For medicine, is there really a need to attend a private university for all four years?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>I didn’t get PACT… :frowning:
Sigh.</p>

<p>I don’t know. If going to UTD doesn’t give me an advantage to getting into UTSW than going to a more prestigious university, then the same is true vice versa, right? So why should I spend so much more money to attend one of those schools when I can achieve the same thing virtually cost-free?</p>

<p>Does having that “experience” really matter though? For physicians? Like I get why having networking and stuff is important for lawyers, but it’s not like I can’t be a good doctor without knowing a bunch of well-connected people who went to Ivies.</p>

<p>I don’t know. I really like Dartmouth and Wellesley (and Cornell, a little), but I just need a really legitimate reason for why my family should contribute so much hard-earned money to go. </p>

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<p>UG connections matter very little (I am leaving room for when it does because I don’t believe it matters at all) for you as a physician. Where you completed your medical school education and especially residency matters the most.</p>

<p>You will count on former residency graduate connections when you are searching for your first job out of residency. Most graduates will work within 150 mile radius of their training site. Many times that is due to connections, hospital affiliations, recruitment, and family ties. The large research based institutions (Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Duke, etc.) have a wider geographic footprint because they’ve attracted residents beyond their 150 mile radius. I also used physician recruiting companies but they provided very poor quality opportunities that were not matches for me. They didn’t care where you trained or went to medical school; most of their opportunities were desperate for providers.</p>

<p>You will also find that your medical school colleagues will become a resource for you too. They may provide you insight to opportunities they were privileged to as a result of their local job search. Furthermore, that medical school may be a site of future employment for you.</p>

<p>UG?? Well, I loved my undergraduate university, and I have been thankful for the experience. But it contributed to none of the opportunities I received after residency.</p>

<p>Once you become a doctor, you will rely on your training from residency, and surprisingly your medical school education experience. You will refer most of your patients to specialists, hospitals, and laboratories within your area. In rare instances, you have to refer patients well outside of those areas. Over time, you will build a network of providers you will reliably refer to. Being a good doctor also depends on your ability to refer to appropriate providers when necessary.</p>

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<p>I’m not saying don’t go to UTD. I’m just saying don’t go to UTD because you think it enhances your chances of going to UTSW.</p>

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<p>Although people assume there is easily earned money, most money is earned by working hard! :D</p>

<p>The dynamics of people staying in state and getting into medical school and going usually turn out differently than going OOS and coming back. One of the med students at UT Houston was telling me that most people in his MS3 class were either married, engaged or almost and he was one of the minority having attended OOS undergrad. He said many have never left the state and were almost settled down by the time they got to med school.</p>

<p>You will have a different life, different set of friends, learn about things you might never across in UTD for not too high a price. Since your EFC is zero, you might find some other top medical schools with FA giving you close to a free ride because you went to dartmouth or wellesley. It won’t be as easy to do so from UTD. If you change your mind about medicine, there will be other doors readily available too.</p>

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<p>@texaspg
Okay, now I’m really confused again. I think I am really uneducated about this whole medical school process…</p>

<p>Wait, you just said some medical schools give financial aid and even full rides? I was under the impression that the only form of “aid” that med schools give is loans (unless I join the army or plan on getting a MD PhD).</p>

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<p>I understand Yale and Harvard have grants (may be you still need borrow some more money but not all) but I suspect it is much harder to aim for them from UTD than Dartmouth/Wellesley.</p>

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<p>^ Agreed. In case it is not clear, the grant is need based, not merit based for the med schools texaspg mentioned above. The difference between UG and their affiliated med schools is that the need based grant is more generous for their college than their med schools. BTW, just in case you (OP, as texaspg definitely would know) do not know, Dartmouth has a med school which gives out some need based grant as well. For somebody from a family with 0 EFC, these med schools may not be much more expensive. (e.g., Even BCM may cost you more than these two schools if your family’s EFC is 0, even though most would agree that BCM is as cheap as a private med school can be.)</p>

