You can’t…unless your parents co-sign loans above the Direct Loan amount,you won’t be getting those loans.
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Make sure to show them the cost of the years of medical school also. Those will be entirely funded by loans and salaries of doctors when you will graduate will not allow for quick payback. Many doctors are still paying off their loans 20-30 years after graduation, even when they are paying for their own Children’s’ education.
Reading between the lines and going off what I’ve seen at school, this is often code for your parents not actually having the money to help you. They may earn a bit, but that doesn’t mean they have adequate savings. It also doesn’t mean they’re bad people - most kids at our school need either merit aid or need based aid.
I suggest you apply broadly, including the SUNYs you like. Go ahead and try a couple of the top schools known for need based aid if you like them - schools like Yale. Don’t expect to get in, but give them a try.
Try Case Western, Lehigh, Lafayette (already on your list), U Rochester, Pitt, and similar to see what you get in merit and/or need based aid - again, expecting if you get in that they may be too expensive to go with.
If you’re willing to head further south, you could try Richmond or Washington & Lee. U Alabama might give you an affordable option many kids desiring aid opt for.
If you’re willing to go smaller and less city than you could try Washington & Jefferson or Juniata.
Once you find a mix of schools you like, try them and see what the financial packages are in the spring - then compare to the SUNYs. Don’t apply anywhere you don’t like as well as a SUNY.
This depends upon your parents being willing to fill out a FAFSA and Profile (many schools use the Profile). Look those up online first and check with your parents to be sure they are willing to do so. If not, then you need to stick to potential merit aid schools to get something affordable.
You will not be able to get massive loans to cover 4 years of a college education. You’ll need your parents to cosign for any loan higher than federal, and even if they qualify now, they might not in the following years. Then you were hoping for med school afterward…
It’s super common for parents not to know about financing college - you’re not alone in this. Is there a guidance counselor at your school who is savvy about colleges? If so, they can both guide you toward schools that are likely to be affordable for you and talk with your parents about the process.
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Hi,
Good luck with your college search, my daughter is also building her list, and the choices can be overwhelming. If I may echo some advice from other posters and from 1st hand experience and info I picked up in the last 9 months:
- Since you plan to go to either PA or Med School, and are not expecting any financial help from family, I would advise that you seek to incur the least amount of debt possible during your undergrad degree. Therefore, Public State Universities are your best bet and provide just as good an education. And, 1-2 years in, if you have a change of heart and want to switch majors, you can do so without having to transfer into a different school because they are large enough and offer most everything. If you are a NY resident, the SUNY schools are your best bet financially without sacrificing quality. There are a handful of private liberal arts that may meet your financial need but I think (not sure) you still have to put your parents income and financial assets and it may interfere with how much aid you would qualify for.
- You do not have to major in Biology to qualify for Medical School. I have friends who were English Majors, Classic Majors etc and went to Med School. You can major in anything, provided that you complete the course requirements necessary to enter Medical School.
- University of Vermont (UVM) would be another school to look into. It is a state school but you are out of state. If your grades and ACT/SAT high enough, you may qualify for merit aid up to $19-20K max/yr. Great academics, nice size at around 10K students so not too small, not too large,very welcoming and accepting community skewing towards liberal.
Good luck!
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Here are two links that might be helpful.
This one lists colleges that give large merit aid packages and indicates what percentage of students receive them: https://www.road2college.com/top-30-colleges-largests-merit-based-scholarships/
This list details various full tuition & full-ride scholarship opportunities on the east coast: 64 Full Ride and Free Tuition Scholarships: East Coast — Socratic Summer Academy.
Due to the fact that you may be highly likely to need loans and that you want to pursue graduate school, I would definitely focus on opportunities to get costs as low as possible. You can go to med school from anywhere. Med schools care about your GPA, MCAT score, and that you’ve taken the required prereqs. It’s often easier to get a high GPA and be at the top of your class when you’re not at the most prestigious school…which then helps you get into med school. The less prestigious schools are also often the likeliest to give the most generous merit aid.
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Those are both good lists for the OP to prowl through… and adding a note to the OP that full tuition and full ride scholarships are extremely competitive, so try those at schools that appeal to you, but don’t get your dreams set that you will get one. Be happy at the SUNYs, then just celebrate if something comes along otherwise.
