BS/MD programs and merit scholarships

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
1

Colleges like Boston University, Rochester, Rice, and Case Western all offer merit scholarships to their top applicants. Incidentally, all of these colleges also offer a BS/MD program, which again they only offer to their top applicants explicitly interested in medicine.

My question is, can students get both BS/MD and merit? Or do colleges think that just the BS/MD alone is sufficient enticement and hold off the merit scholarships

2

@hebegebe, it can vary much by institution, definitely not a one-size fits all rule, when it comes to giving merit scholarships at the undergraduate level for those in a combined Bachelor/MD program. There are some in which you can gain entry into the Bachelor/MD AND get some undergraduate merit aid, and there are others for whom getting the Bachelor/MD is enough of an enticement that they don’t feel they need to give you a merit scholarship, esp. if you’re only doing 2-3 years of undergrad before moving on to med school.

3

“can students get both BS/MD and merit?” - Yes. Merit scholarships are awarded by college FA departments. They are completely independent of the bs/md programs, which are collaboration between the college and the medical school. Specifically, my D’s best friend was part of the PPSP at Case where she was also on great Merit scholarship for the UG portion of PPSP. My own D. was in bs/md at in-state public where she attended on the full tuition Merit award. Coincidently, both ended up attending Medical schools outside of their bs/md programs, but again, this has nothing to do with Merit awards.

4

@hebegebe Re-posting from 2016 thread.

Here is a take on the topic of merit scholarship.

  1. What a student will get for merit scholarship has no bearing to whether you apply only to UG or BA/MD program.
  2. You get merit scholarship only if the school is not need-based. All the 8 Ivy and top schools in general are need-based. So you will not get merit $ from all Ivy, MIT, NW, Stanford, Caltech, NotreDame, etc.,
  3. Even if the school is not need based, the higher ranking, the lessor chances because of more qualified students competing for the same pie and also the number of awards are limited. Though Duke, WashU, Rice, Vanderbilt, Uof Chicago has merit awards, they are limited and also the awards for any majors, so the chances are very limited.
  4. Once you are out of the top 20, invariably you will get some merit aid from schools like Uof Rochester, Case, USC, UNC, UofM, Boston, RPI. But it is not going to be full tuition but it will be like $20-30k / year.
  5. Then comes school outside top 40 or so, which gives decent merit award based on academics close to 100% tuition. Uof Pittsburg, Baylor etc.,
  6. Fortunately still some schools participate in in the National Merit Scholarship (NMSC), and give full tuition. NJIT, Nebraska 99, Oklahoma 106, Arizona 121, Kentucky 129, UT Dallas 145, Alabama 149,, Ole Miss 149, Houston 189. Students need to be National Semi-finalist.
  7. Extremely very few programs, give merit aid for 1 or 2 years even in MD years (like Howard, Oklahoma) in addition to 2-4 years of UG if the student is part of the BA/MD program or for any masters also as long as student continues in the same school for both UG and Masters.
5

Thank you all for your posts. So to summarize, for colleges that offer merit and have a BS/MD program, applying to the BS/MD program does not seem to impact the chance for merit scholarships most of the time.

But to follow up on Roentgen’s post, I hope that others will specify individual colleges where both are allowed, or not allowed. In this thread I see that Case allows both BS/MD and merit, and in the 2016 results thread I saw that WashU did the same.