There is a bioengineering major at Santa Clara University. If your stats are very high, you might get some merit aid from them.
This quote is quite revealing. Your cost at Case could easily be the close to equivalent to 1/2 off compared to the schools you have listed. It is not unusual for Case to give $30,000 scholarships to students with your stats. (I don’t know about Tulane. I’ve never had a child apply there.) It sounds like you only want to consider the $60,000-$65,000 “vibe and location.”
The only thing anyone can suggest to you is to seriously consider what is going to happen in the fall if your parents can’t swing the cost of attending those schools. Acceptance is not the only issue. Being able to afford to attend is even more important. You need to decide where you will be happy attending if your actual budget is a Toyota and you want a Porsche.
@menloparkmom I’m looking up numbers to see how bad those other 3 states are (as you’ve suggested). I have looked up the 3 states you mentioned, and Texas and Calif.
Those other 3 states don’t seem to have a similar issue, and neither does Texas.
NY
NY has 1878 first year med school seats in the state.
NY had 3400 applicants
so theoretically there are seats for 55% of applicants
Conn
Conn has 292 first year med school seats in the state
Conn had 545 applicants
so theoretically there are seats for 54% of applicants
Mass
Mass has 655 first year med school seats in the state
Mass had 1163 applicants
so theoretically there are seats for 56% applicants
Texas
Texas has 1586 first year med school seats in the state
Texas had 3870 applicants
so theoretically there are seats for 41% of applicants
Calif
Calif has 1170 first year med school seats (including UCR)
Calif had 5920 applicants
so theoretically there are seats for ONLY 20% of applicants
The above is why Calif is not a great place to be an OOS premed (or even instate for that matter). Unless the education is cheap there for the OOS student, I don’t see what benefit there would be going there.
Is there a typo here? 292 is not 54% of 3400.
The other thing…just because a student attends med school in a state does NOT mean they need to apply to medical,school in that state. Many students attend college OOS and apply to their instate med schools. Or OOS in other places.
It is probably more convenient to go to interviews at the in-state medical schools if one is attending an in-state undergraduate school (or at least one in a nearby state, particularly if the states are small). Given the relatively low cost of Texas public (and Baylor) medical schools for Texas residents, it is likely that they will be attractive for the OP to apply to. Going to medical school interviews in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Lubbock, and El Paso is likely a lot easier and cheaper from Austin or College Station than it is from Cambridge or Baltimore.
Here is a list of medical school tuition and fees:
https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/report.cfm?select_control=PUB&year_of_study=2015
Note the relatively low cost of Texas medical schools.
why do you have this idea that pre med students will ONLY apply to in state Med schools?
MOST Students who want to be DR’s apply to more than just their in state public med schools. Some have no choice. And many DO end up going to an OOS private OR public Med schools, because that’s were they were accepted. I have never read of premed students who just give up on a Medical career because they did NOT get accepted into a lower cost instate public med school.
And yes, they may take on debt, which may not be avoidable, but for many medical specializes- surgery, Dermatology, anesthesiology, radiology, oncology, etc. etc., does not end up being an hard to overcome financial disaster.
The average med school applicant applies to over 26 med schools - both public and private!
Obviously, MOST of the schools that the average student applies to ARE in other states!
This is a reality in many states, not just in Calif.
Has anyone suggested a thread title grammar correction? Isn’t it a burden to, not a burden on?
For a Texas resident, the much lower cost of Texas public medical schools makes them very attractive targets compared to others. Attending one will probably result in $160000 less debt than attending a private or out of state medical school. Sure, the student can apply elsewhere, but those other schools are likely much less attractive based on cost.
“And when you’re attending a school where literally hundreds of students will be applying to med schools, the chances of getting superior LORs becomes sorely low”
Calif has lots of pre med students because it has lots of college students- but there is not a disproportionately high overall student /faculty ratio at Calif colleges that would make it any harder to get LOR’s than in any other state!
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Conn
Conn has 292 first year med school seats in the state
Conn had 3400 applicants
so there are seats for 54% of applicants
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@thumper1
Yes, that is a typo…thanks for catching…that 3400 is a NY number
should be
Conn
Conn has 292 first year med school seats in the state
Conn had 545 applicants
so there are seats for 54% of applicants
oops…thanks for catching!! Was watching a recording of Property Brothers - Buying and Selling while typing. lol
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.just because a student attends med school in a state does NOT mean they need to apply to medical,school in that state. Many students attend college OOS and apply to their instate med schools. Or OOS in other places.
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Right, but attending an OOS school as a premed, where there is this particular issue, isn’t doing anyone any favors.
And, as @ucbalumnus mentions, doing the interviews, etc. Obviously, some may go to a Calif undergrad not knowing that they’re premed, or may even make that decision after graduation. That is a different situation.
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why do you have this idea that pre med students will ONLY apply to in state Med schools?
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???
@menloparkmom I certainly do NOT have that idea. I HAVE A child in med school. He certainly didn’t only apply to instate med schools. So certainly I would never have that idea. lol I don’t know of ANY med school applicant that only applied to instate schools. There probably are some, I just don’t know them.
That said, I do know that many (in Calif and elsewhere) sure hope for an instate seat, particularly a public one, because costs can be lower, etc. Some are in serious relationships at that point and don’t want to be far away, and some are even married at that point. There are many benefits to going to med school in one’s own state. My son has had classmates give birth, and they’re sure happy that they have spouse and extended family nearby to help out. My son’s longtime GF is in PA school an hour away. They like that they’re not a few states away from each other.
