I have a hard decision i’m trying to make. My top two undergraduate college choices are Emory University and Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU offered me a $5,000 scholarship and my parents can pay the rest of the yearly tuition so I don’t have any debt. Emory University is my top school choice, but offered my $11,000 in grant $5500 in loans and $2500 in work study. Is it worth it to take a parent plus loan for the rest of the $40,000 cost of attendance. If i go to emory, worst case scenario is i transfer back to VCU for the second year if i don’t get scholarships and significant financial aid for the second year at emory. Thanks
It is highly unlikely that you will get significant scholarships from Emory for your second year.
So…that being the case, why start there if VCU is OK with you.
Are you a VA resident? Did you apply to any other VA schools?
ETA…Emory is a terrific school…but $40,000 a year is too much debt.
I thought Emory met full need for all students accepted. Does your family not qualify for need based aid?
Well VCU is my safety school. There are other schools i got accepted to that i would much rather go to, but would cost about $30,000 after financial aid packages. My dad makes about $164,000 a year and the EFC was $40,000 for the FAFSA and about $80,000 for the CSS PROFILE. Emory originally gave us the $5500 in loans and $2500 in work study, but after the appeal they gave us the grant. I was looking over my dad’s finances and it seems that he has left over about $500 a month after taxes and bills, etc. BTW I want to major in Biology and go to medical school after college. I think going to emory will significantly increase my chance of getting into a better medical school.
If you plan to go to medical school, you want to keep your undergrad debt to a bare minimum. You also want to get the best possible grades and the very best possible MCAT score. The GPA and MCAT score will be what gets you into medical school, not the name of your undergrad school.
If Emory determined that your family contribution is in excess of their cost of attendance while the FAFSA is lower…than this implies some assets not reported on the FAFSA…home equity could be one. Or if your parent is self employed or owns a business, that could impact your family contribution.
There are a lot of wonderful instate public universities in VA. Instate costs would be terrific. Why did you choose VCU?
I chose it mainly because my dad wanted me to go there. Also, i was considering doing the guaranteed medical school admission program, but turned out didn’t applying because I hadn’t done the SAT yet (I’m an early high school graduate). I would not be able to apply to the GMed program as a current student until the end of my second and third year at college.
Well…you have some options.
You could continue HS for another year, and you could reapply to other VA instate public universities.
Well… I’ve considered that but I really don’t want to that. I’ve put a lot of effort and extra time after school and during the summer so I could graduate early. I don’t want to have to end up spending another year here.
I don’t think it is ever a good idea to spend $40k when you have other options that are a very good match for you. You are young. You don’t want to be 21 years old and owe $120k (along with your parents) and wanting to go to medical school but unable to afford more debt.
List all the things you like about Emery and see if you can find them at VCU. Courses, faculty, activities, internship opportunities. If you can’t, is there something about VCU that outshines Emery? Closer to home, better work opportunities, cheaper housing? The reason students are supposed to find a safety is so you’ll have somewhere to go if other options don’t work out, INCLUDING financially. There are thousands of kids who got accepted to colleges they want to go to but just can’t afford, and you are one of them.
Well, I really want to go to emory for a lot of reasons. For one, I want to become a Neurosurgeon and Emory’s pre med program is one of the top 20 in the nation, and top 10 for majoring in biology. The campus is beautiful, and there are a lot of research and internship opportunities. Plus, i’ll be surrounded by many brilliant peers. VCU i think wouldn’t challenge me academically, and could hurt my chances of going into a top medical school. I would live with my parents since its 30 minutes away. I don’t really know what to choose, Because I have equal number of people voting for each decision. Emory is great academically, but not so much financially. It seems like it would be a good choice for my long term goals. I’m thinking about going there for freshman year, and work really hard for scholarships. If i fail, i simply transfer to VCU, apply for a full scholarship (which isn’t very competitive, i just didn’t know about it until after the deadline), and complete the rest of my 3 years there. When I apply to medical schools, they’d see that I went to Emory for the first year, so that would probably significantly decrease my chances of being blown off from a great medical school because i went to a not-so-great undergraduate.
Why would you transfer to VCU? Why not JMU or GMU or UVA or WM? Lots of choices in VA?
Medical schools will not care that you went to Emery for freshman year, and won’t care that you graduated from there if your scores and gpa aren’t high. They really won’t.
I think you are rushing things and therefore missing deadlines. I know you don’t want to wait, but that is a costly decision. If you continue in high school for another year (and can you take mostly dual enrollment at a nearby community college?), you can reapply to any schools, including Emery, and apply for a lot of scholarships. You know so much more having done it once. I think you’d be very successful.
So, if I understand this correctly, you want your parents to borrow $160k for your undergrad degree. And they’re going to pay that off with the $500/mo. that your dad has leftover after paying all the bills every month. And then, once they’ve defaulted on that debt (‘cause, as it turns out, $500/mo. isn’t enough to pay off a $160k debt), they’re going to borrow another $300k to put you through medical school?
Just curious, did that accelerated high school program you just completed include any math classes?
