been already accepted to binghamton and since i am am a new york resident it should be not much more than 20,000 without any aid ad if i do get into the Macaulay program at a cuny it ould be entirely free.
If someone, preferably a current medical school student, can give me some advice regarding if its worth it for me to go to one of the private school i applied to (if i get in) and if yes which ones? Also where does Binghamton stand academically compared to the private schools i applied to?
Medical school is expensive, so bringing large amounts of undergraduate debt to add on to the $300,000 debt that you are likely to take on for medical school (if you get admitted) does not look like a good idea.
Probably not, but it kind of depends on what you mean by serious debt. If you have to borrow any more than around $30-40K total then it’s probably not worth it. Especially not for medical school, but really not for any potential career you might choose.
As someone who went to Bing, several of my friends are now in med school and I guarantee you they are really happy they don’t have even more debt than they currently do. There is a good program in place there for pre-med.
Remember as well that Binghamton tends to be more selective than any of the public universities in a wide geographical area from New England to Pennsylvania, so many highly qualified students do choose the school. Good luck with your visit.
If you’re 100% set on going to medical school and you think you can do well in the pre-med program, then it’s generally a fine idea to take the cheaper option. Medical schools don’t discriminate based on “name” brand of undergrad.
Hey guys I have a bit of a dilemma. Yesterday I had attended the Binghamton accepted students day and by 3 o’clock I thought I was convinced… but after attending the premed seminar in which the advisor had said that only 46% of their students get into medical school. I loved everything about the school this stat just made me think twice. Some of the other schools I got into like Brandeis boast acceptance rates in the 70’s into med school, but the finanacial aid was extremely weak so I’m kinda ruling it out completely. I also got accepted to GW with a presidential scholarship of 25k but it still ends up being twice the price of Bing. I am gonna write a letter of appeal and see what I can do tomorrow but I really do need some advice, that premed session from bing really turned me off. And I know that it doesn’t really matter where u go for undergrad as long as u get good grades but from a statistical standpoint I think I have a good reason to be concerned. If money wasn’t a factor and I only cared about academic I would choose Brandeis. If student life was the only thing that mattered and I wanted to save money I would choose bing. And I really feel like a tool to pass up offers from Macaulay and GW. I was also told that the reasons Bings percentages is so low is because they let anyone who wants to apply apply, but they only got 66 kids in in total…Any advice would be appreciated.
@bigjack14 I would be wary of the high 70s percentage acceptance rate that Brandeis mentioned. There are a lot of ways to manipulate the numbers–perhaps Brandeis only considered the number of applicants from its school who received a committee letter of recommendation. If so, such applicants would be the highest stat and overall qualified kids with the best chance of med school acceptance. Check out he following link listing the undergraduate institutions supplying 100 or more applicants (the lists are broken down by race and ethnicity) to US med schools for the 2015-16 school year. HTTPS://www.aamc.org Interestingly Binghamton is on the list (216 total number of applicants) whereas both GWU and Brandeis are not included. They did not have at least 100 applicants applying. Michigan and Florida had the two most total of applicants (782 and 802 respectively).