Look here: http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
Your parents would only have to pay room and board.
OP, my usual advice would be to go ahead and apply to your dream schools, since you have good stats and you never know (until you try) who might give you a great merit/aid package. Cast a wide net and include a few financial safeties that you would be happy to attend in case all of the dream schools turn out to be stingy.
BUT, this would not be my advice for YOU, since it seems that it would be very hard for you to turn down a “dream” acceptance even if the price is insensible. Therefore, my advice to you is to refrain from applying to the expensive schools. My fear for you is that you would either find a drastic and poorly planned way to attend even without the necessary aid, OR that you would agree to pass on the “dream” but live in the unhappy world of “I could have attended…” And be miserable at whatever school you do attend.
OP, your parents’ financial situation is not going to result in you getting the financial aid you need to attend the pricey schools. Please, take a couple of days to grieve your loss, and then come back ready to find schools with automatic merit aid that can be a good fit for you.
Premed should equal No Loans. Period. Or as little debt as you can get away with. Keep the big picture in your mind. MED SCHOOL. That is your focus. Undergrad focus is on keeping your grades up, volunteering/interning/researching in a related medical area and making good connections with professors to get good letters of recommendation.
Good luck to you!
Is your dream to work in your desired profession? Then your dream school will be the one that helps you achieve that dream. Choosing a “prestigious” school where you will be weeded out of pre-Med doesn’t sound like a dream…
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Choosing a “prestigious” school where you will be weeded out of pre-Med doesn’t sound like a dream…
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This is sooooo true.
I have been following the premed forums here on CC and on Student Doctor Network for many years. It is very sad to see kids choosing a “reach” school for their premed undergrad, and then see them end up with a GPA that isn’t med school worthy.
There is a parent here on CC whose child went thru the med school app process last year. The child went to a Top 5 school - one that everyone drools over. She ended up with a 3.5 GPA and a qualified MCAT. She applied to about 20 MD med schools. She got NO interviews…none. I’m sure that she and her parents thought that the “big name” would nudge her app to the interview list. Nope.
The above family was full-pay at this school. Do you think that they are now thinking, “what the heck? She could have gone to X, Y, or Z good school with a nice merit scholarship, and have gotten a higher GPA. She would have likely had a very different med school application result.” I’m sure they are. (Can you imagine if they had taken out loans to afford this school??? ugh!)
It’s very hard for a traditional unhooked MD applicant to get in with a 3.5 GPA. (traditional meaning someone applying within a year of graduation or earlier. You will see in the stats records students getting in with below a 3.5, but generally those are hooked students or non-trads who had to do grade-repair. Two of my son’s housemates are former Div I football players…one from Auburn and one from Oregon. They are both older because they had to do “grade repair” and “post-baccs” after they got out of college.).
There is a student here on CC who was attending UTexas-Dallas, a very fine school, known for sciences, and had a 4.0 GPA. He thought he needed a “name” school as a premed, so he transferred to Vandy. Wrong decision. His GPA is now not med school worthy. He will probably have to do a Special Masters Program or something to repair his situation…or change his career goal.
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3.9 gpa, 2220 sat,
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I don’t want to imply that few from top schools get into med school. Obviously that is not true. The issue is the risk. All schools weed, even the top schools that otherwise have grade-inflation. In the premed prereqs, someone has to get the B’s and C’s or ugh worse. If you’re in a top school where all your premed classmates have stats like yours or BETTER, you’ve just worsened your chances of emerging with the A’s.
The top schools have the same issue as other schools. Every year, a huge number of frosh declare premed. By the end of frosh year, a chunk have moved onto something else. By the end of soph year, another chunk have moved on to something else. After the remaining premeds get their MCAT scores, some move on to something else. When it comes time to submit med school apps, only about 1/4 of the original remain.
I also don’t want to imply that going to a “lesser school” will guarantee you a high GPA. You’ll still have to study and do well. It will still be hard work. The difference will be that every premed classmate won’t be an ACT 33 - 36 student (or SAT equivalent.) At a “lesser school,” your premed classmates will more likely be ACT 27 - 36 ACT. You’ll still be around smart kids, but you’ll be swimming with fewer sharks.
