<p>My friend and I both were admitted to ivies. She got into Dartmouth and is going there. I got into Cornell but am going to UGA to save money for grad/med school. Neither of us qualify for FA, so we'd both have to pay full tuition ($60k+ annually).</p>
<p>I thought I made the smart decision bc I could potentially get into a good med school and be able to pay for it since I saved my parents' money. Contrarily, if she got into the same medical school, she'd have to take out loans. Hypothetically, let's say I went from UGA to JHU Med School and she went from Dartmouth to JHU Med School. However, her mom was talking about it and it made me question my (my family's?) college decision. She said that employers will look not only at the grad/med school someone attended, but also the undergrad. If the person went to a bad undergrad like UGA, then they won't be hired. Is this true?! Please tell me any experiences you have with this.</p>
<p>It’s your last degree that matters. If u have a graduate/professional degree, no employer will care about your undergrad degree. Ten years on in the workforce, no one is even going to care about your graduate degree; people will only care about what company you worked at or what papers you have published lately.</p>
<p>You are making the smart decision, and you won’t be freezing your wazoo off in February. </p>
<p>No.
I’m in a pretty similar situation with desires to go to med school. I got admitted to Vanderbilt but couldn’t afford it so I’m going to UGA as well. You made the right decision. Dartmouth is a great school but I don’t think any school is worth 60k+ a year unless your family is raking in millions annually. Her mom is probably just trying to make her wallet feel a little better. It does not matter at all. </p>
<p>No employer cares about your undergrad for medical school. Grad schools may care (apparently Ivies like to pick other Ivy undergrads for grad school?). </p>
<p>If you decide to opt out of medicine, then it would matter. Things like finance or business are pretty cut throat so prestige of undergrad matters. However, that’s the case if it’s your only degree. Say you go to UGA for undergrad and then Cornell for grad school, they would care very little about your undergrad.</p>
<p>So overall, you made the right choice. No school is worth that amount of money for undergrad unless you can afford it. Ignore her mom, she probably developed that elitist mentality because her daughter is going to an Ivy. </p>
<p>Also for the record, UGA is not a bad school by any means. It’s pretty well respected as a public school. It’s not like you’re going to KSU or anything (which still isn’t that bad…)</p>
<p>What dorm are you staying in?</p>
<p>If you go in to medicine, spending $200K or so more on undergrad makes very little sense as no one hiring a doctor will care where you went for undergrad (residency and med school matter far more). Plus, if you look at the doctors who do best financially, there’s pretty much no correlation with where they went for undergrad (and very little with even where they went for med school). Finally, if you’re a doctor, I see little reason to be concerned about job security. Your friend’s mom seems to know little about the healthcare world.</p>
<p>If you opt to work straight out of school (or can’t get in to med school), Dartmouth will open more doors straight out of undergrad (especially for the high brand-awareness industries of MC and high finance). However, for Wall Street, at least, you could try to get in to a Master’s program at an elite school or a top-tier MBA.</p>
<p>Just will give what I know from personal experience. Daughter grew up in ga…went to a very elite ug…when applying to med school…med college of ga had almost all uga and emory kids…of course, great instate tuition. Daughter had choice of 9 med schools…was it because she went to elite UG? We will never know. Is on the admissions committee at her ivy medschool…her year they had one GA student from a GA College…GA state! I don’t know how many applied but I know the results. Nothing wrong with UGA but of 88 students at her med, they took 14 of their own.just a data point and no uga kids. So does your friend have a leg up in medschool admissions…prob if all else is the same, mcat and gpa and ec>s. They take from their own.</p>
<p>You made the right choice! The University of Georgia is a wonderful school. Did you get any merit aid? If you got into Cornell, you probably got some merit aid at Georgia?</p>
<p>I get Zell Miller which is a state scholarship that pays for 100% of tuition. I also got the charter scholarship from UGA which is $1k per year. So I basically just pay room, board, fees, and books.</p>
<p>Your decision to attend UGA is even more justified, then! ^_^</p>
<p>3 Days earlier, I went to medical for some testing. I thought it would be a better place as it’s one of the top 5 medical schools of my country. When I’d given 6 ml of blood, all lights were gone. The intern had made an error while she was taking my blood and I was unconscious for around 2 minutes. </p>
<p>On the same day, I noticed one patience who had food poisoning and guess what? the medical specialist gave her some drugs related to metal issues and prescribed her to do endoscopy (a process needed for something completely unrelated to the matter) . and they both were from top medical colleges.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter where you go to for undergrad as long as you don’t become above mentioned two doctors. </p>
<p>Georgia is an excellent university, and Athens is a very nice college town. Unless your family is very wealthy, you made the right decision.</p>
<p>UGA is a perfectly respectable institution and you can get into a top grad school or med school if you do very well there. Don’t second guess your choice. But don’t second guess your friend’s choice, either, that is her and her family’s decision and really not your concern. Focus on your own path.</p>
<p>I agree that OP made the right choice for her here, mainly because Georgia is ranked #60, which is still really good. But given the same situation, full-tuition free for undergrad vs. paying full-ride for an Ivy, followed by med school, where is the breakpoint? At what point is the free ride no longer worth it? #100? #150? #200? Or is the free-ride always the better way to go?</p>
<p>Who are we to second guess for the other kid and her parents? That is my point. Heck, the odds of either of them actually getting to med school are tiny… the vast majority of kids who start as pre-med either wash out based on grades & MCATs, or voluntarily change majors.</p>
<p>@MrMom62:</p>
<p>To me, it would depend a lot on potential career choices. For pre-med, I would not pay up a lot. For Wall Street or founding a startup or something else business related, I may depending on the school. For a humanities major, virtually nothing.</p>