How do I narrow down my list?

College Search & Selection
1

I will have tuition reimbursement from a certain list of colleges around the country. However, I am having trouble narrowing some down. Do you have an idea on how I should go about doing this? Are there any colleges on this list that you know of or reccomend? I have attached the lists from which I can choose.

However, I do want to pick other colleges as my “safeties”. I want to go to a “reputable” and “respected” school in the list. Wanting to go into Pre-Med to get into a really good medical school.

My “parent” institution will pay “for sure” for any of the schools I get accepted to in the CIC list, but there will be a selection process for the kids who get it all payed for the schools in the tuition exchange list. Is there any school that catches your eye?

Council of Independent Colleges (takes a while to load) - https://wp.cic.edu/Chapter/CICChapterMembers.aspx?CID=4776a598-90cd-db11-a182-005056873acc

Tuition Exchange - http://www.tuitionexchange.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/Families%7CMember%20Schools

Thanks so much,
AtticusFinchh

2

You need to understand that your primary goals in premed are to get a good GPA and do well on the MCAT. The question is what schools will help you with that. If you have tuition reimbursement I would assume you have a parent that works at a college. Can’t they ask what good institutions are on your list for premed?

3

The CIC list has a few schools that are on the Colleges that Change Lives list (http://www.ctcl.org/colleges/list) including Allegheny, Hampshire and Hendrix. I would definitely look into those.

The Tuition Exchange list has many reputable schools on it.

Besides pre-med, is there any thing in particular you’re looking for? Size? Location?

4

Okay, these lists are huge and varied. If a college is good it usually has a good pre-med program, so don’t worry about that - you can go to med school from anywhere.

You need to make some decisions about preferences just like any other student would. Do you prefer a smaller environment, a medium-sized one, or a larger one? Do you want to be in an urban location, a rural one, or something in-between? Do you want to cheer for the team, discuss philosophy in your dorm room at night, or both? (They’re not mutually exclusive.) Deciding what you want in a college will help you narrow down these lists.

There are some excellent schools on these lists - Occidental College, USC, Connecticut College, American University, George Washington University, New College of Florida, University of Florida, Agnes Scott (if you’re a young woman), Knox College, Bard College, Fordham University, RIT, Skidmore College, Elon University, Case Western, College of Wooster, Willamette University, Bucknell, Dickinson, Duquesne, Drexel, Gettysburg, Franklin & Marshall, Lafayette, Villanova, Furman, Sewanee-University of the South, Bennington, University of Richmond, University of Puget Sound, Lawrence University, and Beloit College all stand out. There are some other good to great ones on the list, too.

5

Not all Tuition Exchange schools offer full tuition to all eligible students. You can use http://www.tuitionexchange.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/Families|School%20Search to check for percentages of eligible students getting the awards, the size of the awards, and other factors relating to the awards.

For your safeties, you may want to choose schools where all eligible students get the awards, if the award is necessary for the school to be within your budget (considering that money saved or debt avoided in undergraduate can help if you go to expensive medical school).

6

From the CIC list, I would consider the following matches:
Hendrix, Illinois Wesleyan, Southwestern (TX), U Scranton.

and the following safeties:
Allegheny, Concordia-Moorhead, DePaul, Guilford, Pace, St Edwards (Austin), Wittenberg

All would be good for med school.

7

Also check out Drew.

8

Thanks for the input…

I’m a male.
I’m okay with any environment…not super super large.

Don’t mind if it’s suburban, but not out “in the middle of nowhere”.

Really, just okay with anything…but it’s just that I’ve always been drilled about how the rankings are all that matter.

For example, I just put in all the colleges mentioned by the posters above on US News and just looked up the rankings…

Is there like a “best” one on there?

9

Rankings are not “all that matters,” particularly for a premed student. Med schools don’t care about school rankings.

It looks like there’s a good number of Jesuit and other Catholic univs on the list. Do any of those interest you? Creighton is practically a premed univ all by itself with so many premeds there. Does your parent work for SLU?

But, really nearly any of the Jesuit or Catholic schools listed would be fine if the Exchange covers ALL tuition…Fordham, Creighton, Santa Clara, Loyola Maryland, Villanova, UPortland, SeattleU, SLU, and so forth

But also…Tulane, and other schools listed in others’ posts above.


[QUOTE=""]
Wanting to go into Pre-Med to get into a really good medical school.

[/QUOTE]

lol…are you aware that ALL US MD schools are VERY GOOD? This country doesn’t have any MD med schools that aren’t “really good.”

