There are two distinct paths, physician managers (department heads, chief of staff, chief medical officer, etc.) and administrators (CEO, President, VP, etc.). The former (I have multiple acquaintances and family, including my dad in those roles) are physicians. They tend to work with issues directly related to patient care, including, but not limited to quality. The latter (also many acquaintances) have not been physicians. They run business functions. A physician certainly could do the later, and I’m sure somewhere they do. Not in any of our hospital systems though. They may even be better due to the experience. It’s a lot of extra schooling though for what might make a person marginally better. I agree though that at this age, there’s no downside to taking medicine prerequisites.
I guess our experiences differ. The CEO of this health care system and President of the hospital are both former health care providers. I know of several other academic medical centers where that is the case off the top of my head. As I said previously, doctors acquiring mbas or other advanced degrees to assist with the business side of department management is becoming more common, at least at large academic medical centers.
In any case, op said she wanted to be a doctor until a few months ago. Since she doesn’t seem to have a strong sense of what she wants to do, taking the premed prerequisites seems like a good plan for her. I think we are in agreement there.
Its very very common to have non-providers lead hospitals and specific service lines at the hospital. Every provider group is struggling to manage their fixed cost + falling reimbursement + increasing wages problem. Physicians notoriously hate administrative tasks so its not a surprise that many health admin leadership roles are filled by ex management consultants.
You have an excellent resume! Ideally, pick an ED such as Upenn if that is your favorite and I think you have much better than “average” odds—though your “reaches” are reaches for everyone, and I would place your chances at 15-20% max for the highest selective schools on your list. Spend a lot of time on your essays. Visit campuses if you can: it makes the interviews much easier (they ALL ask “Why X?”). If you decide not to ED at a reach, it still could work out—my D23 got into 4 top10s when all was said and done(no ED—all RD). However , please ED if you have a favorite that offers it. It is much harder to find success without ED.
You are already on top of your future. Could not have given you better advice than what you have planned ! However, why no Case Western and U of Rochester on the list ? Are they that bad ? Be aware, all merit scholarships nowadays are need-based; unless it is the named scholarship that is awarded to a few incoming students.
That is quite simply inaccurate information.
Many schools offer merit scholarships to attract students that meet their institutional needs (high stats, diversity, etc). These are essentially tuition discounts that are guaranteed for four years, but they have absolutely nothing to do with financial need. And are awarded by the Admissions Office, not the Financial Aid Office… many don’t require FAFSA or CSS to be filed. These are often sought by donut hole families (full pay but with lower budgets than full COA), in addition to the competitive named scholarships you mentioned.
There are some schools that have traditionally offered merit as “tuition discounts” that have moved much of their funding to need-based aid, but that’s not all schools by any means.
Yes, what I mean is most schools have moved the majority of their funding for scholarships to need based so they offered much less i.e. UPitt and Penn State. And in most schools their “merit” scholarships are not based on purely merits. They have mixed with institutional priority in the amount they offered.
School dependent - but possible.
Some schools have tables - and some have gone down, some have gone up, most have stayed stable - meaning if your GPA is that and test score is that, you get this much.
I disagree with this. Some schools are that way. They are mainly the schools that don’t have money to give merit (think CA state schools), and schools that don’t have to give merit (Ivy League, plus Stanford, Tufts, etc.). The ones in between though, the ones trying to buy talent to up their ranking profile do this in a major way. It’s been a while, but our EFC was high enough to not qualify for need based aid anywhere. We didn’t even fill out forms. Between the value of WUE and straight up tuition deductions, our son’s cumulative award was around $400,000. That was from Cal Poly, Utah, Colorado State, Oregon State, CWRU, RPI and WPI.
I have seen in the past, schools who had a formula for merit scholarships i.e. U of Roch. have taken it out and moved it behind the disguise of being holistic review. The more the school wants your kid to attend, the bigger the “merit” pie they give.
However, that is not true of most schools as you’ve stated.
Off the top of my head most schools that have moved in that direction recently are more selective. Tulane comes to mind. There are many universities and LACs that offer merit to attract high stat students. Some, like Alabama or Miami-Ohio, list the merit that will automatically be offered based on GPA and test scores. Straight up on academic merit. Not financial need.
That is correct. I agree with that. And it has absolutely nothing to do with financial need.
That’s exactly how merit scholarships work. They’re meant to attract highly qualified students that might otherwise go elsewhere. And they’re based on academic achievements (and sometimes other EC achievements). If there’s a need component then they’re not really merit scholarships.
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