In the spring you can compare financial options, then pick what’s best for you (and affordable).
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I am aware of generally how much they have in savings and I know they have a decently substantial amount in investments. They could pretty easily pay everything for a SUNY without it having much influence on family finances/retirement funds. I think they’re just trying to skirt around the fact that they are unwilling. For years, I was told they would contribute nothing. And they definitely aren’t obligated to help me out or anything, but I do kind of wish they’d understand the situation they’re putting me in.
Yes, I’ll still apply to other colleges with the assumption that it will likely be too expensive/not worth the price.
Thank you for the suggestions. I can try to enlist the help of my counselor.
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You may have to be be willing to go out of region or otherwise compromise on your desires in order to find something close to a full ride merit scholarship.
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Are you able to commute to a 4-year or community college from home? Is your family open to letting you live at home while you’re going to school? Because at most colleges room & board is $13-15k (and sometimes more). Federal loans won’t come close to covering that amount. And it would be very stressful to depend on working enough hours to pay the differential, which can also add to the difficulties of getting good grades in college.
Some of the tried-and-true merit aid places that are frequently mentioned are becoming less generous.
You would qualify for Alabama’s Presidential Scholarship, which is now $28k/year. Costs for tuition, fees, room & board is now about $45k, leaving you with $17k/year to cover.
At U. of Alabama - Huntsville, which is also well-known for its health science programs, you would qualify for a $19,900 scholarship. But costs there now run about $35k, so you would still be on the hook for $15k/year.
At U. of Montevallo (AL) you would qualify for Presidential Honors Scholarship which would get you an out-of-state tuition waiver and $9k/year. I think you’d also be very competitive for one of the full ride scholarships as well. If you only received the Presidential Honors Scholarship you would still be left with $14-15k of costs to pay.
One option that I think is worth considering is U. of Louisiana at Lafayette. You would qualify for the Live Oak scholarship which would pay for room & board, offer you a campus work-study job, an out-of-state tuition waiver, and $2600/year. That $2600 is probably their attempt to cover fees, as many Louisiana residents qualify for a tuition scholarship at the in-state schools. I would not be at all surprised if they also granted you a tuition waiver, so that all your costs would be covered. But if they didn’t, I suspect the price would be about $8k for in-state tuition.
I know you said you are an under-represented minority. Would you consider an HBCU? There are some where you would be very competitive for a full ride. For instance, at Tuskegee you would be eligible for the Distinguished Presidential Scholarship, a full ride that includes $800/year for books.
Of course, none of these schools are in the northeast. But just wanted to provide these as some food for thought as you think about what compromises you might be willing to make when it comes to your college search, should your family not contribute anything financially to your college education.
I don’t know the specifics of admission selectivity for each program but if your goal is an advanced degree in a healthcare field then every program is competitive whether it’s, PA, MD, OT, PT or NP. With your stats you would be competitive as a freshman admit for some of the 5 year programs. The one at Elizabethtown according to their website doesn’t require shadowing hours to apply as a freshman. Every PA program requires substantial patient contact hours before you enter into the advanced courses. You can get those in many ways from being an EMT, CNA, ED tech, I work in a peds rehab and we have a playroom for the kids. One of the attendants got into PA school with just his playroom hours.
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Sorry to reply to this again, but I was thinking about contacting financial aid offices like you suggested. How would I go about this? Do I just explain my situation and they would help me?
That’s pretty much what you would do. Call the financial aid office and let them know that you suspect the NPC calculator wouldn’t be very accurate for your family because they own a small business and a rental property. Ask them for an appointment with an advisor/counselor who could give an estimate of what the school would expect your family to contribute financially, and what information you would need to have ready for the appointment.
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You might want to check out this program at SUNY ESF:
https://www.esf.edu/academics/upstate/
Yes, ESF stands for Environmental Science & Forestry, but they have a BS/MD program which is direct admit to med school at SUNY Upstate without taking MCAT if you satisfy academic requirements of the program as an undergrad. Acceptance is directly out of high school.
I’ll highlight 2 aspects of admission to this program:
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Students are encouraged to apply by November 15.
