I was wondering if anyone had any genuine advice to give on a public vs. private debate. I would really like to talk to my high school counselor about this, but thus far the majority of students at my school, including myself, have agreed that the counselors push us to attend CC above all else (and I would prefer information without bias). I don’t see CC as an option because my hometown leans toward being homophobic and it is not a good environment for me personally.
My options come down to paying around $30k a year for a private school or <$22k a year for a public institution. My parents cannot contribute more than a max of $22k a year, and I will be paying for all my textbooks and living expenses outside room + board myself.
I want to major in biology on a pre-med track. I am wondering if attending a private university and assumably placing myself in debt is worth it. I feel a private school may look better when applying to med school, is this true?
The public universities I am looking at are UIC and Iowa State. I am concerned that UIC is too big; I visited campus multiple times and felt like I could get “lost” there pretty easily my freshman year. Also, without Honors College it would be unaffordable, and I am unsure when/if I will be notified of an interview date. However, I love Chicago and the research opportunities at UIC. It is also only a train ride away from home. Iowa State is likely my most cost-friendly opportunity but I am concerned about its rural location. Experiences in my hometown have made me wary of attending a “rural” university, which is why I ruled out UIUC. Is either of these schools known for pre-med? Would you suggest one or the other?
I have been accepted to both Iowa and UIC. I am waiting to hear back from private universities, but I’d like to a have a realistic view of things before getting my ducks in a row. I’m open to any and all advice, thank you !
There are basically two routes to make school affordable in your situation, where you have significant family resources but full pay OOS or private would not work (like for many students/families).
–Merit aid: depends on your application (test scores, grades, etc.). Obviously depends a lot on your record. Some OOS schools that might fit the bill in that they are more urban, diverse, etc. might be Universities of Arizona and New Mexico.
–Financial Aid: a pretty large list of private schools claim to meet full financial need–you pay what you can, they absorb the rest. Some important caveats: these schools may be “need aware,” admission is more difficult if you aren’t paying full price because few schools can afford to have only a few students paying; they may calculate that your family can pay more than your family feels it can actually pay, so, for example, a school costs $70k a year and gives you a $30k scholarship, but you are still short $18k per year ($40k-$22k your family can pay). But some schools that seem to claim to meet full financial need that would be good for bio, pre-med, and in general, without being ridiculously competitive (i.e. Harvard): Bates College (I love), Beloit, Brandeis, Clark U. (Worcester, MA), Connecticut College, Kalamazoo College, Kenyon (small town, almost no town, but great school), Smith (all female), Vassar, Wellesley. Some or all might be a challenge for you in terms of admission, they are all competitive though you have a good start with your acceptances. There are others, but most would be extremely competitive and/or Greek, conservative, etc.
Explore some of these, and see if they appeal. If so run the Net Price Calculator (NPC), which you can usually find by typing that after a school’s name. See if they might be affordable. It’s a challenge but having fun with the exploration.
Iowa State is a good school. I personally would not be concerned with UIUC. Lots of diversity. No one cares about your life choices. Just be yourself at college. I also agree with Beloit.
If looking for some 3/2 private schools connected to premed with good merit "program for pre med I assume you are in Illinois… Check out both Knox college and Illinois Wesleyan University.
Have you visited ISU? I think they are making strides in the area of LGBTQ support. They will help you find an appropriate and compatible roommate assignment, for example.
BEWARE of GC’s that blindly push community college route. There was an IL student who posted last year. He had an ACT 33 and high GPA in high school. His GC just blindly pushed all students to go “CC to Univ” route without any thought about merit scholarships. He posted as a soph in CC asking for transfer merit. Unfortunately, he sadly learned that he missed the big merit boat. I don’t know what he ended up doing because he stopped posting, but it was clear that he was hitting a brick wall when it came to coming up with funding for those last 2 years (couldn’t qualify for enough need-based anywhere and parents could only pay maybe 8-10k per year…and he didn’t live close enough to any 4 year to commute)
So if you have the stats to grab BIG MERIT as an incoming frosh, do so.
Med schools have NO PREFERENCE…they don’t care if you go to private or public univs.
MOST med students went to public univs!!!
