What about UPitt?
For a dark horse safety, check out U of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Your D would be auto-admit, including their Honors College. She would also qualify for their automatic Amigo scholarship, which is a 4-year OOS tuition waiver. Full COA after the waiver is around $22k/year. Off-campus rents are cheap for year 2 and beyond. They also have a program where a student’s final semester is tuition-free as long as the student graduates in 4 years. If she could bump her SAT up a bit (to 1390), she could apply for their competitive full-ride Regents scholarship.
https://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html
UNM’s School of Medicine is a hidden gem that outranks Stanford and Johns Hopkins for things like rural medicine and primary care. There’s no way they’d be able to do that without excellent undergraduate preparation. The hospital adjacent to campus is a Level 1 trauma center.
Our pre-med is S there on a National Merit scholarship and he loves it. Kids are friendly, and the vibe is laid back, supportive and not at all cutthroat.
She should also check out auto-stats offers at Bama, UA Birmingham and UT Dallas.
West Chester has a great med school placement rate and would be about the cheapest in-state option. They (like all PA state schools) are a little stingy on merit, but they do give up to half tuition to their top students (I think based mainly on GPA and test scores). My daughter has since moved away from the idea of med school, but when we visited we met with the head of their pre-med program and they really seemed to have a nice program in place to mentor pre-meds and get them into good schools. You might also look at Ursinus which is also supposed to be excellent for premed. I think they give an automatic half tutiion for SAT/ACT over a certain number, but even with that, it’s still well over 30K/year. I don’t know if they give any more aid than that.
https://www.wcupa.edu/sciences-mathematics/premed/
https://www.wcupa.edu/sciences-mathematics/preMed/placement.aspx
I think the above wording from West Chester’s website shows part of the problem with a premed hopeful relying on a school’s published high placement rate. A premed hopeful (or parent) may be blinded by “95%” and overlook what the rest of the school’s website states, or omits. For example most who start premed change their minds (eg, noncompetitive grades, realization that becoming a MD is a very long slog, changed interests, etc). Note the placement rate reflects the number of students “who meet the standards or our program”… and “who have been recommended by the Pre-Medical Committee”. If one doesn’t get a Committee letter, although not necessarily fatal to a premed’s chances, it can be a red flag to med schools, perhaps dooming a premed hopeful chances. And if you read the professions factored into West Chester’s Pre- Medical program and its high placement success rate, it includes osteopathic, podiatry, veterinary, optometry, dental, physician assistant, (and schools abroad, whatever that means). Be very wary of published placement rates
If she goes out of state, all of that money is going to get spent with tuition and room & board. If medical schools give priority to any applicant, it won’t be the one from USC. It’s going to be the in-state applicant. That’s going to be her best shot at getting into medical school, plus it’s half the cost to stay in-state.
West Chester appears to be “baking” the data; kids that “meet the standards” and are “recommended” seem to do very well but as @Jugulator20 points out that doesn’t apply to every premed at the school.
A less obvious take-away, though, is their story underscores that kids can do well in med school admissions from just about anywhere! West Chester is not a name-brand school like UCLA or UW, it admits about 2/3rds of its applicants, and yet kids doing all the right things while in college are successful.
Someone taking the time to research med school admissions (I gave a few links before, there are plenty of books and websites that discuss it) and then goes ahead and does them can get in.
I want to second - or perhaps third - Washington and Jefferson plus Juniata. Both do very well with pre-meds.
There are others. What is she looking for in a school besides merit aid? I’m guessing not pure urban if she didn’t like Pitt, but urban with a campus bubble?
Make sure her stats are in the top 25% of incoming freshmen for her to personally feel up to snuff. Kids with lower stats compared to their peers often feel they aren’t as smart even if it’s just a case of not as prepared due to their high school class depth. Then too, if class depth wasn’t as strong, they have to put more work in to be on par. There are several factors at play with it.