The point is the number of theoretical seats in the state compared to the number of instate applicants does have a negative consequence. When is a low number of theoretical seats proportional to instate applicants, it makes the competition more fierce.
I could understand Case Western in Cleveland to be lacking in location & campus vibe, but Tulane in New Orleans???
“If you feel badly about your parents having to fork over ~$50k per year for you to go to MIT/JHU (or their ilk), you could offer to pay them back over time.”
Bingo.
We also are able to do the reverse - help my son pay back loans later for a few years.
One of the inherent problems of the college process is that parents need to decide what financial info to share with their college-bound children, and when.
If your parents said they CAN pay for top schools, but seem to be hesitant, it is completely within reason for you to use that feeling as an impetus to make sure you can either:
a) pay them back after you graduate (either undergrad or med school) over time, or
b) take care of them when they get older and need extra help - not just money, but your time and your energy and your love
NO ONE wants to pay 50K per year for college. Not even a billionaire. But they have to decide on that. If it comes down to you are accepted to MIT but UT would be 30K savings per year, the decision is between you and your parents whether the 120K is worth it. MIT is certainly a rarefied experience. I went to an Ivy, and I can tell you after going to other colleges and teaching at other colleges, it is a different experience than at a state school or lower-ranked private college. But is that worth more than 100K?
Please don’t blame yourself, all you can do is talk to them and help them decide what they can, and want to, afford.
Apply to a bunch of schools, get FA packages, and compare them all. You will have a much better feeling then.
If the difference between MIT and UT Austin is $120,000, then that can probably pay for three or four years of Texas in-state public medical school costs (depending on how frugally you live). Imagine graduating from medical school with $0 to $30,000 of debt instead of $120,000 to $150,000 of debt. You will have a lot more freedom to make choices in your medical career with a low or no debt, instead of being forced to chase the money at every turn (see [url=<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Doctored-The-Disillusionment-American-Physician/dp/0374141398%5D%5Bi%5DDoctored%5B/i%5D%5B/url”>http://www.amazon.com/Doctored-The-Disillusionment-American-Physician/dp/0374141398]Doctored[/url] about the kind of financial pressures that physicians face that can be much worse if you have high debt).
See also https://www.aamc.org/download/152968/data/debtfactcard.pdf .
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Location and campus vibe are my deciding factors for this. Im NOT applying to schools like Tulane or Case Western.
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Ok, I can understand not wanting/liking CWRU, but what’s wrong with the location and vibe at Tulane??
What about Loyola Chicago? or Creighton? Or what about University of Miami? These are schools that will probably give you merit.
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Imagine graduating from medical school with $0 to $30,000 of debt instead of $120,000 to $150,000 of debt. You will have a lot more freedom to make choices in your medical career with a low or no debt, instead of being forced to chase the money at every turn
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$120k - 150k? More like $200-300k+ of med school debt. Instate Public COAs can be about $50k per year, and private COAs can be about $85k per year.
And since that debt grows the whole time, including during residency, that $200k-300k of debt will be significantly larger once the person is ready to begin his/her practice.
Someone with $200k-300k of med school debt is going to feel pressured to choose a higher paying medical field, even if that’s not where their heart is. A friend of mine just started her peds residency. She has no debt at all. It’s not a big deal to her that peds is a lower-paying field. She loves it, and it where her heart is. But what if she had $250k in med school debt (that is growing during her residency)?
<<< @menloparkmom
The average med school applicant applies to over 26 med schools - both public and private!
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While I agree that the average applicant applies to both public and private, instate and OOS, it isn’t true that the average applicant applies to over 26 med schools.
the number of applicants: 49,480
the number of applications: 731,595
avg per person: about 15
That said, maybe the average CALIF med school applicant applies to over 26 schools. That may be so. I can understand why they’d have to do that. They’re in a more desperate situation. If they’re each applying to 26+ med schools, and that state makes up 12% of the nation’s applicants (5920 applicants), then the rest of the applicants are applying to an avg of less than 15 each…because their situations are less desperate.
If 5920 Calif applicants each apply to an avg of 26+ med schools, that is 153,920+ applications.
Removing Calif numbers from the nation’s totals:
the number of non-Calif applicants: 43,560
the number of applications: 577,675
avg per non-Calif person: 13
I was assuming in-state public medical schools in Texas, which are unusually low cost compared to in-state public medical schools in other states.
https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/report.cfm?select_control=PUB&year_of_study=2015
CT resident here. The three medical,schools,in CT (Yale, UConn, and Quinnipiac) had FAR more than 545 applicants…far more.
OP believes they are entitled to a ton of money to go to a school where the vibe and location feel right, and clearly have a name that befits a school OP is entitled to attend and slap on their resume. Hmm, that money is to come from Mom and Dad, since after all the student worked so hard in high school. Any though given to the fact that your parents had to work very hard through their own high school and college careers, possibly grad or professional school and then did real hard work throughout their careers, while raising a family, to have earned that money OP feels entitled to. Seriously, what amount of hard work in high school, which is really what is expected of everyone, has earned OP a couple hundred thousand dollars of the wealth and savings the parents toiled for? Reality check time, don’t you think?
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CT resident here. The three medical,schools,in CT (Yale, UConn, and Quinnipiac) had FAR more than 545 applicants…far more.
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@thumper1 You misunderstood. Those 3 med schools had 545 applicants who were Conn residents. That is what is being counted…not the total applicants per school.
The comparison is number of applicants from a state vs number of theoretical MS1 seats in that state.
the numbers are from the aamc