There are several things about the med school app process that may seem counter-intuitive. Some wrongly think that a “big name” helps. Or, they’ll think that double majors or having several minors impresses Adcoms. Or, they think that a “harder major” will impress the Adcoms so they’ll overlook a problem GPA.
I miswrote the below:
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BTW....you CANNOT work AT ALL when in med school. When in med school, you do NOT get summers off.
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This summer, at most, my son has gotten one month off while in med school. This summer, he got NO DAYS off.
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Should be:
While in med school, at most, my son has gotten one month off. This summer, he got NO DAYs off. It is virtually impossible to work and earn money while in med school.
So negative.
Run the Net Price Calculator on your dream schools and see what kind of financial aid you are likely to get. If it’s very little or not enough, your options are the 1) private loan route, 2) merit money route, 3) affordable college route.
The private loan route is the one everybody is advising you against, but only you and your parents know the true financial situation. It may be a route that isn’t out of the question for them despite what the naysayers here say. You have to do the math though. You’d need a co-signer, so they are involved.
I’m not saying that is what you should do, but it’s an option you need to explore with math and healthy skepticism, not panic.
It is hard to run the NPC with divorced parents, though, including remarriages. How would you suggest that the OP do that? Worst case is to have both parents run it (including stepparent data) and add the EFCs together. But odds are high given the OP’s description that the combined EFCs will be far out of his reach.
And even if enough money was scraped up for undergrad by cosigning private loans, who will be paying for med school?
NOT negative, pragmatic.
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The private loan route is the one everybody is advising you against, but only you and your parents know the true financial situation.
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@classicrockerdad I would propose that NO ONE knows the true situation, not even the parents. When parents are divorced and one is remarried, it can be difficult to know what the real situation is. And, at some point, the single parent may remarry, adding a whole 'nother complication.
We’ve seen this sort of thing too many times on CC. Here we have a situation where “one side” has an income that appears to be twice that of the other “side”. You think things are going to go smoothly all four years while one side has half the income? You think that the lower income side is going to want to co-sign half the loans?
And…NPCs aren’t accurate when parents are divorced, and not accurate when there are business deductions.
The idea of taking out private loans for an undergrad premed is just so wrong-headed. Medical school alone will be $250k-350k+ by the time this student would be in med school. Right NOW, private med schools have COAs that are around $80k per year. 4-8 years from now, those will likely be close to $100k per year. My son’s public instate SOM is about $50k per year…and that’s right now. I’ve been tracking the cost for about 7 years now. The tuition has more than doubled during that time.
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They just have no savings and it will be impossible for them to pay for my college because of the expensive living costs.
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So, how would they help him pay back any of these loans? And god-only-knows if they’ll be able to repeatedly qualify to co-sign.
Most parents do not deserve the financial risk involved with co-signing. A parent here on CC co-signed their student’s loans because the student was headed towards a high-paying career. The student went onto grad school and commenced the high paying career. A potential health crisis with this rather newly employed child almost derailed everything. The potential health issue could have resulted in the person being unemployed for a long long time. The parent rightfully panicked because they couldn’t afford the make the payments on those co-signed loans.
And…CRD…did you know that if the co-signer dies, then the student has to pay back the loan immediately??
CRD…I know that you’re a big fan of taking out big loans for MIT-like schools. In some cases, maybe that can be justified. You’re not divorced, and you and your spouse have a high income. This family (either side) has no savings and no “left over” money each month. Your situation is different.
If this student is serious about med school, then borrowing in his situation is just too risky.
Sure, it’s ok for the student to apply to one or two, “just to see,” but only if he is prepared to “walk away” if a bunch of debt is needed.
Can I add a dose of “negative reality”? I borrowed for 4 years post Bachelors. My loan payment was over $1200 a month in the early 90s. That is a ton when your starting salary is below $40k. It took 18 years to pay back. Years where I could save nothing.
