My daughter is a rising senior, who is at the tail end of the college search process. She plans on playing basketball in college and is deciding between a D2 upper Midwest state school and some of the top schools in the NESCAC. She recently visited the D2 school and was offered a full scholarship for four years. She liked the school and the team quite a bit. She would not qualify for any financial aid from the NESCAC schools, so we’d be paying full tuition/room/board out of pocket. Going into the process, I envisioned her going to a top D3 school, so I am trying to wrap my head around the idea of her going to a larger state school that doesn’t have the academic prestige. She is a 4.0 student and first in her class of 400. Her ACT score is 31. I think that she could balance basketball/academics at the D2 school and have a good shot at med school. She is doing a summer medical internship and a surgeon told her that in order to be admitted to med school, it was better to get a 3.8 at a less prestigious school than a 3.5 at a prestigious school.
Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated!
She should attend the school that gave her full scholarship. Med schools do not care much about where you went school they only care if your high Gpa and mcat scores and medical Ecs.
Athletic recruit? Your daughter may want to consider Amherst or Williams.
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/infographics/top-feeders-medical-school
Unless money is a complete non-factor for your family I’d have to strongly consider taking the full ride. Med school is quite expensive.
Is the full-ride conditioned upon her playing a sport?
@CrewDad: I have no doubt that the OP would consider Amherst or Williams if you are willing to pay.
^ good question.
We are fortunate to be financially comfortable. However, it is hard to justify paying $65-70k/yr for a NESCAC school followed by $55k/yr for our state medical school if the four years of college could be free.
The full ride is a basketball scholarship.
Woah. That puts a completely different spin on things.
Put aside the money for a second.Has your daughter asked the coach how many players in the past that he has had on his/her team that have been accepted into Med School.How will your daughter be able to manage missing practices for labs etc. Some coaches are great with academics first others not so much. That is one area where the NESCAC Schools really are strong.
You may want to ask this question on the 'Athletic Recruits" forum:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/
I also know that @twoinanddone has a NCAA scholarship D.
If she is good enough to get a scholarship for DivII, is she good enough to be recruited by the non-scholarship DivI schools? (Patriot and Ivy). Transfer to a DivIII school or those other schools could also be a possibility.
Even D3, without any scholarship riding on team membership, most athletes don’t do pre-med. Or so Amherst found in a study it commissioned on athletics. It was presumed to be in part a lab+time issue.
Before taking the scholarship, I’d ask her if she would ever consider going to that school if it were not free.
Two former basketball players have gone on to medical school. Team GPA has been 3.5-3.6 the last five years. Labs/classes come before bball practice.
She has had some interest from small D1 schools, but no offers. I think that the balance of academics/athletics is better at this school than most D1 schools (except Ivy). Thx for the advice re: Athletic Recruits forum.
@PurpleTitian
There’s no reason to make that offer. 
OP said “we’d be paying full tuition/room/board out of pocket.”
You can learn more about what it takes to get into med school by reading thru the very informative https://www.rhodes.edu/sites/default/files/PreMed_Essentials.pdf. There is also a good handbook at https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/gradstudy/health/guide and no doubt many other websites, as well as books.
Any college in the country offers the lower-division science and math tested on the MCAT. Whether she works for good grades, gets to know some profs to get strong recs, takes part in appropriate ECs, and develops compelling essays is up to her. Prestige doesn’t matter much, but GPA and MCAT scores certainly do! Browse thru the data at https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/ and you can see accept/apply charts based on these.
The real question to address at this point is not what college, but why an M.D? Has she looked into the medical field and considered the alternatives? Its almost a reflex action among HS kids, they think of a career in medicine and its “I’m pre-med!” Doctors are far from the only ones in the health field that help people. Physical therapists, radiology techs, nurses, speech pathologists, physician assistants, to name but just a few. Have her spend a few hours browsing on http://explorehealthcareers.org
But some do. The former captain of the women’s crew is now at Dartmouth Med.
Very True.
mikemac - Thanks for the info. My wife and I are both physicians. My daughter has spent time shadowing both of us in hospital/clinic. She has participated in a medical mentoring program with a local orthopedic surgeon. Believe me, my wife and I did not push her towards medicine! She knows more of the good and bad of medicine than most 17 yr olds and is still drawn towards it as a career.
@CrewDad - crew is a club at Amherst, not a varsity sport. A big time commitment to be sure, but not the same as a varsity sport. And the young woman you refer to also finished, I believe, at the very top of Dartmouth’s med school class.
If you haven’t read the athletic report you might be interested: https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/PlaceOfAthleticsAtAmherst_Secure_1.pdf
After scanning that report and from my own knowledge of Amherst, I think that the question is very sport-specific. There are few pre-meds on the football team (the team with by far the most athletes), but numerous pre-meds on the cross-country teams and the swimming teams, etc.