Can anyone help me with my college decision?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
1

Hey everyone!

I’ve been put in the unfortunately lucky position of choosing between some great colleges. I really have no clue where to go and I have about 10 days to decide so I’m getting a little nervous. My options are Yale, Duke, and UVA.

Yale has been my been my dream school ever since I remember. I believe this would be the best fit for me socially and academically; the only issue is that we’d have to take out loans of about $10k/yr (my parents have yet to give me the final number, but this is the estimate). We are currently appealing as Duke unbelievably gave us more aid than Yale. I’m going to Bulldog Days next week FWIW.

Duke- Not as expensive as Yale but not as cheap as UVA. I like the school and would be fine if I had to go there, but I just can’t seem to let go of Yale. I did go to Blue Devil Days and really enjoyed it.

UVA- I’m from Virginia so it’s much cheaper since I’m in-state, in addition, I received a full tuition scholarship, so the COA is about $12k (and I’m in the running for another scholarship that will cover the cost of the rest of the school). I’m also CSS and an Echols Scholar, so if I went I would have many opportunities and resources at my disposal. However, I’m mainly concerned that it’s a state school and has to obey rules set by the Virginia government; also, I know it has a worldwide reputation but the prestige at some of my other options is hard to ignore.

Financial Situation/Career Goals: The main dilemma is that I want to go to medical school so it would make sense to keep undergraduate costs low and choose UVA. However, I’m not completely set on medical school and I’m also interested in business and policy so what if I end up in a career where a name brand college is much more important than it is in medicine? Also in a lot of instances, 2 years for an MBA is a lot cheaper than 4 years of medical school so undergraduate debt wouldn’t matter to the same extent (I think, I could be wrong on this). I think if I chose not to do medicine, Yale and to an extent, Duke, could help me with providing prestige and other academic pathways whereas UVA wouldn’t (to the same degree that Duke and Yale could). If I were to do medicine and still go to Yale, I read a statistic that said you shouldn’t take out loans that exceed your estimated entry-level salary and the average medical school resident makes $40k/yr, so the loans should be doable.

Final thoughts: In my mind, Yale > Duke > UVA, but I know that my emotions don’t really matter in this decision as much as I would like them to matter. I’m not sure if I would sacrifice my chances of going to medical school just to go to Yale but I know that last year I was 100% set on becoming a doctor, and now I’m about 85% sure that I want to be pre-med. There’s always a chance that I could have a further change of heart in college or get weeded out by the difficult courses, so I don’t want to make my undergraduate decision with that being the number one priority, maybe the fourth priority.

Thanks for all your help and for reading through this entire post!
-Slytherclaw12

PS. I also have more reasons to choose one college over another–I’ve thought about this for a long time–but I just didn’t list all of them.

2

That’s a tough choice. It sounds like you can “do” Yale, and you will always regret it if you don’t do it, so why not do it?

On the other hand, your MD, MBA, or Policy Ph.D. school will matter more than your undergraduate school, so you may want to go where all the resources and the personal contact with recommendation-writing professors is best.

Your problem is that there is no clear winner, so you should let your emotions and the consensus of your family be the deciding factor.

3

I’m a Yale supporter, but I’m also debt averse by nature.

$10k per year is a lot of debt, but frankly, if you go on to medical school it will seem like a rounding error. I don’t know the percentage of kids who change their minds about med school, but I’m sure it’s considerable.

To my admittedly biased mind, the decision would be between Yale and UVA. Forget prestige; all 3 of them are in the ballpark, and you’re not comparing international prestige (where Yale has a big lead). I just don’t think Duke has sufficient pluses over UVA to warrant the extra expenditure.

I don’t know how FA works, as we didn’t qualify. DS earned ~$5k freshman year (including summer) and sophomore year will earn ~25k. Granted, STEM kids typically make more than policy kids (everything else equal), lucrative employment isn’t guaranteed, and I don’t know if earnings reduce FA – but it’s something to consider.

It’s so hard to give advice on this. As a first approximation, I try to judge how DS would have done at Duke and UVA. He would probably have done well, but I honestly am not sure that the others would have been transformative in the way that Yale has been. His other early acceptance (he was SCEA) was UMichigan, which is somewhat similar to UVA. Without debt and potential med school in our picture, it was an easy call, but I don’t know what we’d have done in your shoes. On the bright side, what a wonderful problem to have :slight_smile:

What does your family think?

4

^ I would disagree about ruling out Duke, if it’s a question of Yale + debt vs. Duke with no debt. That’s significant, and I don’t think there is any significant quality difference between Yale and Duke. But it depends on exactly how much the “extra expenditure” is, and how much it affects the OP’s family and financial situation.

5

@renaissancedad, if it were two schools, I would agree with you, but it’s not an adamantly held view of mine in any case. If it’s Duke with no debt but moderate expenditure vs UVA with minimal expenditure, I’d vote UVA, but I admittedly have some family fondness for UVA. So, in practice, Duke fell out of the trio of Yale, Duke, and UVA.

6

^ I think Duke is a lot more likely to provide a similar undergraduate experience and environment to Yale than UVa, and has very strong pre-med and business tracks. I’m not sure why you consider Yale a “transformative” experience compared to Duke, but it probably depends a lot on the individual. Plus the OP apparently had a very positive experience to Blue Devil Days. So I would treat this as a Yale/Duke vs. UVa/Jefferson decision, with the Yale vs. Duke choice coming down to a combination of affordability and gut feel/emiotional attachment (especially comparing BDD and Bulldog Days). It’s not clear from the OP how big the difference between “moderate” and “minimal” expenditure is, or how much of a burden that places on the OP’s family.

7

^ I thought I was clear that I was extrapolating from family experiences, implying all of the caveats that go along with that.

It’s obviously just a thought experiment on my part; for all I know, Duke would have transformed him more than Yale has. I’m not sure that OP expects a rigorous answer to an unanswerable question; presumably opinions, imperfect but honest, are what is expected.

8

Thanks for all the help so far, and my parents are currently discussing exactly how much loans we would need to take out for Duke or Yale, so I can get back to you on that.

9

These are all excellent choices so whatever you decide will be a great decision. I agree with what IxnayBob said about $10k/year being real money but pretty small relative to the potential debt for medical school . . . one is roughly analogous to a car loan, the other more like a home mortgage.

10

You are right that you have a lucky dilemma. The Echols scholarship, with its perks, is pretty sweet. If the finances are not the driving factor, I would say go to Yale (indeed, that’s the decision I had to make many years ago, and I chose Yale.) But you can’t really make a bad choice here.

11

It doesn’t matter if 40k debt seems smaller than med school costs. What matters is what your family (and you) can truly afford, over the next 14-20 years. (College and any post college program. And Parent Plus loans can start due each spring.). Loans are ok when you know how you will pay. Not when you just think of them as reducing today’s costs.

I’m another fan of UVa, great business and premed. Of course it’s known all over and can feed into a great B career. It’s also one of the toughest schools to predict an admit.

12

If you said you were leaning towards a career in public policy or education, I would be more concerned about $40K of additional debt being a concern. Although you will incur more additional debt should you go for an MD or MBA, the stating salaries in those fields are so high that the additional debt is meaningless. I think you need to look at the $200K+ starting salary after residency in medicine and not the resident salary too. I’m a fan of going to your dream school if at all possible and this difference sounds pretty doable but your choices all seem good.

13

When I was at Bulldog Days, we went to the financial aid office and asked for another review and it’s now around the same price as Duke. So with that, I think I’m going to Yale!

14

Congratulations!