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<p>Of course they are, the other school graduates are not worthy. :p</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBEn3a4TIUw”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBEn3a4TIUw</a></p>
<p>OP, our D is a TX resident who will be coming home to start med school in the fall. (She chose to attend a well-known OOS school for UG.) She interviewed at all of the TX med schools. Her observation? Although UTSW has several students who attended TX UGs, they have a lot of students, more than the other TX public med schools, who went OOS (most to highly-rated schools). Also, I would not encourage any premed student to graduate early unless they’ve already been accepted into a joint BS/MD program. I would also suggest you look closely at Wellesley’s average GPAs. They’re known to practice grade deflation and as you know, GPA is a very important part of your application. Like others, I would encourage you to take a second look at Dartmouth and Cornell. </p>
<p>D attends one of he Ivy schools that uses the unit loan. I am not the brightest crayon in the box, but what I “thought” it was going to cost was nowhere being where it actually is. That being said…I am soooooo grateful for the grant money they gave her… takes her coa down to where she can cover everything with her fed loans.</p>
<p>OP may be interested in this:</p>
<p><a href=“http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/news/2013/11/26_payson/”>http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/news/2013/11/26_payson/</a></p>
<p>It is said the geisel med at Dartmouth gives 3.5 millions to their med school students.</p>
<p>Also, this link:</p>
<p><a href=“http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/admissions/financial_aid/”>http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/admissions/financial_aid/</a></p>
<p>Is the term “base loan” the same as the “unit loan”? The base loan amount is quoted as $35.5K here. The “sticker price” for the tuitions only is about $53.4K. If the parents are considered as not being able to contribute any, the total out of pocket price each year is then about $35.5K. Compared to OP’s FA case for Dartmouth College, the difference is that the med school will ask the students to have $35.5K loans each year. This includes COA, as I believe. Assuming that the COA is about $80K, the school essentially gives out $80K - $35.5K, if I read it correctly, Could BCM give out so much “free money”? Granted, the COA at BCM is lower. But, the students need to compare the OOP price of both when the $ is your only concern (and if your parents truly can not contribute any in the eyes of the school’s FA officer.)</p>
<p>Even though the tuition is $53,436, the students are required to take out $35.5K – at least this is my interpretation (which may be off though.)</p>
<p>And you could build a giant Igloo!</p>
<p>Thank you for all the information! I haven’t had a chance to process it yet, but I’ll make sure to go through everything that you all wrote. </p>
<p>As for the graduating early thing, the reason why I’m so set on doing if I decide to attend UTD is because I know an alumna of my high school who graduated in 3 years from Cornell (BME) and is now at UT Southwestern. I figured, if she can do it at such a hard school with such a hard major, there should be no reason why I can’t do it from a much easier school like UTD.</p>
<p>Also, my dad made an interesting argument last night about Ivy vs. cheap school for med school. He said that he would feel much better sending me off to Dartmouth or something if I were pursuing a career in actuary or compsci or something else that can allow me to get a job straight out of undergrad. But if I want to pursue medicine, then I’m not “living off of” undergrad; I’m living off of med school and residency, so undergrad really shouldn’t matter at all. I think that’s very logical reasoning.</p>
<p>Our family happens to know seeral students over the past decade who went there (UTSW). Heck…my own child almost went there. I am fully aware that it is perfectly doable from UTD to UTSW for a student like you.</p>
<p>However, my S’s situation might be slightly different than yours back then. He was not really committed to medicine at that time. So he needs other options and we need to pay more for his UG as his EFC was not zero, in order to afford him more options, if he ended up choosing other career path. Or, it is just like what you said, he (and we) just could not resist the “world class education” (I think this is funny even though it is not PC), the reason you mentioned in your post.</p>
<p>With this said, my spouse’s opinion is that you should go to that OOS school because it is really cheap for you. However, I have a mixed feeling about whether you should go OOS or “stay the course” which is TAMS (is that magnet high school called like this? Several of DS’s classmates went there) → UTD → UTSW. We occasionally have this “what if he stayed in-state back then” thought maybe because we miss our child so much as he has been thousands of miles from us for so long.</p>
<p>no matter what your decision may be, be a good girl of your parents and do not stray too far from them for too long 
It will take a long while (if ever) before anyone else will come along who will care about you like your parents do.</p>
<p>Thank you very much! </p>
<p>I’m leaning towards Dartmouth at the moment. However, I just found some data for their medical school admissions: <a href=“http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nss/nav/pages/school/Med%20School%20MSAR%20Summary/MSAR%20Summaries%202012-13/MedSchoolFactSummary12-13.html”>http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nss/nav/pages/school/Med%20School%20MSAR%20Summary/MSAR%20Summaries%202012-13/MedSchoolFactSummary12-13.html</a></p>
<p>For Texas medical schools, DC students seem to not do so well… But maybe this has to do with only a few people applying? What do you think about these stats; in general, are they good? </p>
<p>IMO, Dartmouth would be a good choice for you. Or Wellesley. Check out which school is more supportive towards premeds. Some schools are not. They gate keep their own students out. </p>
<p>The reason I think you should take the opportunity you are getting to go to some top schools is because there is no guarantee that you will end up going to med school THe number of kids at age 18 who start out premed always dwindles by quite a bit. The STEM and natural sciences do get huge dropouts and transfers out of their programs and classes because the work is difficult and often students do not want to put the time, effort and stress that it takes to get the grades to be a viable medical school candidate. Grades are a very important part of the package to get into medical school. Can’t do well in O-chem , labs or any of your courses and you are often done. I took Cornell out of the picture because that is definitely a school with a steep grade curve, tough courses and a lot of competition. Not known for its warm and fuzzies there.</p>