My hair dresser says her daughter’s payment is $2300 a month. She is s teacher.
It’s about not ham-stringing yourself before the game even starts. Advice from someone who has been there.
CRD- there are a couple of types of divorced families. There are the types where other than the parents no longer living together, everyone is focused on giving the kids the most normal kind of upbringing possible (as they define normal, and within their limitations and means). There are the types where it’s practically nuclear winter, and every move by one parent is countered by the other, and the kids are mostly collateral damage. And then every variation between these two.
Even in the most amicable divorced family, tensions start to climb when one party has remarried and it’s time to plan for little Johnny to head to college. The money that was mentally earmarked for college may have gone to the lawyers. The borrowing power of one parent may have doubled due to a remarriage (but that parent is not interested in going into debt for someone else’s kid) and the borrowing power of the other parent might well be zero due to disparities in earnings, pension, home equity and all the other issues that get decided in court (but not always with an eye towards financing college for the kids).
So while philosophically I tend to agree with you- sometimes educational debt is the best possible way to achieve one’s goals, and the only investment that always pays off is investing in your own human capital, I am always leery about encouraging kids like the OP to take out big loans.
Why? Because the kids rarely have transparency into their parents divorce, and if they did, most of the time, they’d opt NOT to borrow big time. They often borrow because one parent assures them that “I’ll help you pay off the loans early”, without knowing that this was the parent whose fiscal irresponsibility caused much of the friction in the marriage. Or they borrow because the other parent assures them that the new spouse “really wants to help out but he’s got a cash-flow situation right now, so take the loans and we’ll make good on them once you graduate” without knowing that this was the parent whose inability to deal with reality was part of the toxic dynamic of the marriage.
And so on.
So I tend to advise children of divorce to get a detailed understanding of who is willing to pay for what (NOT who can afford to pay for what), and then figure out how to meet the gap. Big loans co-signed by a non-custodial parent, or co-signed by dad’s new wife, or co-signed by the custodial parent who is already in over his/her head living in the marital house which is unaffordable- I’ve seen these situations and they are not pretty. And of course- the poor kid who has to live with the debt…
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Can I add a dose of “negative reality”? I borrowed for 4 years post Bachelors. My loan payment was over $1200 a month in the early 90s. That is a ton when your starting salary is below $40k. It took 18 years to pay back. Years where I could save nothing.
My hair dresser says her daughter’s payment is $2300 a month. She is s teacher.
It’s about not ham-stringing yourself before the game even starts. Advice from someone who has been there.
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Wow @HRSMom Thank you for sharing. (your poor hairdresser’s DD…no pun intended. )
Seriously, when you ham-string yourself like that, you have so few choices…
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live at home (if you can) and pay back the debt. BUT…often your new job isn’t near the parents, or they no longer have room for you, OR you’re now in a romantic relationship and don’t want to live at home.
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live with a SO who is willing to support you while you focus on all that debt. (good luck with that option these days!)
I know a couple who recently “moved in together” and one has now learned that the other has almost $100k in student loan debt, which will soon require payments since they graduated in June. That’s a real smack in the face. The one without the debt will soon find herself having to solely fund things that she likely though would be shared costs.
PLUS loans are discharged at the borrowers debt. So it’s better if your parents take out the loans and you pay them back or not - I wouldn’t saddle my kids with debt. The parents can calculate how much they can borrow and whether it makes sense for them.
I just refuse to assume that everybody else is an idiot. If people do the math and feel they can afford the loans, then it could be worth it. If they do the math and can’t afford the loans then they shouldn’t do it. If they feel that it isn’t worth it, they shouldn’t do the loans. It’s not a one size all proposition.
I’m not going to make any assumptions about divorces, or anything. People need to talk and do math. Everything else is just speculation.
@blossom is right.
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...I am always leery about encouraging kids like the OP to take out big loans.
