While I value the military and all that it does for us, I would like to suggest that you do NOT consider the military as a career. What potential benefits you may get financially toward school could easily be offset by damage to your body and/or mind once you enter into conflict. This is too great of a price to pay for an education, in my personal opinion.
There are many other ways to attend school and not acquire too much debt.
I would advise that if you keep your total debt load to about $33K or less, you’ll be fine in terms of paying it off. The less the better.
If you were my child, I’d suggest looking at the following schools –
Reed – it’s in Oregon, has good FA, is in Oregon, so you’d be close to home
Whitman – it’s in Washington, has good FA and 36% of its students received $11K (average) merit scholarships (and then you’d need to see the rest of their aid package to see what else they offer)
Hobart and William Smith – has a special scholarship for people interested in medicine among others – https://www.hws.edu/admissions/merit_based.aspx
Southwestern University in Texas – has excellent aid – https://www.southwestern.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/scholarships/ Average merit award is above $23K
Muhlenberg – has nice med programs – 30% of students receive sizeable merit
https://www.muhlenberg.edu/main/academics/health_professions/
If you’re female, schools that give merit plus need-based aid and are excellent for premed include:
- Bryn Mawr
- Smith
- Mt. Holyoke
Earlham – excellent premed prep, including uniquely a cadaver course – http://earlham.edu/academics/programs/pre-med/
St. Mary’s of California – has the other undergrad cadaver course and would offer you sizeable merit – https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/cutting-edge-human-anatomy-cadavers
There are many many other schools that you may want to look at. I would look for a combination of –
- schools that offer merit
- to get merit, you would need to be in the top approx. 75% of their applicant pool
- for premed NOT in California as there are too many people applying from CA that you’d compete with.
To find out #1, look at a website called CollegeData. Hit the “money” tab. That will tell you the percentage of merit, the average debt of the graduate, etc.
To find out #2, you can google and – that should pull up images of graphs of datapoints that show which were admitted and which were rejected by scores vs gpa. You can find yourself on the graph and that will help you determine if you’re in the top of their pool. CollegeData also lists the number of applicants by GPA. You can see where you stand in the applicant pool by using those numbers
To find out average cost for YOU for any school, go to College Navigator and hit the tab. That will show you average cost by income bracket. If you want a more precise number, run the net price calculator for you family’s data. https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/