<p>I have no idea how well your local UT shuttles premeds into med school acceptance. That is something to research too. DO they nurture and help premeds along so that they have a high med school acceptance rate? It’s normal for a state school to have a high number of instate kids because they do give preference to in staters but those numbers do include students who went to college OOS. But find out how many kids start out premed at UT Dallas and how many end up in medical school and what the accept rate and stats are for those kids going from the college to the med school. YOu can see pretty clearly if there is an advantage. Though state medical schools might have some seats reserved for various counties and have some reciprocity with their undergrad college, it’s usually not much much there. </p>
<p>If you graduate with a Dartmouth degree but change your mind, you’ll have gained quite the experience going this school , coming from Texas. And ivy can pack a whallop of sorts. The question I have is more what you would do if you go to your local school and decide not to stay pre med than making that change at some of your private choices. I’ve known many, many kids who were dead set on becoming doctors…and they changed their minds. You are young yet, and it is very possible you find an interest, passion in something else and/or decide medicine is not for you. </p>
<p>I don’t see any data among the dartmouth data about what state each student was a resident of. In other words, how many Dartmouth medical school applicants are Texas residents? Non texas residents have a very hard time getting into Texas medical schools regardless of what school they went to.</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse Thank you! That’s actually one of the reasons why I’m leaning towards Dartmouth!</p>
<p>@i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown Okay, thanks! But what about the data for entry into the other medical schools? I’ve noticed that they’re all relatively small percentages (even Dartmouth’s med school). </p>
<p>Re: “they are all relatively small percentages. (even Dartmouth’s med school.)”</p>
<p>OP, Several points.
Accepting 24 (?) applicants from its own college is already pretty “generous” (I know that the number of applicants is 169 so the percentage is not as high as you would like to see.)</p>
<p>Re: “all relatively small percentage”:</p>
<p>It is understandable that you do not understand how the med school admission “game” is played, because you have not had experience yet. I did not know any of this when DS was your age.</p>
<p>When a high schooler applies to college, he may apply to, say, 8 or 9 colleges at most (at least this was the case when DS applied to college.) This was because the incoming class at a college is, say, 1400 -1600 even for many private college and the student does not need to apply to too many colleges and still has a decent chance to get in a few of the colleges.</p>
<p>To apply to med school, many applicants apply to, say, 25 or even 30 med schools, hoping to get into one or just a smaller number of med schools. This is because the incoming class of a med school may be only 150 matriculants. If the applicant applies to n med schools and the acceptance rate is 0.05 (or the rejection rate to each school is 0.95), the odds for such a student to be accepted to zero school is 0.95 ^ n, or 0.95 to the power of n. So the probability that he is accepted to at least one med school is 1 - (0.95 ^ n). By increasing n to a reasonably large number, his rate of acceptance to at least one med school could be increased to a relatively “comfortable” percentage. The main reason here is the size of incoming class is just 150 or so (only exception is that the incoming class of almost all Texas med schools is “Texas size”, over 230 (?).)</p>
<p>I heard that many med school graduates gunning for competitive specialty residency programs could apply to, say, even 100 residency programs because each program may admit a “low single digit” number of residents each year. So, the applicants can not afford to apply to too few residency programs. Do you see how tough the road to those competitive specialties may be?! </p>
<p>Few other points: Relatively few Texans will attend elite OOS schools like Dartmouth College – even fewer of them from Texas will be on the premed track.</p>
<p>When DS applied to med school, he once commented that almost nobody in his circle of premeds at his college would bother to apply to any med school in Texas (not even including BCM which is an AMCAS school; it is not a TMDSAS school.) I would guess there were less than 5 premeds (maybe only 3 or 4 in his class year) from his college who are Texas residents and applied to Texas med schools. So if you want a lot of peer premeds who apply to Texas med schools a few years later, stay at any good college in Texas.</p>
<p>Also, as a Texas resident applying to OOS med schools in other states, you will, generally speaking, be disadvantaged. This is because there are, relatively speaking, too many “cheap” med schools in Texas so those OOS med schools, with the exception of the tippy top ones, do not believe you will attend if they admit you. You have an extra burden to prove to them that you are willing to attend an OOS med school if accepted.</p>
<p>By going to an OOS college, you may still be slightly disadvantaged by applying to a med school close to or affiliated with your college, just because you are from Texas – however, at least you have earned some “credit” by demonstrating that you are willing to get out of “the Republic of Texas” for college. You will NOT be disadvantaged when applying to Texas med schools because you are still considered as a Texas resident.</p>
<p>^ BTW, in DS’s high school graduating class, only one student was admitted to DC and attended DC. He was busy in pursuing intern opportunity while at DC and I think he is likely in the finance industry in the NE area now. Many DC graduates seem to be very motivated in going that direction (but, which ivy school is not like this. I have an impression that P even sent almost 40% of their students toward that (or related) industry in one year.) After all, when the reimbursement rate for doctors’ services has been cut, the bonus for those working for many top finance companies (the word “top” is the key here) is up.</p>
<p>Or another way to describe the difference in competitiveness between UG and med school, the top 3-5 UGs (out of 4k UGs in the country) maybe hit 95% rejection rates in the last couple years. The top 25 medical schools (out of only 140) have been at that rate for several years already.</p>