<p>OP, The main issue, IMHO, is that whether or not you may change your mind a couple of years later. (Your parents may not change their opinion though :)) Many parents prefer that their child eventually will settle down not far from them. By sending their child far away to a college, it increases the odds that she may end up settling down elsewhere. I know a female student who went OOS for college, went back to a top med school in Texas, and then went back to NYC for her residency. (There are not enough residency slots in Texas anyway. So she helped Texas med school students by freeing up one residency slot for them. She used to be a very competitive student in high school – getting into multiples of HYPMS, but failed to get into Rice-Baylor because her family did not know “how to do premed” as a high schooler (maybe just like you and your family?). So I will not be surprised if she was also competitive as a med school student in that top Texas med school.)</p>

<p>Looking a little bit too far ahead, since some residency programs as well as med schools have regional bias (even some inbred or “incest” phenomenon), where you want to go to for your residency program, and where you may practice eventually could matter to some extent as well. This may have some relation to where you go to for your college to a certain extent – not so much about which college it is, more likely, which region your college is located at in general (i.e., west, mid-west, south, northeast). Georgetown in DC may have a good track record of producing more shares of (neuro?)surgeons. BCM’s pediatric program is a top notch one. The students at UTSW are rumored to have more hands-on experiences in “delivering babies” as compared to most students in other med schools – It is rumored that if one of their teaching hospitals all of a sudden stops delivering babies in a month, you will notice a dip in the US birthrate in that month. (Since these are just “rumors” that I heard in the past few years, so they should be interpreted with a large grain of salt.) </p>

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<p>Many med schools (all?) do have some grant money they award but unlike UG, I don’t think a single med school guarantees to meet your need. I know my school has 1 or 2 full rides they give out and several partial scholarships. These are used for kids they really want. In fact I’m not even sure if your financial need is a factor. We also have some targeted grants for people with certain interests (e.g. primary care, advocacy, etc).</p>

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<p>I myself did not investigate in details by reading each med school’s FA web site. But I heard that there is something called “unit loans”, which are different for these med schools. The definition of the unit loan is the loan every FA students must borrow no matter what. But I heard that if a med school really wants to recruit a student, the student could even haggle the out-of-pocket price. But this is relatively rare as few students have the bargaining power (“You ain’t that special!”) DS knew of a student who haggled the price with Columbia P&S because Brown would give him more grant. But Columbia P&S was only willing to give out a couple of thousands more. In the end, I heard he chose Brown. I think he made a right choice.</p>

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<p>@mcat2
Where on Harvard and Yale’s websites does it provide information about need-based grants? Also, why would going to a more prestigious college help in landing grants that are need-based, not merit-based? I’m kind of confused. Could you explain in more detail how an Ivy medical school could be more affordable than one like Baylor? When I did research on this subject, I found that virtually every medical school included a bunch of loans in their aid package.</p>

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<p>OP, As I posted earlier, I personally did not look up their web sites. Since you raised this question, I look up one link as an example:</p>

<p><a href=“http://medfinaid.yale.edu/funding/index.aspx”>http://medfinaid.yale.edu/funding/index.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Of course, they do not provide very black and white information on these sites (like a financial aid calculator.) They also do not specifically say that. as long as the parents’ income is less than $65K (it used to be $60K 4 years ago?) a year, there is no parents’ contribution, like in their college FA. But still, they did mention need based scholarship even for the medical school.</p>

<p>I think what they are trying to achieve is that, for most if not all students, they want their students’ debt at the graduation (from their med school) to be capped at a certain level (like barely above or below six figures.) If the school believes your parents could contribute in THEIR (not yours) judgement, the school is not shy about asking the parents to contribute their “fair share” (as defined by them). But if your parents are considered as not being capable of contributing anything, the school will give you more need-based grant. However, every students had to take out a certain amount of loans (called unit loans.) The main difference between the FA of these colleges and that of their affiliated med schools is the mandatory unit loan. Somebody showed me the amount of unit loan before, but I can not locate it at this moment. (Considering my age, my googling technique is not that great :))</p>

<p>I did see the FA letter from BCM (and UTSW) before. Although I could not recall the details as it was several years ago, my recollection is that it was also not a small amount even for the first year. (UTSW honestly told everybody that they sweetened their first year FA a little bit.) And unlike your family, our EFC is not zero. So, the FA for some of these need-based med schools may be even “better.”</p>

