So basically I have decent objective stats (4.0 UW GPA, 15 APs by graduation, 1500 PSAT, 1550 SAT, 800 on 4 SAT IIs) but nothing special in terms of extracurriculars/awards and no hooks (middle-class asian male going into bio/math). I love my parents to death but they are trapped inside the “top 20” mindset and emphasize prestige a lot more than what it’s worth. I know that I could probably shotgun all the top 5-20 and get into a few “prestigious” colleges but after running the net price calculators I found out we would have to pay around $22,000/year. I know this isn’t too expensive and my parents say that they are fine paying for my education but I don’t think it’s worth it.
Here’s my logic: I know I’m all but guaranteed National Merit Semifinalist and that opens up a lot of doors in terms of full-rides and I also believe that I am competitive for large scholarships at mid-tier schools as well because they focus more on academical stats. So, I would much rather go to colleges such as the University of Florida or Florida State University on guaranteed full cost-of-attendance scholarships from NMF or try for full-ride scholarships at colleges like Southern Methodist University and Texas Christian University. In addition, I do have thoughts of applying to medical schools and I understand that a high GPA and graduating with the lowest debt are invaluable. I have explained all of this to my parents and they tried to understand yet in their eyes it still was basically prestige>everything.
How else could I try to convince my parents that there is marginal difference between top 20 schools and other great colleges in the 40-80 range? Does anyone have any similar experiences in terms of choosing a more prestigious college and paying more vs a less prestigious college on a full-ride?
First thing–NMSF opens full rides at decent colleges but I remember when I was looking through them, none of them were that great when compared to the other colleges I had gotten into. If you guys would have to pay 22,000 a year, you can take out loans if you feel bad, but I really think it’s worth it. I’m paying a bit more than that and I still think it’s worth it–I would also hate myself if I had gone to a 40-80 college when if I got into top 5. I’d graduate with 40-50k in debt but the experience is worth it. For the first time, I’m surrounded by tons of people smarter than me, people from whom I can learn. It’s an awesome experience, even if it can be difficult.
As a fellow middle class Asian male, I’d recommend shotgunning the top 5/10 and apply to some match schools too.
I don’t know how much medical school plans affect things because it’s true they care a lot about GPA and it will be harder at top schools to maintain good GPA.
You sound like you have a fantastic plan. Perhaps give your parents the argument that youd rather be summa cum laude at florida than middle of the pack at an ivy. Standing out above the crowd gets you better access to top profs and internships. Also give them Frank Bruni’s book about college admissions. Maybe ask a local doctor to talk to them about med school.
$22000 per year is $88000 total over four years. Med school is expensive. Will they be able to borrow more money at the end of four years to send you through med school?
You are smart to want what you want. Ask your parents which looks better, an undergrad degree from Harvard or a doctorate from Harvard?
I don’t think you should shotgun. I think you should pick out 2 or 3 of the top schools where you think you would fit best and apply to them, then spend the bulk of your efforts on the more affordable schools.
Some top schools have financial aid for incomes as high as $180k/year- and families pay 10%, basically, at that level of income. So look into what schools like Harvard and other Ivies, or “little Ivies” like Amherst, would actually cost.
If your parents have the money to pay the $22k, then I think you should apply to the best fit, whether it has prestige or not.
There is some reverse snobbery at times about Ivies and other top schools. They are indeed a great experience due in large part to the other students with whom you attend.
There are a lot of great colleges out there, some prestigious and some not. Large state schools are a fit for some, but think about things like size, location, academics and “vibe” as you choose.
Don’t go by cost if your parents can pay without hardship, and investigate net price calculator results for a variety of schools.
I think that perhaps what is really going on is that you know that grades and scores are not what gets applicants into the most selective schools, and without significant EC’s, you are right that your chances are much lower. Maybe you don’t want to disappoint your parents and would rather just not apply, so that you don’t get turned down.
That reason is quite different from the one you posted. We don’t know you. Don’t undersell yourself but I would say, instead of convincing your parents that prestige is not important, try to get them to understand that your chances are slim.
Since you are looking to keep cost down and prestige I’d look at applying to the following:
Princeton/Harvard for the best need-based aid (run the NPC)
Vandy, WashU, Duke, USCal for merit scholarships that cover Tuition.
Your odds are very low but at least it’s better than shotgunning all the top schools.