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“One of the goals of this program is to encourage diversity and to provide a pathway to medical school for students from a variety of different academic backgrounds. As a result, students applying to the UAS are encouraged to consider majors outside of biomedical sciences (although students majoring in science will be considered).”
The Upstate Accelerated Scholars Program with direct admit to Upstate Medical School and acceptance out of high school also has partnerships with SUNY campuses at Albany, Purchase, and SUNY Poly. There is a similar program at Binghamton, but application and admission are in freshman year vof college and not in senior year of high school.
You might also want to consider the CUNY School of Medicine at City College. It is also direct admit out of high school, but is only 6 7 years to complete both undergrad and med school, saving an additional year of tuition. When my niece attended, on campus housing was guaranteed and I assume it still is. (She just completed med school).
https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/csom/sophie-davis-biomedical-education-program-admission
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But you can do more with a nurse practitioner degree than you can with as a physician’s assistant.
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For safety schools, you might consider a couple with a pre-Physician’s Assistant curriculum: SUNY Brockport, 20 miles outside Rochester, and SUNY Polytech in Utica.
The public colleges in New York State with Physician’s Assistant programs are all at the graduate level only: Stony Brook, Upstate, Downstate, and City College.
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you are getting suggestions on this thread that range from SUNY Brockport to Johns Hopkins. While I think Hopkins is probably out of reach, and I agree you want to minimize debt, I think your stats put you somewhere in between. And I think getting into med school even with good grades will be harder than you want it to be coming from SUNY Brockport. I agree with the usual posts on CC that where you go undergrad doesn’t matter for med school admissions…to a point. I would still try to stay in the top 100 or 120 schools, or at least stick to schools people have heard of. I do suspect it will be harder to get in from lesser-known colleges, plus you don’t want to completely sacrifice your college happiness and want to be sure you have a cohort of similarly academic-minded peers. I am not sounding snobby here, I hope.
Yes, you might go the PA route, but don’t commit to that before you are sure.
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Not recommending that he go to Brockport. Just that he can get on track for PA right out of high school at state tuition costs if he opts for that choice. A lot of private schools have the 6 year PA programs but SUNY doesn’t seem to offer that.
But SUNY campuses aren’t what they once were for admissions. Admissions at all colleges are getting tougher each year. This isn’t the old days at Brockport when they’d be accepting 90% of their applicants. They accepted only 58% last year and 55% just a couple of years ago, and my guess is that once the numbers come out, it will drop even lower this year. He said he was looking for schools which accept 40-50% of their applicants or higher. He also would prefer schools that are small to medium in size. If you want to pay instate tuition at a SUNY for schools like that your options are limited.
At Brockport, 10% of last year’s freshman class were in the top 10% of their high school class. That’s this student. He would essentially be in the honors cohort. Isn’t that what we’re looking at for a safety? Affordable and a high likelihood of acceptance. Again my focus was on affordability at a school which offers the program he’s interested in if he opts out of the risky pre-med route. I also was looking at schools that are not rural but are near a city as he requested.
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Don’t NPs have to get a nursing degree and experience as an RN first before going back to school to become an NP? I know it’s completely different from a med school experience, but it’s still quite a length of time. The reason I may be considering PA over MD is because of the shorter time commitment and no residencies.
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Okay, so I should still be looking for schools that have some kind of recognition at least in its respective region? I always thought that med schools considered GPA and MCAT scores over all, regardless of the uni the applicant went to.
Also, I was just curious; what was it about my stats that made you think JHU is likely out of reach? I mean, I realize that it definitely is a reach and I have very little chance of being accepted, but the way you framed it makes it sound like I have a 0% chance. My GPA and my ACT score, if I can get it back up to where my practice/preACT was, would be on par with the stats of an average applicant. My guidance counselor is actually of the opinion that I have a chance at Cornell and added it to my list. I don’t entirely agree with that, knowing how competitive admissions are nowadays, so I’d appreciate your unbiased insight.
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Check out small universities with merit and pre health tracks that have affiliations with colleges of medicine or osteopathy. DeSales University in PA, for example.
Or 3+2 Medical Studies+ Phys.Asst.
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