<p>When doing pre-med, is it recommended that you go to an undergraduate school that is not that expensive so that you wont have much debt when entering med school or is it ok to have lots of debt from going to schools like NYU for premed?</p>
<p>Obviously the best scenario is that you have 0 undergrad debt, but that's certainly not a possibility for some people. And of course there are plenty of people who do carry in large loads of undergraduate debt to medical school. It just means you have to really live w/in your means as a resident and young physician.</p>
<p>Med school debt is going to be in the 140-160k area if you go in-state to a state medical school, and probably in the 220-250k range for a private school (but the private school may have more aid - but obviously not everyone gets that). The government will give you the money, pretty much with no problem at all. And I'm sure that BDM will corroborate this but the medical schools pretty much do all the work for you as far as getting the loans and the amount. You just have to submit your FAFSA and sign the appropriate paperwork. As a grad student, you are considered a separate entity of your parents so you don't even have to supply their financial information.</p>
<p>Sorry I'm kinda out of it but do medical schools give out full scholarships? I mean if you're a really competitive applicant could you receive scholarships from some of the lesser ranked med schools you applied to?</p>
<p>Yes, there are some scholarships. The more money they are, at least the ones a couple friends have, the harder they are to keep. I have one friend who is starting in the fall, who got a Regents scholarship to my school that requires him to end up in the top 10% of the class. He already knows that he isn't going to keep it past this year, but is thankful that he gets at least a one year reprieve from taking out the full amount of loans (it's just fees and tuition, so he still has to take loans for living expenses.</p>
<p>I wouldn't use the term lesser though. You can't go into med school applications like you would undergrad. There are no safeties, and I've seen enough people who deserve to be in medical school not get in, even though they had great records (one was even a Fulbright Scholar, and didn't get into to but one of his schools). Even after looking at BDM's stats from his MDapplicants.com profile, he was unbelievebly competitive and he got rejected from a number of places.</p>
<p>1.) For many private schools, they will require your parental information if they are going to give you any money of their own. The Federal Government will still give you subsidized/unsubsidized loans, etc., but the school itself will often not give you grant money without your parental information.</p>
<p>2.) Most schools give out merit scholarships of some kind or another. Obviously it is easier to win such scholarships at a school where the average incoming applicant is (statistically) less competitive. But the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, and many - many - others give them out. The Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago is particularly well-known for giving out $140,000 in merit aid via "Dean's Promise Scholarships". Perhaps they have a larger budget for this sort of thing than others.</p>
<p>Obviously I'm not saying that you should count on a scholarship from one of these places. You must remember that Wash U's average incoming index is 75, and they only award these scholarships to their top few students out of hundreds that they admit.</p>
<p>It's true, about top med schools giving lots of aid. Harvard, for instance, has scads of money to give in aid. My brother works for the scholarship funds at Northwestern's medical school, and they don't have a lot of donors, so they can't give a lot of aid. That's changing because of him, though, so keep applying! He says they lose a lot of great students because they get more money to go somewhere else, which is just as good.</p>
<p>BDM don't want to hijack but.. is the index of 75 = gpa X 10 + MCAT?</p>
<p>bumpppppppp</p>
<p>OWM: Exactly.</p>