I’d also look at the NMF publics like UAlabama that have honor colleges. You can get info from the placement office for pre-health professions and get a list of what Medical Schools their graduates get into to help convince your parents as I’m sure they place kids into all the top schools.
NMF will open up scholarships, ranging from small ones (a few hundred dollars) to several thousand, to some full tuition, and some possible full rides. Your plan is perfectly appropriate. But instead of trying to convince them not to be be trophy hunting for window decal bragging rights, why not have them come on cc and read about the many wonderful opportunities for excellent educations, and the wise financial planning for med school down the road. Good luck.
Do not count on NM money. There are thousands who will be finalists and not even half of them will get any award. I presume you are from Florida based on your schools mentioned. You may not get awards from any schools despite your gpa and test scores.
I am assuming your parents can afford college and medical school without a change in family lifestyle, dipping into retirement funds (always a NO!) or taking out loans. With your potential you should look outside just state schools and schools you think you can get a full ride at. There are better schools out there! Since parents often overestimate their ability to pay for college make them sit down with you and explain exactly where the money is to come from. Better a reality check now than next spring.
For your initial college search, before doing applications, you should aim high. Explore those top twenty or thirty schools to see if any appeal to you. This includes academics in your proposed major as well as other factors.
When it comes time to actually doing applications include a few top schools you have a chance of being accepted at to please your parents. Include other top tier schools you would like. Also include your state public U’s. Your parents (and you) must realize that just because you may be a National Merit Finalist that does not mean you will be accepted to, much less get any scholarship money for top tier schools. There are simply too many students for the number of spots available. This is why you choose several schools.
Your parents need to realize that elite students populate the top public U’s in their home state because most students need to pay attention to a budget. There is also a cultural component to staying in your geographic region. Unfortunately schools do not list how many NMF students they have but only the few who receive money from them.
Go about your search now with an eye on including schools. The list will be trimmed later.
Oh, and no, most schools much below that top twenty are not as good for top students like yourself. However, public flagship U’s are the exception as- see above- they generally get elite instate students and have honors programs to accommodate their needs. You should aim for schools with an academic peer group to be with students as smart as you are. The top tier schools also offer more in a course than average colleges do- AP classes do not cover as much (one reason some do not give AP college credit). We were lucky to be in a state with a top tier public U, not everyone is.
I would say don’t rule anything out just yet. Visit the schools you mentioned and visit a couple your parents think you might like. But, if you’ve done research and you have already picked the school(s) you like and just want to convince your parents, my suggestion would be to get on their email newsletter subscription lists and learn about the academic and research opportunities at your favorite schools. There are great things happening at schools throughout the country that aren’t top tier.
(BTW, I took D20 to TCU when I was in Fort Worth on business. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but we were both pleasantly surprised by the campus and the surrounding neighborhood. I could see her there.)
Nothing wrong with any of the schools you mentioned. Apply to a bunch – top 20 and beyond. Start visiting. Once you can see the tangible benefits of each school, things will change. You seem like a smart kid. Your parents will come around. Good luck.
My pre-med son will be attending University of New Mexico on a guaranteed NMF full ride.
The Honors College has a Top 25 ranking.
The med school and nursing school have several Top 5 to Top 20 rankings ( #3 for rural medicine, #7 nursing midwifery, #20 primary care). There’s a hospital adjacent to campus that’s a tier 1 trauma center, making for easy shadowing and other volunteer and clinical opportunities. There’s a BAMD program, but only for New Mexico residents.
If you make NMF, here are several other good options for a pre-med.
UT Dallas - guaranteed full ride. It used to be about a thousand dollars short of a full ride, but they increased it this year so I think it’s even, now. Great STEM school, rising fast in the rankings.
BAMA and UAB - Full ride or near full ride for NMF.
U Florida and UCF - guaranteed full ride for NMF.
IMHO, pre-meds should NOT go into debt for undergrad. If your family can afford to send you wherever you get in with no debt, great! Go wherever you like. But if finances are an issue, you have a wealth of guaranteed full rides to choose from.
Actually, you’d have to go pretty far down the list before you would find a school that doesn’t provide plenty for an undergrad to learn. If the profs have PhD’s they are going to know a lot more about their subjects than their students, and if the school has decent lab facilities the student is going to be able to get the premed curriculum they need. It doesn’t have to be a flagship. The schools the OP listed should be able to meet his needs.