<p>I think that Curm, a long time CCer, once said there may be a dozen or so such need-based (but unit loans still required) med schools out of 130 (used to be 126?) med schools. </p>

<p>Also, those med schools tend to inbreed their own. Recently, it seems some CCer posted that Stanford med take over 20 percents of their class from their own college. If this is true, it breaks the record set by those comparable med schools on the other coast which tend to inbreed 10 to 13 percents of their own. (“inbreed” may not be as “damaging” /unfair to the students graduated from other colleges as “incest” among similar kinds of schools in the same region, I think.)</p>

<p>Come to think about this, UTD and UTSW, as well as Rice and BCM, have the somewhat similar “in the same region/status”, incest relationship. LOL.</p>

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<p>OP, Some CCers who know more about this than me discussed the FA aspect of attending a med school not long ago:</p>

<p><a href=“Any "Full Ride" Scholarships for Graduate (Medical) Schools? - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1351849-any-full-ride-scholarships-for-graduate-medical-schools.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also this pdf file details how FA works at HMS. See the link below.</p>

<p>I did not read it in details myself. But I noticed this number $28300. So my previous estimate, about $100’000, is not off by a lot:</p>

<p>Unit Loan is fixed at $28,300 (will remain $28,300 each year at HMS)</p>

<p><a href=“http://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Sites/Financial_Aid/files/Revisit%202013.pdf”>http://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Sites/Financial_Aid/files/Revisit%202013.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For example, posted by Kat:</p>

<p>"Harvard Medical school’s financial aid is need-based only. Depending on your FAFSA EFC and the info provided on the Need Access form Harvard’s package could be much better than a med school that does not meet need. Harvard uses a basic unit loan package and then awards institutional funds for the remaining unmet need. Info includes student, parent(s) and possible spouse’s financial info.</p>

<p>Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Yale and Harvard all use the unit loan policy. Compare vs say Temple where COA is $75K per year and all loans. They do offer some merit scholie’s but no where near what Harvard will offer those with low EFCs."</p>

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<p>OP,</p>

<p>Another link. Again, 4 times the unit loan ($26000) equals slightly above $100’000.</p>

<p>Wow, COA for the third year = $86045.</p>

<p><a href=“http://medicine.yale.edu/education/finaid/md_program/resources/2014.aspx”>http://medicine.yale.edu/education/finaid/md_program/resources/2014.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>mcat - whatever I know about FA in med schools is based on what curm and you have posted in the past. I don’t know the actual amount of loans people are expected to take on except it is no where close to the COA. I think you should invite OP and her parents and mentor them since all of you must be close to each other!</p>

<p>Most Ivy post grad schools are known to accept students from other Ivies to fill large percentage of their classes. So one stands a better chance of getting into an Ivy med school by attending dartmouth.</p>

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<p>curm is much more knowledgeable about this than me. I think I first learned about the unit loan and a link to a web page showing this number from him. But I remember the $100K+ number mostly because of our own experience.</p>

<p>As a parent, I am also concerned about the stress level that DS has to be under on a regular basis. Just recently, I heard he needed to go through a grueling 15 hours day plus a couple of hours of commute to and from another city. What is more demanding is that the hours are sometimes at night and the sleep pattern is disrupted by these “grave yard shifts.” He even has not been in the more demanding residency years yet. A good question to ask is: Is there any med school/residency program that is somewhat “easier”? I once heard that UTMB in Texas and UCLA in California are rumored to the “happier” ones. A physician (who were trained at two places in Manhattan area as a resident and as a med school student when he was young) also told DS at one time that the teaching hospital associated with NYU (or NYU as a med school? not sure here) is also a “happier” one. Somehow I “feel” that U. of Chicago could be a happier one than, say, NW (the evidence: their respective STEP-1 scores and their school’s mission. The school’s average STEP-1 score may be the “miserable index” of the school. LOL. But the preclinical years are not very important as they are generally not very stressful. ) Well…I have side-tracked.</p>

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<p>@texaspg

This kind of ignores the idea that ivy league graduates tend to be stronger students to begin with</p>

