My daughter has the opportunity to attend either Tufts or Lafayette and wants pre-med. No financial aid at either school unfortunately .
Tufts has a reputation on the forum as a place with stiff premed competition for grades, but I don’t have any personal experience.
Has she already been active volunteering in a health-care setting to see that the career is a fit for her? Volunteer or paid work is an unwritten requirement for admission, she might as well start now.
Another thing for her to think about is why a M.D.? When a lot of HS kids think of a career in medicine it becomes “I’m pre-med!” and happily embark on a track that will take 11+ years of school/training plus enormous debt. Doctors are far from the only ones in the health field that help people. Physical therapists, radiology techs, nurses, speech pathologists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, to name but just a few. as you can see on http://explorehealthcareers.org
Unless she’s carefully considered the alternatives and thought about fit (informed by her actual experiences working with ill people) its better for her to think of herself as interested in exploring a career as a doctor rather than someone who has already made the decision, IMHO.
Both excellent schools that can get her where she wants to go if she does well (for full disclosure my D went to Lafayette and loved it). I would choose based on which environment she prefers.
I concur with happy1. Both schools will serve as perfectly good paths to med school so long as she maintains a high GPA and does well on the MCAT. Neither school is cheap. Full freight at Tufts is now $76 K per year and Lafayette is about $70 K. Also, just curious, how is it that your daughter still has a choice between the two schools at this late date? (full disclosure, I went to Lafayette and son goes to Tufts - neither for pre-med though).
Thank you MikeMac, but there are several MD’s including me in the immediate family so she has had a lot of exposure and is well aware of the different career paths available in the health fields .
Big Chef -choice is for next year- athletics.
There are still a few other schools coming into play but those 2 are her top choices.
Here’s a different perspective. She is a recruited athlete. She also would like to become a physician. Would she likely have been admitted to Lafayette and Tufts without the hook of recruited athlete? Where do her scores fall on the distribution of scores among enrolled freshmen? If these are academic reaches for her, the pre-med weed-out courses could end her medical career before it starts. I’d encourage her to seriously weigh the relative importance of the sport vs. pre-med. The usual advice for aspiring physicians is to go to the least expensive school where you are most likely to maintain a 4.0 over the four years. Often that’s a school where the student can get merit aid, meaning they are a top achiever in the entering class. If she is Tufts material, maybe she can get merit and do her sport at, say, Gettysburg, Pitt, Tulane, or Grinnell
Tufts has a slightly higher “success rate” for their med school applicants, but not enough to offset whatever educational environment will allow her to do her personal best. Just a quick premed/athlete note: One of my kids got into a super selective LAC as a recruited athlete - so within the college’s mid-50% stats range, but definitely far from being a “top achiever” in the class. Four years later, ended up with more than a dozen med school interviews, got into several T10s, and almost all of them brought up my kid’s experience as a captain of a college sport. So yeah, if your daughter enjoys her sport enough to put in the extra time to be a premed athlete, it seems it can really pay off.
So, in the mid-50% range is typical for that college. Often, the bottom 25% comprises athletes and other hooked candidates. If a student falls there, it may be wise to give serious thought whether that’s the optimal school for that student for success at pre-med.
Congratulations! If it’s down to these two schools, look at what they each have to offer., down to the nitty gritty.
All things equal, I’d pick Tufts. More balanced school in terms liberal arts and STEM. Fewer hard core tech/math types. Boston with a lot to do, more students, heck, it’s the ultimate college town. If the sport doesn’t work out, the world is as wide open as could be
Which comes down to the immediate issue of the sport. The team , teammates, the cosch, the sport. Athletes earn their privileges but spending a lot of time with the team, with the sport. Unlike a bad classmate you can avoid, bad course, bad professor that are for the duration of a term, there for the class time, you are stuck with the team. If she has visited each team, talked to team members , spent time with the team, researched the coach and watched the vibes, she can assess this ever important component that none of can begin to know.
I know two top level athletes who picked schools less prestigious both in their sport and school name recognition because of the team/coach interactions and the feel of the campus overall in terms of being a student athlete there.
This isn’t a decision point reached out of the blue, and there are strong reasons it’s down to these two schools. Now is the time to fine tune the features and come to the final choice. .
She sounds exactly like our friend who will be attending Tufts. Both parents are MDs. She is also a recruited athlete. The NESCAC schools and league offer tremendous competition and the ability to maintain exemplary rigor, the travel requirements are not that onerous. She will have proximity so some of the country’s best teaching hospitals in Boston to do research or internships. Go Jumbos, its a stellar choice. Best of luck!