People often make missteps on the premed route because they “think” or they “feel” that something will “look better” to med schools. They’re often very wrong. Some of the premed route is counter-intuitive, so please start posting in the premed section here on College Confidential.
For disclosure: my son is a new physician…graduated from med school in 2017. We learned a lot during the whole premed, med school process and share what was learned.
AVOID debt as an undergrad if you’re premed. You’re already going to have BIG debt from med school. You’d end up with ridiculous debt if you also have undergrad debt (which all will grow during the very long process…please realize that many new doc residents are earning too little and their loans are still on hold…growing and growing…so debt isn’t even attacked until many, many years later…and it’s huge by then!!)
What are your stats???
About UIC or any univ being large… don’t let that scare you. Besides, isn’t Iowa State huge too???
I don’t know about UIC particularly, but big univs are often laid out in a way where buildings are clumped by type, so you’re really not taking classes in all four corners of the univ. One corner may be where the business school is. One corner may be where engineering and STEM are. The school may try to have Gen Ed classes sort of centrally located.
And really, once you’re in your major, you’ll be spending most of your time in just a few buildings.
Do you have any AP credits? If so, which ones?
Your parents will pay $22k per year…I think we can find options that will work with that.
What are your single sitting ACT/SAT scores and GPA
All known schools are fine for premed. They all have successful premeds. Keep in mind that premed prereqs are just regular science classes. There’s nothing medical about them. They don’t prep for MCAT. That is all on you.
You’re right to avoid UIUC, too expensive if you’re OOS.
What about UIowa?
Let me get you the med school app numbers for these schools…
Yes, pre-med is really about how you do in school, not where you go.
A big tip, which we got from a pre-med advisor at a top national university: get a tutor at the beginning of fall and spring semester, especially for any math and science classes. These can be very challenging for freshmen. And they weed out a lot of pre-med students. The advisor said that the vast majority of the small number of students who received A’s in the organic chem class they taught had gotten tutors at the beginning of the semester, and had beaten the rush when everyone bombed the first mid-term.Getting a tutor is not a sign of academic weakness; it is a sign of academic strength. And you are paying a lot of money for your education. Why not take advantage of one-on-one learning sessions offered as part of your education?
Also, get to know your profs? Sure some are misanthropic. But the vast, vast majority want to know their students. They want to root for them. They want to TEACH them. Again, your profs will have office hours where they will be available to meet with you. What’s a better way of learning than sitting down one-on-one with your professor? Students don’t like to go because they don’t want the prof to know what they don’t know. A) They know it anyway. B) If a student is coming up short somewhere, better to correct it before the exam, when the prof will surely know anyway. And, regularly going by office hours creates good incentive to keep up with your work, and helps you learn to interact with a knowledgable professional.
Last point, med schools now place a great emphasis on service hours and some scientific/medical experience. They want to know you really do like medicine and can succeed at it. So at some point, start looking for volunteer opportunities, lab opportunities, shadowing opportunities, etc. They will be there, even if that sounds daunting now.
So you have some great choices, which are very much able to prepare you for med school. Maybe you can find a few more affordable possibilities among the suggestions.
@mom2collegekids, Thank you for the advice! My high school is so small it doesn’t even offer AP/dual credit/IB courses. I chose to not take the 2 CC classes (not dual credit, just located at the high school) offered senior year because I was unsure if they would even transfer.
Stats: 1410 SAT, 3.78 unweighted GPA. (School does not weight either.) I took classes that would be considered “advanced” or honors-level such as accelerated math, human anatomy, etc. I took 6 science classes but unfortunately, nothing counts as AP.
I don’t know how much leadership/job experience plays into merit, but I worked 4 jobs throughout the course of high school, and currently put in about 15 hours a week at a fast-food restaurant. I’m also president of my school’s German Club and co-founded the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.
I think my stats are hurt by the lack of a weighted or advanced system, but there’s nothing I can do to help it.
Don’t worry about Iowa State being too rural. Ames is a great college town. You will not feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. Ames is larger than you think, especially when the school is in session, making the entire Ames population 90,000+.