<p>@mcat2

Not sure what you mean here.</p>

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<p>iwbb, What I meant was that the average STEP-1 score could indirectly tell you the percentage of their students who are potentially gunning for those lucrative competitive specialties. When/if there are too high concentrations of these “aim high” students, the atmosphere at that school may be different. For example, in DS’s circle, there are some students who perpetually put in 13 hours of study in the first two years, even well before the preparation period for STEP-1 starts. If you are not able or willing to keep up with these hyper competitive students, you may feel like you are a slacker as a comparison.</p>

<p>Since you seem to be from Brown College, this analogy may be appropriate: If you compare the atmosphere at Brown (open curricullum, in a mid-sized city), vs Columbia College (core course, in a large city) or Penn as a college (preprofessional bent, in a large city), you may see the difference.</p>

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<p>i get what you’re saying now, but I disagree with you. Plenty of kids were putting in 13 hours during the week and then going out on the weekends - I certainly didn’t find them to be miserable and I doubt they did either. Med students are a double selected group (had to do well in high school and college) and there are a large proportion who are capable of achieving those scores while not holing themselves up in the library. I generally find the people who I would say were “unhappy in med school” to be the ones who were struggling to pass, not the ultra studiers. I also would of course say there is a difference between hyper competitive (which can occur at any score level) and ultra studiers.</p>

<p>I think the only way you can get a sense of the student body atmosphere is to actually interact with the students.</p>

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<p>

Do you mean 13 hours per day on every weekday? If there are plenty of kids doing this at your med school, your med school could be more “intense” in the preclinical years than DS’s school. This is because DS told us that there are only a couple of kids who are doing this in his circle.</p>

<p>But in the big picture, the preclinical years tend to be still pleasant enough for most students as it is still like the continuation of the traditional schooling the students are used to. The stress seems to be mostly felt in the clinical years, esp., MS3. I believe that in DS’s next rotation, his day likely starts from waking up at 4:30 am. Even with such an early start everyday, he said it is already not a very stressful one – like what he needed to struggle though : straight 15 hours a day, with energy bars in his pocket for his meal,</p>

<p>But occasionally we can hear that some MS1 and MS2 students may still be under more stress at some schools with a more traditional A/B/C/D grading policy. The research power house UTSW and the school with one of the largest MSTP programs, WUSTL, could be such schools in my guess. Is UVA likely not far behind in the stress level? After all, I think UTSW, UVA and UF are those public med schools which seem to have a higher STEP-1 school average. But UF has great support/coaching system in place on STEP-1, while it appears UTSW and WUSTL mostly let their students “fight for themselves” – They may even not allocate as much time for this at these schools.</p>

<p>I may not be correct in my guess in the above. After all, I am just a parent who “observes” all of these at a distance.</p>

<p>OP, I stray from the topic in your original thread and apologize for this. What is your original concern again? UTD vs Dartmouth? 4 years vs 3 years? Doing it in 3 years is so much like “a kid from a new immigrant family might do.” Avoid it if you can. </p>

<p>Regarding Dartmouth, I think it is mini (a long time CCer who is a social activist, I think) who once posted that the main focus of any top private college, including most ivies, are by and large the teaditional liberal art education the first and other focus the second. An analogy using UT Austin could illustrate this point. In one year, UT wanted all of their students to take some of the core courses. In the end, I believe the engineering departments and likely business honor programs also protest, on the ground that most of their students have taken, say, 10 APs, and should have meet their new core educatiion requirement. Their students were exempt for this after everything had been said and done. This kind of “exempt” could hardly happen at some ivies. You need to prepare for this (i.e., APs are just used for the class placement purpose only because all students likely come in with tons of APs. It is better that you would like to further your foreign language education in college, as your AP in Spanish is sort of like pre-requirement for your language courses) if you attend such a “liberal art-ish” school.</p>

<p>I think DS has some grade-centric premed friends who were burnt by this even though they were very good students in their science magnet high school ( but the truth is that they are not good enough as compared to those truly humanity oriented students.)</p>

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<p>I want to clarify that, in my previous post, I do not try to speculate that OP may not be good at the non-science subjects. I believe she is good at this (otherwise she would not apply to these schools and have been accepted.) I just want to point out that these schools may not let their students skip these core education classes - they may allow the students to take higher level classes – this may be “world class education” OP referred to in her post. </p>