I mean, seriously – if the schools offer full rides to NM finalists, it means that they are bringing in other students with similar stats.
@ripasians2023 -please don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t get a good education – or that you are somehow too smart – for Florida State or TCU or any of the other colleges you are thinking of. College is not high school and a smart student can find challenge at any of those schools. And undergrads can often enroll in graduate level courses at their schools.
I do agree that to please your parents it makes sense to also apply to a small number of the schools they favor – for one thing, if you apply to Princeton (for example) to please your parents, and you get turned down… then that will give your parents the dose of reality they need. And if by some chance you do get accepted to an Ivy or equivalent… your own opinion might change as well. But I personally think that applying to 1 or 2 would be enough – just emphasize to your parents that your goal is med school. In the long run, no one is going to care where you got your undergrad degree, and you really may end up with better choices for med school if you complete undergrad in a somewhat less competitive environment, which in turn may be an environment where you stand out more.
As for how to convince your parents, look into the details.
Example: At #20, University of New Mexico’s medical school outranks the following for primary care:
Dartmouth
Northwestern
UVA
Boston U
Duke
Johns Hopkins
Stanford
Vanderbilt
Emory
Brown
Chicago
Cornell
Tufts
Given that they have a preference for in-state residents, there’s no way in heck they could have such a rating with sub-par undergraduate candidates or sub-par undergraduate training.
You’d have to get the numbers for whatever school you pick, of course, but “It outranks Stanford and Johns Hopkins,” makes for a pretty good comeback if anyone tries to cast aspersions on your school of choice.
Thank you all for the wonderful responses! I will definitely take all factors into consideration but it seems to me that I should apply to a good balance of schools (some guaranteed full-rides, some mid-tier colleges with good merit scholarships, and some top 20s) and compare financial aid packages afterwards. Right now I am definitely leaning towards UF, FSU, UCF, UTD, UNM for that sweet NMF money.
Yours is an interesting question. I won’t digress into future trends in the medical profession.
My wife is a pediatrician. She went to the in-state medical school. There are not many medical school scholarships. She graduated from med school in '02, finished residency in '05. We will finish paying her student loans (and mine for law school) when we plan to retire. Neither of us had any undergraduate debt. The difference for us (compared to many now) is that interest rates when we locked in our student debt were around 2% (really makes you think about paying that off early).
Anyway…the point of this is why, if you seriously plan on going into medicine would you want to pull undergraduate debt along with professional school debt? Your thought process is a good one. Maximize the amount of merit award you can get at the undergraduate level. Parents often do not think about the cost of college (until it is too late). I know, I am one. Parents are this site are not indicative of parents as a whole. A parent paying $22K to put their kid through college is a parent not putting $22K into their retirement savings. That is not to say that the kid isn’t important, but the life and future of the parent is important, too, and they should not be a financial drain on the kid once the kid is in the workforce (especially, when the employment prospects of the kid are unknown).
My recommendation would be to shoot for the stars on one or two top 20 schools (hell, everyone else is doing it, look at the application numbers). But, be realistic with your other applications and follow the merit money and fit.
What I would advise anyone interested in medicine (or law for that matter) is talk to someone involved in the field (learn what a wRVU, ICD code, and billable hour are), find out where the fields will be in ten years, what impact will communications technology have on the field. Does any of that impact your interest?
@ripasians2023 with 15 APs, in addition to finacial aid packages you might want to consider how much credit each school will give toward your degree for AP credit. Every school is different some schools are very generous, some schools just give “general elective credits” that don’t really help much toward your degree others give little or no credit for AP’s. Just something else you might want to look at when comparing schools.
^^^ This. My son has 38 or so dual enrollment credits and 6 APs. UNM accepted all of his credits. He will enter UNM with second-semester sophomore standing. His AP and DE courses knocked out all but two of his general ed. / core requirements. This will allow him to do some combo of the following:
double major in theatre and emergency medical services (pre-med path)
minor in theatre and take a double focus area in EMS - the pre-med focus and the disaster medicine focus
minor in theatre, major in EMS and take a bunch of courses just for fun, things like Monsters and Marvels Through the Ages, a literature class where they read Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Frankenstein, etc. After that one, he's planning to take Writing the Occult Detective Novel, an Honors College course that also fills a core English requirement.
