<p>S needs to decide between Columbia or full ride at Binghamton or Stonybrook for premed. Money is huge concern. can do it but it will be a struggle and have other siblings. Thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you.</p>
<p>Full ride without a doubt—having no UG debt will be a HUGE plus down the road…</p>
<p>I was not aware that Binghamton gives full rides. Is this based on merit or need?</p>
<p>Sorry I forgot to add that I would take the full ride without a doubt.</p>
<p>save Ivy (and extra debt that comes with it) for grad work.</p>
<p>Full ride. And if you are a top student, you are likely to get better mentoring, better internships, better research opportunities than at the Ivy. </p>
<p>Med school is SO expensive these days.</p>
<p>Full ride. Average med school debt was 90K when I graduated eons ago. Now it’s between 160-200K. Why would you want to double future med school debt?</p>
<p>Full ride no question. S2 has taken that path. No regrets no debt</p>
<p>Do you mean to say Columbia will be at list price? If so, take the full ride.</p>
<p>Medical school is so [url=<a href=“https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/select.cfm?year_of_study=2013]expensive[/url”>https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/select.cfm?year_of_study=2013]expensive[/url</a>] that it is best to save money to minimize the amount of debt that a student will end up with after medical school.</p>
<p>Agree. Take a full ride and save the Ivy for grad school. Congratulations to your son!</p>
<p>Go to state full-ride, save the money for med school. much better trade-off.</p>
<p>If finances are a concern, take the full ride…especially at Stonybrook as they have strong pre-med/health sciences programs. </p>
<p>However, this needs to be prefaced with the possibility your child may wash out so you/your child also need to ask which campus may offer good alternate majors should he change his mind on pre-med or he’s effectively weeded out*.</p>
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<li>Considering the exceedingly competitive nature of pre-med admissions…1 B+ in a core pre-med course like orgo is enough to substantially reduce your chances of gaining admission to any med school.</li>
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<p>Roughly 45% of first-time med school applicants get admitted somewhere. When you add in those who are admitted on the second try, it is probably closer to 50%. While I wouldn’t downplay the difficulty, med school isn’t nearly as difficult to get into as a bunch of humanities and social science Ph.D. programs where fellowships are paid. </p>
<p>The real difficulty is, 1) sticking with it as an undergrad (lots of students don’t, though there is no such thing as a “pre-med” major, so that really isn’t much of a problem), and 2) paying for it.</p>
<p>However, a lot of pre-med frosh never get to the point of applying to medical school, because their GPAs are too low or they take the MCAT and get too low a score, so that they realize that applying is futile.</p>
<p>As far as majors go, it does appear that many pre-meds think that they have to major in biology, even though that is not the case. Not surprisingly, the biology job market at graduation is flooded with biology majors.</p>
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<p>I’ve known several friends with 3.7+ Ugrad GPAs from places like Berkeley, tippy top MCAT scores, internships in hospitals, ECs, and stellar recommendations get rejected 3+ times in a row before suddenly getting admitted to some fine med schools like UChicago, Columbia, BU, NYU, etc…sometimes with partial-tuition scholarships.</p>
<p>“because their GPAs are too low or they take the MCAT and get too low a score, so that they realize that applying is futile.”</p>
<p>Understood, but exactly the same thing is true of all kinds of graduate programs. It’s nothing specific to medicine. Same could be said of musicology (where admissions for a fellowship are much more difficult.)</p>
<p>“I’ve known several friends with 3.7+ Ugrad GPAs from places like Berkeley, tippy top MCAT scores, internships in hospitals, ECs, and stellar recommendations get rejected 3+ times in a row…”</p>
<p>Almost always because they didn’t cast their nets wide enough. (Or because they are impossible, immature interviews.)</p>
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<p>Medicine and law are two graduate professional schools where admissions is much more numbers driven and more transparent than other programs. </p>
<p>Especially PhD programs where evaluations can be very subjective considering LORs are the most important factor in the application and where assessments of a student’s “seriousness/commitment” to the field and “collegiality” often count just as much/more than their GPA/GRE scores so long as some unwritten minimum threshold is exceeded.</p>
<p>"While I wouldn’t downplay the difficulty, med school isn’t nearly as difficult to get into as a bunch of humanities and social science Ph.D. programs where fellowships are paid. "</p>
<p>You are comparing tuition-paying med school admission to tuition/stipend-paid grad school admission. Very different situations, even if it is hard to gain humanity/social science phd acceptance (with money).</p>
<p>How much FA has Columbia offered? How much debt would need to be incurred for UG there? All things considered, it makes the most sense to keep debt down as much as possible if he is sure he is headed to med school some day.</p>
<p>“You are comparing tuition-paying med school admission to tuition/stipend-paid grad school admission. Very different situations, even if it is hard to gain humanity/social science phd acceptance (with money).”</p>
<p>Well, of course I am! I am also comparing the admissions requirement into a profession where the average salary is around $70k v. medicine, where the average salary can be… Especially relative to income (and a guaranteed job!) it is much, much easier to get into med. school.</p>
<p>“Especially PhD programs where evaluations can be very subjective considering LORs are the most important factor in the application…”</p>
<p>In most of the Ph.D. programs I know, GREs and GPAs are the beginning point for consideration. They do count much less in the final evaluation, but without them, you don’t get to the final evaluation.</p>