UIC has its appeals, including a very good medical center, but it won’t provide you with the traditional college experience that Iowa State will. I don’t know how much importance you place on that, though (dorm life, parties, big time football). I assume you would be commuting to UIC?
As for med school, as @allyphoe states, there’s no secret path to medical school (or graduate school for that matter). Earn top grades. Study for the MCAT and earn a top score. Secure outstanding (not just very good) letters of rec. Participate in relevant and interesting opportunities and activities. For top medical schools, perfect grades and test scores are not enough. That said, I do think that the appeal of certain private schools, such as LACs, is that students are in a smaller environment with direct access to profs, who often become friends/mentors that students know on a first-name basis. This can help with the brutal slog that is pre-med. History is littered with the bones of once-hopeful pre-med students, so sometimes being in that introductory chemistry class that is thirty students instead of 100 or 150 can help some learners. Still, the general advice to go where it will be cheapest is almost always the best.
@TTG, Thank you for your reply! I have some friends in CC right now struggling through organic chem and calculus and I believe they started tutoring ASAP.
Also, your advice was really great, I want to file it away for next fall.
I’m interested to know which private schools you have applied to so far, some will offer MUCH more financial aid than others. You should look into private schools that offer high amounts of financial aid. For example, I go to Pomona College and they offered me a lot more financial aid than I was ever expecting and has made college affordable for me. Also super accepting of LGBTQA!!
@SienaRose, I applied to SLU (accepted), and am waiting to hear back from Reed College and Tulane University. I also applied to Brown and Dartmouth despite being on the lower spectrum of their stats. I am debating applying to Wellesley.
I am not sure how well SLU meets demonstrated financial need, but I have a gut feeling net will be around $30k a year.
Also–how do you like the size of Pomona? I’m attracted to a smaller school setting but haven’t had the chance to visit Reed or Wellesley, though Wellesley is larger.
Medical schools will not care at all about whether you attended a private or public university. They will care about whether you got a very high GPA and a high MCAT score. They will also care about whether you have experience volunteering or otherwise working in a medical environment.
Medical school is expensive. If you make it to medical school, then you will care about minimizing your debt as much as possible. If you don’t make it to medical school, then you will care about having as little debt as possible when you decide what else to do instead.
“pre-med is really about how you do in school, not where you go.”
Exactly. Premed at Iowa State will be tough. Premed at any of at least 300 other universities will be tough. Plan to work VERY hard in university if you want to get into medical school.
In my experience the large majority of students and faculty and other employees in nearly every university are very tolerant of a rather wide view of people, lifestyles, and sexual orientations. Be kind to people, treat everyone with respect, and you should be fine on any of the campuses that were mentioned in this thread. Be aware that there are some jerks anywhere, but they will be in small number on a wide range of campuses.
In my opinion, $8K (or so) is not necessarily too big a price premium to pay if you think it will buy a better academic/social experience. That is near the upper limit of what a student reasonably can be expected to cover from “self help” (federal student loans + work study/savings/summer jobs).
What constitutes a better academic/social experience? Hard to say precisely, but it may not translate to any significant advantage with med school admissions. It may even translate to more debt and a lower GPA, both of which could disadvantage you for med school. But it really depends on specific situations. Personally, I think Reed/Dartmouth/Brown/Wellesley are all worth some price premium over UIC or Iowa State, possibly irrespective of the med school factors. The net costs for the private schools may even turn out to be lower.
This is very true. College students are pretty accepting people. Everywhere there will some nuts, but they will be the exception, not the rule.
Being premed will hard everywhere. The prereqs are weeder courses, so try to review your textbooks befor classes start. AND, please understand that profs aren’t like high school teachers. Profs will test you on stuff that was not presented in class, so you have to really study your textbooks, including pictures, charts, etc. And, unlike high school teachers, profs don’t usually give you a “study guide” which essentially tells you what’s going to be on the tests.
One reason why so many “honor students” do so poorly in premed prereqs or STEM classes, is that it’s the first time that they’ve been tested on things that weren’t presents (spoon fed) in class.
^After making all A+s in high school, I got a 45 on my very first college exam, in honors physics! And there wasn’t that much of a curve. I dug in, got a tutor, and ended up graduating with high honors. But that first semester was a shock.
