For a premed with a health science major, what college would be the best choice?
For a premed…pick the one that will leave you with the least amount of debt. If you happen to get accepted to Med school years from now, you will likely be paying with loans, loans and more loans.
Boston College has a phenomenal pre-med advising process. If they support your application through committee the support is complete and extends to after graduation until you are placed or move on. However the curve is rough in science core classes.
Another big plus however is the new Schiller Integrated Sciences School. The 200mm facility and new majors will be a cutting edge approach to science and other majors combined.
The building isn’t finished. But the majors and minors are being built. The new school launched a minor in Global Public Health and the Common Good. The theme of the common good will intersperse the science work. It is competitive to get this minor and has an admissions process once you’ve matriculated. My d just went through the process and it requires essays a s obviously good grades. It’s the future imho.
The best choice for who? Do you really expect that such a serious evaluation can be undertaken with zero input other than the five institutions?
From your other threads it appears that you are a junior in high school. Is this the case or have you been admitted to all five schools? If so what is the bottom line cost of each?
I was admitted to all of them and am now trying to decide between them. NEU is $45,000, BC and BU are $55,000, and UMass and UConn are both $30,000.
What other information would be helpful to provide?
- Is your family able to pay these net costs without taking out Parent or Private loans??
- How do you plan to pay for medical school should you get that far? Like i said...that will be loans, loans and more loans most likely.
- How much are your parents able to pay annually for your undergrad degree...without loans?
I think my family can afford to pay max around $40k per year and I think for med school I will have to take out students loans to cover about half the cost. I was thinking the NEU coops might help me bring NEU’s cost down $30k or $35k. Does that seem reasonable?
The NEU coops will also extend your undergrad years. It takes more than four years to complete a bachelors when doing the coops.
You need to talk to your parents about the costs.
Frankly, all of these colleges will prepare you if you decide to apply to medical school. I would suggest keeping your costs to a minimum.
@thumper1 You can do all majors in 4 years with 2 co-op’s, which is common for premed students to choose. It’s case by case depending on the degree and credit you have coming in for how packed that schedule is of course, but there are many patterns of attendance for Northeastern. Many choose to do the 5 year / 3 co-op version if they aren’t doing grad school, but 4.5 years is also a good option for med school students often too.
Co-op’s are either January-June or July-December typically. It sounds like the students you know chose the 5 year 3 co-op route which I do think is the most common among those I know personally, so that makes sense as well.
I’m not aware of any such “fully year” courses. Northeastern operates on 4 four credit classes a semester (plus labs etc) so that might help, and I think otherwise it would just be split up into two courses you can do whenever it makes sense for your schedule.
The only thing similar to this I know of is the engineering capstone projects which are either done senior year in consecutive semesters or simply broken up midway by a co-op I believe.
@thumper1 Until about 20 years ago the 5 year coop program wa pretty much required for all students. That has radically changed.
I’m thinking about courses like the full biology and chemistry years, Organic Chemistry, etc. Yes, these can be taken any time…but is it easy to schedule these at NEU if, for example, you take OChem 1 the fall term, and do a coop the spring. Would you then need to wait until the following spring to take this course?
@thumper1 That’d be correct, though it’s also worth noting that you don’t go on co-op until your 3rd/4th semester, so the first 3 semesters are all sequential, which allows you to get in a good deal of those back to back.
Yes…and those first 3-4 semesters will be charged at the full family contribution. It’s not like you get a price break because you will be doing a coop in the future.
The OP needs to understand that too.
@thumper1 Agreed, good point. Northeastern ends up front weighted because of that + summer if you do it the first year, but of course co-op’s space it out as effectively years 3-4 you are only paying for one semester each year. The details of that can get complex, but depending on if you’re pulling from savings or income and when for each source, it can be a notable advantage or disadvantage.