Medical school has traditionally been heavy with students from high income families. See https://www.aamc.org/media/5776/download which shows that about half of medical school students come from the highest quintile (20%) of family income. Although this may be a lower family income distribution than a typical elite private college (where half of the students come from the top 5% or so of family income), the “middle-middle-class” is still much less represented than the upper-middle to upper class.
Let’s put it this way, IMO and looking at datasets, it is far better to be wealthy when applying to 99.9% colleges. This is especially true for T50 schools that are not ivy league or public ivies. There are maybe 2-3 other schools are like that. Very few schools are truly need blind.
Probably about 70% of colleges are need-blind for individual applicants, although that may not apply to decisions made before the admissions cycle (e.g. whether to increase or decrease legacy preference which tips the SES distribution upward and therefore the overall financial need downward).
Note also that many less selective colleges admit by a formula of GPA, class rank, and/or SAT/ACT scores, without anything else. There are also, of course, open admission community colleges.
But need blind admission does not necessarily mean that the college will be affordable to students who have less money.
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Right off the bat, the study states that the median income of the entering med school class for 2006 was $100k. That would not have qualified as upper middle class even back then. Sorry, but med school has always been a favored pathway into the middle-class for many, many generations of Americans.
$103k was where the top quintile of family income started in 2006 in the US, according to census data.
http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/sipp/2004-panel/2004-ann-income/tab1B_2006.xls . I.e. it is consistent with about half of medical school students coming from top quintile income families.
Right now it’s a pretty inefficient pathway, if indeed that’s the goal. When a college grad’s classmates and peers are just hitting their stride professionally , the young doctor is making do on a resident’s salary. So in addition to the out of pocket costs of med school, you’ve got the opportunity costs of the wages, increases, contributions to retirement funds, etc. as someone launches as a physician. You’d do better entering a 15 week coding academy if the goal is a “favored pathway” into the middle class!
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Fifteen weeks after graduation, sure. Fifteen years as an entry-level Google employee, are you sure about that?
Honestly, the underlying assumption that just because a student is first gen/lower income, they don’t deserve the same dreams and aspirations as someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth is kind of disappointing and frankly shocking.
Circuit- you made the point that med school is a favored pathway to the middle class. I’m pointing out that there need to be other “dreams and aspirations” in order to make med school a solid option- given the number of years out of the work force you’ll be after getting a BA. There is nothing shocking about that. That’s reality of how medical education works in this country. I’ve interviewed lots of kids from immigrant families, a few years in the US, who have considered med school but have opted for a corporate career (at least for a few years post-grad). In their own countries, you could start studying medicine at age 18, qualify as a physician in your early 20’s, get a good job (civil service in many countries) while your US counterpart is still in medical school.
Reality may be harsh, but better than deluding kids into thinking that they’ll be making “the big bucks” after med school.
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Also, medical school in many other countries is much less costly to the student (and/or family) than it is in the US, so the physicians entering practice can live better on lower pay because they are not trying to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical school debt.
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Hey, nothing wrong with entering med school after working a few years. It’s much more common than you might think. The point is that making that a goal begins with good advising and resources both while an undergraduate and even after when the good offices of a career center continue to be available to alumni.
I am well aware of that. See my comment above. I have hired MANY new grads who leave after a few years for med school. Why would you think this is news to me?
I don’t know. I’m still puzzled by why you think working for Google is a more satisfying career than being a doctor?
I never said it was more satisfying. I did say (or imply) that it is a faster pathway to the middle class than medical school- and I stand by that. My point was that there needs to be MUCH more than just financial stability as the motivator for med school and a career as a physician, given the financial sacrifices that a low income kid is going to be making…just like a kid from a high income family, the motivator can’t just be financial. The days when any doctor could manage an outsize salary are mostly over (for now). A stable income as a hospitalist in primary care? Yes. But that still takes years of study after the Bachelor’s. So not the fast route at all.
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The back-and-forth amongst the 3 posters above, if it needs to continue at all, needs to move to PM
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Brown just became no loan starting this year!
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Okay, my bad. I should not have ended a CC post with an open-ended question. LOL. 
So, let’s look at this another way, OP. From the college’s POV. I think we’re in agreement that being low-income isn’t enough; you have to couple your SES with something else that the college is looking for: URMs, geographic diversity, or in your unusual situation - your legacy status.
What else are colleges looking for? Uh, like, maybe… filling seats in under-utilized facilities? Look at where elite colleges invest the most money. By all accounts, it is in their science facilities. But, look at these latest numbers for baccalaureate degrees awarded at Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst:
Wesleyan - Biochemistry, Biophysics and Moleculat Biology - 36
Economics - 100
Williams - General Biology - 56
Economics - 135
Amherst General Biology - 35
Economics - 74
This represents a distinct shift in the popularity of Economics and the traditional “life sciences” of Biology and Chemistry since the Great Recession of 2009 and I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that the virtual disappearance of the “donut hole” families - the families that have a hard time qualifying for much need-based financial aid but too “poor” to afford full tuition - has compounded the problem.
Needless to say, outside of the huge research universities with engineering programs to support, no elite college that I’m aware of is scouring the planet for more comp sci majors.
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I’m not sure what you’re trying to illustrate with the popularity of the econ major. Very few students who major in econ are going to become economists. Econ is popular with students who don’t know what other specialty they want to choose and it’s just as good as any other major for a generalist. Colleges do build fancy science facilities for research and some also build them to attract students, not just science students, but many of them want to attract more students into their humanity departments because they have fixed cost for running these departments.
I’m not sure which part of my earlier post was so unclear that 2 of the 3 offenders needed to jump back in.
If you’re not addressing the OP, don’t engage.
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I can’t find the book, but more than a decade ago I read one all about legacy status with the top tier colleges. It suggested that this advantage is dropped for anyone who couldn’t turn an Ivy-league degree into a career that pays enough to fund their children’s college costs. I do not know if this was/is true, but my Harvard BS+PhD friend mentioned something similar once (and she falls into this category, of not having turned her degrees into a high-paying career). Even if that was true when the book was published, it may not be true now since the cost of attendance has risen so much.
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That’s really a speculative question that doesn’t have a clear answer. The best thing we could say is maybe…maybe not. The admissions process is highly subjective and differs widely from school to school. There’s a lot of “things” they could take into account. All you can do is put in an application and see what happens. If you get in…GREAT! If you don’t, they’re not going to tell you why anyway,
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