10

It appears that UMKC BA/MD program is the one that you’re applying to. Is that school included in the exchange.

I was surprised to see that for instate students the tuition is quite high for that program. I’ve never seen a public charge so much more for instate students during the BA part of the program. The tuition alone is over $20k per year and the COA is about $35k per year for instate.

If the exchange won’t pay for UMKC’s tuition, are your parents ok with that?

11

As far as your “financially guaranteed” academic matches (CIC), no there’s no strict academic difference between Hendrix, Illinois Wesleyan, Southwestern (TX), U Scranton. None is “better” than the other, they’re all good and will be intense for a premed. Environment is very different though - for example, Hendrix is in the South( though not really “Southern”!), smaller, liberal, and quirky, with signature experiential programs (essentially, they help you pay to volunteer abroad and get you a stipend to do research or internship) whereas Illinois Wesleyan is larger, midwestern, has Greek life, and is fairly mainstream. Research all four since there are many more differences if you include UScranton and Southwestern TX.
If I were you, I’d apply to at least 2 of them, based on fit.
As for your safeties, pick your 2-3 favorites from Allegheny, Concordia-Moorhead, DePaul, Guilford, Pace, St Edwards (Austin), Wittenberg, and Drew. Explore each website/request information. I know that Allegheny, Concordia-Moorhead, and S Edwards have excellent reputation for premeds, but you’d have to check into the support and advising yourself.

As for TE, it’s more of a roll of the dice for you. You’d have to check whether the schools offer full tuition or not and how competitive that is. Occidental, Connecticut College, GWU, Centre, Tulane, Bard, Fordham, Skidmore, Elon, Dickinson, Franklin&Marshall, URichmond.
should all be on your list as high matches/low reaches (due to selectivity) so check out the TE conditions.
Eckerd, Rollins, Butler, St Lawrence, Willamette, Gustavus Adolphus, Stevens, Hobart and William Smith, Creighton, Ohio Wesleyan, Muhlenberg, Ursinus, St Michael’s, are all good matches for a future premed.
Valparaiso, Luther, Stonehill, U St Thomas, U St Louis, UPortland, Carroll MT, Nebraska Wesleyan, Elizabethtown, Susquehanna, Gonzaga, are additional safeties if you don’t like the ones above, and probably easier to get TE from than the ones above.

I’d prefer any of those colleges to UMKC.

12

If you have a tuition reimbursements to UMKC, then I would definitely go there if you for sure want to be a doctor. To be honest, one of the biggest things that stops people from going there is the cost so without that I don’t see why you would not pick it.

13

@ang Ummm, thanks for the input. Let’s just say that I’m really open to the traditional path as well and UMKC isn’t the best of med schools for a non-primary care speciality/residency in the long run.

Good luck!

14

@AtticusFinchh Well, that’s a good thing to consider, but hard to even know what specialty you go into so I would not let that be a limiting factor. In the long run, things will change about you and medicine so keep that in mind. UMKC is fine for people going into any specialty because they have had students match into many competitive specialties, you should take a look at the previous match lists. There’s a only so much a high schooler could know about residency and matching at this point and I can tell you right now that your school does not determine your match.

15

@ang , thanks for the input. I’ll take that into consideration. Good luck to you as well.

16

This is not a productive post at all, but I just had to say that I’m from Missouri as well, and your avatar makes me very happy.

17

:smiley: @whitespace

18

@AtticusFinchh

It really concerns me that you say that you want to “go into Pre-Med”, and that you think rankings are important to your goal of med school. There is not a single degree hanging on someone’s wall that says they graduated with a B.S. in “Pre-Med”. You can major in history or ballet and apply to med school. Also, all the med schools in this country (as was pointed out they are all quite credible) are filled with people that went to schools not highly ranked by USNWR, which I assume is the ranking system to which you refer.

Just find a school you like better than the others based on location, size, special programs, friendliness as best you can tell from what you hear and read, etc. Whatever is important to you except ranking. Ugh. Then get a great GPA, especially in the required Pre-Med courses, and do well on the MCAT. Doing some research might not hurt, but you don’t have to. But you should get involved in community/charity work.

19

It does seem that some colleges do offer majors along those lines, like [Bachelor of Science in Preprofessional Studies](http://science.nd.edu/undergraduate/sample-curricula/preprofessional-studies-sample-curriculum/).

However, would such a major be seen as questionable by medical school admissions people, in that the applicant seems to have no other interests besides pre-med? And if the applicant does not get into medical school, would graduating with such a degree tell prospective employers that the graduate was a failed pre-med?