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No MCAT, CA resident & UCR undergrad only, min BCMP 3.4 (admitted ave is 3.77). Probably the only early assurance program in UC after UCSD discontinued its program.
UCR is doing some clever things to help it overcome its “any UC but R,” image.
We are giving this a serious look. Unfortunately it will be the most expensive undergrad option for us, and may not be affordable.
^^^
@DiotimaDM You’re instate with a modest income. Why would UCR be your most expensive option? Your child would get B&G, maybe some Pell, and very likely merit/Regents from UCR.
My son is thinking about working as an EMT for year before college. He's a potential National Merit semi-finalist, and he'd like a year off before he hits the grind of undergrad + possible med school.
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That said, if you want your child to possibly get any NMF awards, he MUST go to college during fall after graduation…no gap year.
^^ Who knows, maybe his S is getting full scholarship from Stanford, USC or some thing.
The student isn’t a senior yet. We don’t know where he might get what.
@mom2collegekids When I started posting here, we were B&G eligible. Then the hubs got laid off twice, we moved to a less expensive area, and hubs landed a really awesome job with a large raise. Our income didn’t even double, but our EFC more than tripled.
Now we’re in the doughnut hole. We’re full pay at the UCs now, and even a Regents is only worth $2,500/year for us at UCR.
The NMF packages are miles, nay, light years better than that.
S has an SI of 223 in CA, two points above last year’s cutoff. He’s got a 1490 on the new SAT and is planning to take it again so he can superscore. We’ll be visiting four NMF schools over spring break - UNM, UT Dallas, Texas Tech and OU. Bama and UAB are on the list as well, but later in the year sometime.
S will also apply to Michigan State and Tulane. We can afford $10k/year for sure, probably up to $12k, but 15 would be pretty painful. Room and board at UCR is a bit north of 16k, plus books and incidentals, and our governor is planning to eliminate the middle class scholarship that would have been worth about 40% off of tuition for us at the new income level. Oy!
Re: gap year - some of the NMF schools will let him take a gap year and still get the NMF package so long as he applies as a senior and gets written permission to defer.
At UCR, because of how prior-prior works, we’ll be eligible for one year of Blue and Gold, plus a little need-based aid if S goes immediately after HS. After that, we’ll be full pay.
S will still apply to UCR. We’ll just have to crunch the numbers really carefully. S has 60-odd hours of DE and AP credits, so he won’t need a full four years to get his undergrad. He’ll probably need more than two, though, and that second year at UCR is going to be really expensive for us.
There’s a special scholarship for locals from our area that will pay all med school expenses not covered by need-based aid as long as the recipient agrees to practice in the local area for 5 years after graduation. S would be a good fit for that, so UCR SOM will stay on his radar even if he goes OOS for undergrad.
Some tidbits from the presentation:
Two years ago, UCR had 8 applicants in their EAP pool and accepted all 8.
Last year they had 9 applicants and took all 9.
UCR saves 24 SOM spots for UCR grads, and they have around 160 in-house applicants for those 24 spots.
That leaves 36 spots for everyone else in the world, and they get around 5500 applicants for those 36 spots.
@DiotimaDM Don’t know about other schools you listed, but take a closer look at OU. They give 5 years of free tuition as long as you continue in OU. That may help to get free aid for 1 or 2 years depending on how fast UG is done. They give AP credits and if some one pushes very hard, can do it in 3 years UG.
@GoldenRock - We’re visiting OU during the second week of April. In addition to the benefits you mention, S is interested in their Professional Writing program, so OU is high on the list.
We are delighted that he will have so many good options to choose from!
As I continue to look into UCR, it’s almost looking like UCR might be the one school where applying as a transfer student would be better for us financially than applying as a freshman.
S would still be competitive for a Transfer Regents, and if he was very strategic about his community college classes, he could guarantee himself graduation in two years, plus eligibility for the EAP program.
I’ll keep researching.
^^
Why is that? He’d be full pay for those 2 last years.
hubs landed a really awesome job with a large raise. Our income didn't even double, but our EFC more than tripled.
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Income doesn’t have to double for EFC to more than triple. The calculation doesn’t work like that. Someone could have an EFC of $3000 with an income of $45k, and then get a good job of maybe $85k per year and suddenly their EFC is $12k
He’d be full pay for the last two years but it would only be two years. UCR (the SOM) accepts very limited AP credit - one quarter (or semester) of English and one quarter (or semester) of Math. As a freshman applicant, he’ll need more than two years to finish, probably 3 full years, maybe 3.5.
The CCs are on semester systems vs. quarters for UCR, so he can AP a semester of English and take a CC semester to complete his English requirement as a transfer student, vs. APing one quarter and having to take two quarters as a freshman applicant. Same with math. If he’s strategic about his coursework, he can make it so he’d only need two years as a transfer applicant, but that won’t work as a freshman applicant.
Even if he does, though, UCR is still more for the undergrad degree than our OOS options.
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The CCs are on semester systems vs. quarters for UCR, so he can AP a semester of English and take a CC semester to complete his English requirement as a transfer student, vs. APing one quarter and having to take two quarters as a freshman applicant.
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Interesting! Do Calif schools only give one semester/quarter for AP English? Or was his score not high enough? I’ve mostly seen that a 4+ gives credit for both semesters or 3 quarters?
If he took one semester of Frosh Comp in the summer at a CC would he get a year’s credit with his AP?
Well, it’s complicated. 
UCR, the undergraduate institution, gives credit for English 1A & 1B (8 units) for a 4 or a 5. For a full year worth of credit, you need English 1C, too, for a total of 12 units.
The SOM, however, will only accept one semester (6 units) of AP English, which would mean all of 1A and only part of 1B, leaving the student to retake 1B and 1C.
If he went to a CC for a year, they would credit him a full semester of English, then he could take a semester and it would transfer over as having met the English requirement for the med school. Or, knowing him, he would challenge the second semester by exam as long as the SOM would accept that.
Ditto for Math. The combo of the quarter system at the undergrad level plus discrepancies between what UCR undergrad will credit vs what the SOM will accept leaves him with weird odds and ends in the quarter system that will make it take longer for him to graduate.
S takes 3 APs this May, so we don’t actually know his scores yet. In addition, he’s opting not to take any AP sciences as a senior because of the number of SOMs that don’t take AP credit in BCMP classes. He’ll take things like Honors Anatomy & Physiology at the HS and Medical Terminology and Basic Pathophysiology at the CC instead (to show rigor). He’ll still have 7 APs, including AP Bio and AP Calc BC, so he thinks that’s enough.
So for UCR, he’ll have to take all of the BCMP classes, plus extra odds and ends of quarter classes where AP credits aren’t accepted at the SOM, plus his major, etc. It will be three full years, so even if one of the years is B&G, the room & board are so expensive that that CC for a year (where he can live at home) will still be a lot cheaper.
Or he could take one of the NMF offers where it would be a lot cheaper and a lot less fuss!