Thanks @MYOS1634. She visited Muhlenberg with her dad and liked it, but came home saying they didn’t have good scholarships. I’ll double check, she may have misunderstood.
After careful study, I highly recommend to consider University of Vermont and here are the reasons why:
- With ACT 34 you will be top 10% of the applicants and with a very good chance to get a scholarship. UVT UG has a 70% acceptance rate.
- OOS tuition is not too high at around $30K, with scholarship, you may pay $30K or less for total COA
- UVTCOM has NO IS bias for their med applicants. 70% of their matriculates are OOS. In School applicants certainly will have advantage and pre-med competition will not be bad.
- With only 10,000 students, its not very big and not big on sports.
- Wonderful winter and plenty skiing, Killington, Stowe and Jay Peak are at the best in NE. Out door activities right at the door in Burlington.
- Faculty student ratio 17:1 that is close to private school
Had I known this, I would encourage my D apply, but it is too late.
Another school is UMKC, its med school also does not have an IS bias.
Sorry, OOS tuition is now at 40K, make it a school closed to 60K COA, but you will get very good scholarship with 34 ACT.
Wow, did not realize that UVTCOM took so many OOS students. I wonder how many of them are ONE (out of New England). Had a Brown classmate who was a VT resident who was offered a full ride there. Unfortunately for them HMS offered him enough aid that he felt he was getting the right price for the HMS brand.
I’m going to try to piggyback a related question here. I know that many (most?) medical schools have an in-state bias. If D goes to college elsewhere (not CA 
) will my home state still consider her in-state for the bias? What if she goes to OU, will their med school consider her an Oklahoma student for the in-state preference? Mostly I am asking because D would very much like to go to school pretty much anywhere but her home state just to get some life experience, but I don’t want to make her a nomad that no one gives an in-state bump to.
Thanks.
Only public med schools worry about an applicant’s home state residence. Privates really don’t care and their classes are drawn from a national pool. Some state med schools care more than others about the applicant’s home state. OOS admission rates range from less than 5% to almost 50%.
Your D’s home state will be whatever she lists as her her permanent home address. If she is not finished college or is recent grad, that will likely be her parent’s home address. If she has graduated, is working and living somewhere beside her parent’s home, then it’s wherever she’s actually living.
Residency for in-state admission purposes and residency for in-state tuition purposes are often entirely different and follow different rules. And the rules for qualifying for in-state admission and in-state tuition will be different in each state and often at each school.
Many public med schools look at where an applicant’s high school was located to determine if they are in-state for admissions. (Because so many students go OOS for college.) I know my kidlets both had to provide the name of their high school on the secondary for them to considered in-state for our state med schools–which have highly protected in-state admissions. And the med school did check they had attended an in-state HS by calling the school to verify. (Also the name of an applicant’s high school is often part of their college transcript.)
Your D will likely be consider OOS for admission purposes at OU because she’s not a legal resident of OK. (She’s there for educational purposes.) However, OU may give her an admissions bump for attending OU as an undergrad–esp. if she can convince them she wants to remain in OK and practice medicine there. (The purpose of an in-state preference in admission to help supply doctors for the state.) How much of bump and how much it will influence admission decisions–that’s something you’d have to ask the Dean of Admissions at OU.
@dadof4kids Here is my understanding. Sure, experts will weigh in with their real experience.
- State residency does not change just because a child goes to college in another state.
- Each state have their own rules and definitions on when they will consider a student as in-state student.
- It is important when filing tax returns for the students, what state is used as primary residence and secondary residence if there is a need to file tax.
My D born and raised only in CA for 18 years, just started in OU last fall as freshman. I am thinking and hoping she will be a CA resident, if and when, she applies to medical school.
Per IRS, student going to college is considered ‘temporary absence’.
I was looking briefly on this for Ohio and Oklahoma last year. Ohio rules are relatively simple to classify a student for OH, if some one has a bank account with some $x (150k or so) for x number of years etc., Where as it is hard to get OK residency for the tuition purpose unless you can demonstrate that you have the real intention and you are OK resident.
I will also be interested to know from parents/students who managed to get instate fees for their MD education from a state where they entered only after HS.
ETA: I found OU’s statement about residency qualification;
Thanks. My D can not become OK resident by the first line itself because she is not financially independent!
I would agree with others that I would not attend a UC undergraduate as an OSS. UCB,UCLA and UCSD are some of the most competitive undergraduate schools in the country for pre meds. Not much grade inflation too. On the other hand if you do well… My internist was apparently 2nd in his class of 1000+ in organic chemistry at UCB and ended up at UCSF. Consider schools like USC or the Claremont schools if California is still an interest. California medical schools like UCLA, USC, and Stanford actually do not favor California residents. UCI also may not give instate preference. An ACT of 34 is actually quite good and with an outstanding academic record plus other “stuff” gives her a chance at most Universities in the country. If she wants to leave the south she probably should look mostly at privates in the NE as well as those in the midwest and the previously mentioned California schools. I would look at some of the Ivys such as Brown or Dartmouth as well as the sisters. A few other schools that come to mind include Rice, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Tufts, BC. Lots of good LAC’s in the northeast as well.