Are there younger siblings?
yes, dodgersmom, I did take math classes FYI. First of all, they won’t borrow $160,000 for undergrad, at max, if i don’t get any scholarships during the school year, it will be $40,000. Second of all, you’re using simple calculations. You have to look at it from the long term. If i go to emory, the average ROI after 30 years is about $200,000 more than if I went to VCU. Third, its also kind of more of a moral dilemma. My mom wants me to go to Emory. However, she isn’t employed, but wants to get a job just to help pay off the loan we take if i go to emory. Again, like I said, I want to become a Neurosurgeon, which is extremely competive and rigorous to do. I think going to emory would help prepare me for my career goal, while I would have to work much harder out of class if I went to VCU to make up for the poor academics. Emory has much more notable alumni, and a lot of their undergraduates go to the ivy league. VCU’s notable alumni are mostly in sports while there are only 4 notable alumni in the field of medicine/science, who, by the way, attended its medical school, not undergraduate.
Sorry, I’m not coming up with the same numbers as you. If your parents have to pay 40k/year at Emory, that’s $160k over four years.
And the key to getting into med school is GPA & MCAT, not school name. If everything else is equal, they may look at that . . . but your job is to make sure that everything else isn’t equal! Be a stellar student with impressive extracurriculars, and that’s what’ll get their attention.
@mom2collegekids - you’re the med school expert. You want to jump in here?
By the way, that ROI figure you posted is fancy marketing. It sure as heck doesn’t justify the debt you’re asking your parents to take on.
Well, there’s your solution - go to VCU for both undergrad and med school!
If Emory costs $40k/year and you got $13k in grants, your net cost is $27k/year. By the time you graduate, that’s $120k. You can only borrow $27k, so your parents will be the ones borrowing $100k for your undergrad.
I agree with @dodgersmom. I don’t see how the $500/month your parents have left after paying their current bills translates into VCU being affordable (unless you’re commuting), much less an expensive school like Emory. What are your plans if your parents are approved for Plus loans for a year or two but then get denied? You’ll have no degree, no ability to borrow (other than the $7500 guaranteed student loan), and your parents will be paying that $50k+ loan so likely won’t be able to help you either. Even if they can borrow $100k for your undergrad, I doubt they’ll be able too keep borrowing at the rate you’ll need to get a $100k+/- medical degree.
Schools don’t generally offer large aid packages to sophs. What Emory gave you now is likely the best you’ll see from them. If you attend Emory for a year, you probably won’t qualify for large scholarships from VCU either. Make sure to check VCU for transfer scholarships to see what may be available.
an undergrad degree from Emory will NOT NOT NOT make you a higher paid doctor. It will not guarantee you acceptance into medical school. It will not guarantee you acceptance to a better medical school. It will not get you the residency specialty of your choice. And it will NOT guarantee you a higher income than a doctor who goes to a public university for undergraduate studies.
But it will leave you in more debt if you stay the four years. Actually…it will leave you in more debt even for ONE year.
And the likelihood of you being able to get $40,000 in scholarships for years two three and four at Emory is very very very small. Where do you think those scholarships are going to come from?
If your only affordable choice is VCU, then you applied to the wrong list of schools.
Stay in high school one more year. Can you take dual enrollment courses at VCU to meet your HS graduation requirements…or at a closer community college?
You apparently have decent enough SAT or ACT, and GPA to gain acceptance to Emory. There ARE schools where you would have garnered merit aid if your stats were high enough.
Your family can’t afford Emory for all four years, and it sounds like you totally ignored all of the other VA instate public universities.
To be honest, it sounds like you wanted Emory or nothing…or you would have applied to any number of instate schools in VA.
Your family has a high calculated family contribution. But apparently they can’t pay the cost for you to attend Emory.
I think her plan is to attend Emory for 1 year and then transfer if (when) no more aid is forthcoming to VCU which won’t require any debt.
This kind of highlights a problem that a lot of students face though – attending a more expensive ‘dream’ school for their first year or first two years and then having to transfer to a cheap school. The problem with this is that you’ll still have the original debt from the more expensive school but your degree will be from the cheaper school. The fact that the student is at Emory for one academic year won’t mean a lot; she will be considered a VCU grad if that’s where she finishes out her undergraduate career.
ROI is a misleading statistic when it comes to this scenario. You shouldn’t compare yourself to all VCU or all Emory undergrads but specifically to people seeking a career in medicine; for you, the road doesn’t end at a Bachelor’s degree. Your goal should to be make sure that you get into a good medical school and still have sufficient debt capacity to pay for that medical school. I understand what you’re saying about Emory but it’s important to have a long-term view of these things. What if Mom’s job doesn’t help as much as she anticipates? What if there’s some misfortune like a medical emergency or a layoff? When people stretch themselves thin it’s hard to guard against things like that. I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just advising you – if you haven’t done so yet – to get a clear picture from your parents about how much they are able to borrow over your entire education (not just undergrad) and how they’ll cope with that.
Good luck!
@austinmshauri - Unfortunately, the cost of attendance at Emory is around $60k. The 40k the OP mentioned is his parents’ out-of-pocket cost each year. And even at a state school, I think a $100k medical degree is a thing of the (distant) past. It’s likely to be two or three times that much.
Just want to second (or third) the notion that it doesn’t really matter where you go to undergrad as far as a medical school is concerned. My H attended Hopkins med school back in the day and first year he had 3 roommates; of the 4, one came from an Ivy (not HYP), one from a well-regarded state flagship school, one from a smaller state school, and the last from a private school I had never even heard of at the time. The rest of the class was similarly composed.
What they all had in common was an excellent college transcript and great scores on the MCAT.