“It might be a shame to make decisions about undergrad based on future grad school costs.”
- Many in D’s medical school class felt completely opposite. They regretted attending costly Ivy colleges when they realized that their UG did not result in any advantages to them later. They wished that instead of graduating with huge student loans, they could have spent family resources paying for medical school. While name of the UG may be important in some fields, in engineering, CS and many others, including pre-med (I do not know about pre-vet) the name of your UG is practically irrelevant. How do I know? I was in engineering, switched to CS in my mid. 30s, my H. is an engineer, most of our friends are engineers and many of their kids are also either in engineering or CS. I also know lots of MDs and many D’s friends who are either finishing medical school or currently are residents. Most attended in-state publics or private (like Case Western) that offered large Merit awards. Everybody is doing fine while some are doing absolutely outstanding, including very selective jobs and Graduate schools. All were top caliber public or private HS students.
I believe that the pursuit of $$ vs prestige is regional. In NE they seem to be after prestige and I would say that is true in CA. But in Midwest, most are after Merit awards and that includes a lot of families that have physician parent(s), who themselves have been thru paying their student loans and want to avoid the same situation for their kids. I have talked to some parents like this. One of them explained to me why all 3 of their kids went to our local college on full tuition Merit awards (and lived at home, not in dorms) and then went to the local medical school, which was free for them as their MD dad was teaching there. All 3 are MDs now without student loans. I imagine that the vet. situation is the same, I am simply not familiar with it, I have no examples.