You might want to look around your area to see if there are any good “admission counselors” for hire. Most high school counselors are not particularly good with top students who want to leave the home area.
@mjscal
I totally disagree with your recommendations. Here is the given stats from OP
- A Southern HS graduate that is not interested in Southern colleges, ie, UAB. But prefer Northern or CA.
- ACT 34 and UW GPR 3.8ish.
- Premed
If premed is her goal, she should be entering a college where she is the top 10-25% of the entering class so she can be shining as a big fish in little pond with the lowest possible cost and still fit for her personality. In your recommendations, she would be at the best a mediocre applicant and will face heavy competitions in the premed. She will most likely not be the #2 student in her Org Chem class at UCB, even if she got in. Likewise, she won’t be graduating top premed at CMU, Tufts or any school comparable to Brown.
UAB would be the best of her choice because she would be getting a full ride and be very competitive in her premed quest. Other than that, OP should look for some school that is in the mid range ranking, less competitive in premed and still can get a good job if medicine is not her final choice.
For public school, other than UAB, she should look for a school that has no IS bias but still rank 100 in US, such as UVT.
For private school, she should look for an UG that has lower ranking med school, such as Craigton. She will be able to get a lot of medical exposure in their own school hospital and if do well, she will be able to secure admission from her own school first than apply out for better choices.
correction: Creighton University
.Private meds don’t care. AND…a few public undergrads actually have PRIVATE med schools, so check.
Your DD would keep her home state residency, CA, unless she were to apply to med schools much later and have established residency elsewhere.
If your DD goes to undergrad in Oklahoma, then she’s just there for education and not for residency… However, you’ll need to look to see if their med school considers OOS students if they have a “tie” to the state (having gone to an undergrad there)
m2ck
She is from ALABAMA, not CA.
There are 2 diffeernt posters people are responding to on this thread.
The original poster (melvin123) lives in AL and has a D who wants to attend a northern college.
The other poster (dadof4kids) lives in CA is looking at sending his D to Oklahoma for undergrad. He’s hoping to get his in-state status for admission to OU’s medical school. (She won’t qualify for in-state status for OU SOM.)
You all are probably right about the advisability of going to a school where she can be a shining star, and I only say “probably” because that advice is disappointing to hear. My daughter is really looking forward to going to a school with lots of other really smart kids and learning from her peers and being challenged by them. While I think she will ultimately end up in med school (if she gets in), it is not a certainty and she wants to explore a couple of other subjects that are all somewhat related. I’d hate to see her miss out on a challenging environment just so she can have a shiny resume. I think college is important in its own right too, and not just as a stepping stone to med school. But then I also hear what all of you are saying about the importance of not going to a school where she will get weeded out (like the UC schools) or to a school that is incompatible with applying to med school (like the foreign schools). One thought running through my mind is, is it so bad to be in the middle of the pack if the college has a really high percentage of kids who get admitted to med school?
“My daughter is really looking forward to going to a school with lots of other really smart kids and learning from her peers and being challenged by them.”
There are some VERY smart students at universities such as the University of Vermont (usually abbreviated UVM) and the University of Massachusetts (aka U.Mass). I have met many of them (friends of my daughters) and some are quite impressive and would be doing well at any university in the US. Two obvious places to look for such students: In the honors program, and in the premed program. There are of course other places also.
55 Depends what the median GPA is at that college. If 3.4 or so, you're okay. If 3.1 or so, not.
<<< “My daughter is really looking forward to going to a school with lots of other really smart kids and learning from her peers and being challenged by them.”>>>
There are plenty of very smart kids at probably the top 120+ schools.
However, as a premed, looking to be “challenged by peers” and being in a very academically tough environment can be the quickest way to end up with a GPA that is NOT med-school-worthy.
There are no brownie-points for going to a top school or even taking a more rigorous curriculum. Time and time again we’ve seen top students end up with so-so GPAs because they thought it was “best” to go to a top school as a premed. And, then their dreams of med school are shot down.
@ucbalumnus what was the on-point statement you made a couple of weeks ago about this?
Since she’s not hung-ho on being premed, my advice for you and her would be to look for a college that is collaborative /laid back and offers majors she’s interested in. Overall, colleges in the Midwest and south will be more laid back than north east and west coast; lacs tend to ‘weed’ less (in terms of deliberate weeding ala Purdue - make no mistake, many students at LACs give up too but smaller classes and closer contact to professors tends to make the environment more supportive.) Strong Honors colleges should all be investigated, especially if she wants a large university.
Consider that she probably will change her mind about being premed once she’s matured a bit and discovered mire subjects and professions.
The good thing is that if she attends college in the US she can apply to med school regardless of major.
Note that intellectual kids aren’t necessarily found just at 'top schools '. Some ‘top schools’ have a decidedly non intellectual environment and some schools outside the rarefied elite may have kids who are genuinely excited about ‘learning stuff’ , doing research, etc.
Pick up a Fiske Guide and read up on Earlham or Wooster, then look up Colgate and Dartmouth.