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Why? Because the kids rarely have transparency into their parents divorce, and if they did, most of the time, they’d opt NOT to borrow big time. They often borrow because one parent assures them that “I’ll help you pay off the loans early”, without knowing that this was the parent whose fiscal irresponsibility caused much of the friction in the marriage.
Or they borrow because the other parent assures them that the new spouse “really wants to help out but he’s got a cash-flow situation right now, so take the loans and we’ll make good on them once you graduate” without knowing that this was the parent whose inability to deal with reality was part of the toxic dynamic of the marriage.
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So much of the above is sooo true. Kids rarely have transparency, even when parents’ marriage is still intact. And it really doesn’t exist when the household has split. And one parent really only knows about “the other parent” from the history of the marriage. He/she really doesn’t know how financially-sound (or unsound) their ex-spouse is.
If divorced parents have an iron-clad fully-funded college savings acct for the kid(s), then super. Short of that, each year can drastically change.
This past school year, around Oct/Nov timeframe, there was a frantic mom whose child wasn’t able to register for spring classes because his fall semester still had an outstanding balance. The mom had paid for “half” the cost, and her exH was supposed to pay the other 'half" (and had told their son that he had…which turned out to be a LIE.). The kid already had max fed loans, so that couldn’t help. Her credit had been hurt as a result of the divorce, so she couldn’t qualify for Plus. I don’t know what happened after that. He may have had to drop out, I don’t know.
Sybbie is so right that sometimes the parent that was “bad with money” during the marriage is the one advising the child in the wrong direction. Many of us have seen that happen within our extended families. That’s why we often cringe when someone says, “well, the parents know whether they can afford it or not.” I can assure you that my sister-in-law who borrowed a lot for her child’s undergrad did not know what she was doing. She is now unemployed and her H is under-employed…and the debt…well it’s still there…not getting paid.
Obviously, the person borrowing the money needs to take responsibility for it. I don’t see where the divorce factors in. If a parents wants to borrow money for their kids education, they can figure out if they can or can’t afford it. Why assume that everyone is incompetent?
@ClassicRockerDad, I don’t think anyone is assuming anything about OP other than what OP told us. The point everyone is trying to make is that this OP, who is a child, needs to be very careful about assuming debt because OP cannot possibly know what the adults’ circumstances are. These circumstances may not have been communicated to the child, either purposefully or innocently. This is a determination nobody here can make, but it is a determination that absolutely, positively needs to be made by the people in question.
The OP cannot control the adults in her life, but she can control her own actions. In that case, the prudent course would be to take those amazing stats and find as free a ride as possible.
I think it is hard to grasp the full implication of $XXX per month without understanding all the other expenses for an adult. You can guess at a salary, but rent, utilities, food, car, etc is all just noise unless you have been there. it is not that anyone thinks people are idiots. They are just inexperienced in life and all the expenses and surprises that come with it.
Classic, you must have a circle of fiscally responsible friends and family members who would NEVER take on more debt than they could handle, and would NEVER co-sign for a loan where they know they just don’t have the cash flow (regardless of what the bank thinks) to cover the payments, and would NEVER tap their home equity line of credit for a college loan even though they need to sell the house in four years to move to a less expensive state for retirement, and would NEVER stop paying on a term life insurance policy to free up cash to cover college loan payments and then drop dead leaving a minor child and unemployed spouse to “manage” without life insurance.
I wish I had your circle, because in mine, all of the above has happened. The drop in housing values in 2008 revealed some very bad college financing choices. People who work for me have walked into my office to ask for a raise and revealed the details of some very bad planning and loan-taking. I think it’s particularly bad when there is a divorce, mainly because second spouses and significant others rarely care as much about educating their partners kids as the original spouse does.
But bad planning all around. Invite me to your next party so I can meet your mathematically gifted and credit-worthy friends!!!
Would the housing bubble be an example of adults taking on too much debt?
^^^^^ not to mention accidents/injuries/devastating illnesses that lead to horrific medical bills/time off work… so not even bad planning, just really bad luck.