My son had his GAP interview at Pitt’s School of Medicine yesterday and it went pretty well. He’s very confident that he’s gonna get admitted into the program, but at the same time is struggling in deciding if he should be attending as he has an offer from Yale with a financial-aid package close to full-ride.
His ultimate goal is going medicine. Going with the Pitt’s GAP is obviously the way to achieve his goal in one-step shot in a top-10 med school, however, he is looking at about 20k/yr for four under graduate years (he’s awarded 20k scholarship but we have to pay the out-state tuition since we are from California), vs Yale offered a total package with only 5k EFC. The other thing bothers my son is that for the GAP you have to maintain a 3.75 for each semester (both overall and BCPM), which means if you miss one, you will be out from the guaranteed medical school admission and end up with a Pitt undergrad education for roughly a cost of 80k in four years, where with Yale you will earn a Ivy undergra education with far less cost and may still get to a decent med school down to the road.
It will be a hard decision for sure, and we don’t know how to give advice to our kid. Anyone who experienced the same before can you please share your thoughts/experiences to help us?
Yale would open up more opportunities.
Considering that it would cost less and the Pitt auto-admit requires an insanely high GPA (if he gets that GPA, other med school’s are likely as well, so the auto-admit is of little benefit), this is a no-brainer.
How many people actually know what they really want to do with their life at 18, anyway? Wouldn’t it suck if he realized that he didn’t actually want to be a doctor after all but he went down the Pitt path?
@Deming In addition to weighing cost, prestige and fit, if your goal is med school, you should go to the school where you think you have the best shot at a high gpa. And where you can get the most opportunity to do research and intermships. Pitt is known for excellent sciences and has the Universy of Pittsburgh medical center right on campus for easy opportunity and access to gain experience through shadowing, research or internships. Yale students are generally brilliant so the question is if your competition are geniuses will you be able to do as well in the premed coursework there as at Pitt? And compete with them for internships, research opportunities? This is not at all to belittle the quality of students at Pitt, which are of excellent quality too, but you can’t compare the selective admissions process of Yale vs Pittsburgh. I hear anecdotally that the premed curriculum at Pitt is very rigorous and achieving high grades there will be difficult as well. You should try and speak to some premed students at both schools and find out how good are the premed professors at each school and how are the grading practices is each. Sometimes the grading at the more selective school, such as Yale, is higher than at a less competitive school, particularly a state school where professors seek to weed out a majority of the class. This could help you make the decison. Med schools don’t care so much what undergrad school you go to as much as how you do in the sciences and what experience you obtain, showing a demonstrated interest in medicine. However if you decide to switch out of premed then Yale would provide more opportunity in my opinion. Also ask yourself if you thrive better as a big fish in a little pond (I.e., at Pitt) or not?
That very high GPA requirement significantly devalues the GAP at Pitt, since it is likely that most students (including many who could get into medical school the usual way) fail to meet it. Meanwhile, a student who does meet that GPA, and gets a good MCAT score, has a good chance of medical school admission, though s/he will have to go through the application process. See https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf .
Thanks to you all for very helpful points/thoughts. This discussion touches right on our painpoints in terms of making a decision. One voice is telling us this is the great opportunity if my son’s long-term goal is going into medicine and this is his chance to his goal locked at this early stage without going through that hard selection process again he just went through (may be even tougher considering the depth of the requirements like MCAT vs SAT, GPAs for high school courses vs college courses, etc.). But on the other hand (mainly from our parents’ perspectives), what if he fails to maintain the 3.75 GPA at one point? you are talking about giving up the close to full-ride opportunity at an Ivy university vs you pay 80k for a second tier undergrad and ended up going nowhere in medicine. It’s very hard to us to justify this especially given our low financial status. Which way is really worth to go with? But certainly we don’t want to put this pressure over our son just because of financial number. It’s just like the decision whether you would let your kid do medicine or not. At the interview day, the Pitt med school gave our parents a budget projection in terms of how much debt the student is looking at after four years medical sudy, $320K! That’s more than our house value or our life time saving, and it’s all after tax out of the pocket. I worked hard for the last 20+ years and am still struggling for my mortgages and daily living. With that cash, you could be early-retired to some extend. So at the end of the day, where that equation is? Yale might be a safer way or at least you secure a decent education with less cost at the front while still leave the doors open for next steps in Medicine. But again, if we give this advice to the kid, we really don’t want to see some day he comes back to us without getting into the medical school and feel regret. I don’t know. We will obviously have a very tough decision to make…
@Deming - tough but good situation to be in - considering so many of us who are still waiting for one good admit!
Did your S get in Yale EA? Do you mind sharing stats?
@Deming, I have first hand experience of this as a parent. My D1 was a GAP admit a few years back, she had acceptances from Harvard, UPenn and other top schools for undergrad. In her case though, she did not receive any scholarships from either Harvard or UPenn, EFC too high as well.
She is at Pitt Med now. She graduated from Pitt with close to a perfect GPA and an MCAT score of 36 and did not even bother applying to other Med schools. She has had a fantastic experience at Pitt, both academically and socially. She has done a volunteer gig last summer in an Argentinian community hospital and has lined up a couple more for next summer. Recently, she and her team were given a sizable grant (from a private drug company) to implement a drug distribution model alongside their Pitt Pharmacy folks in rural China. As a proud parent, I am happy to see her blossom into a terrific young lady. I am very sure the environment at Pitt played quite a big role in this.
Thank you, i012575. I know Pitt GAP is a very good program and there are tons of opportunities there for the kids. I am just not that so confident that my son can keep up good work in all four years (actually you need to perform well every semester as if your GPA fall off 3.75 one semester you are out). And not like the girls, the boys tend to be less self-disciplined when parents are not watching them. Parties, drinks, you know, all those college fun can easily make them forget their primary focus. I am just so worried.
If we don’t have other choices then it’s a straight call. But talking about giving up other good opportunities, like yesterday he just got another offer with close to $6k EFC from JHU studying in BME, it will be a really tough call for us to make…
Honestly, Yale (or JHU) is actually the more responsible choice here.
You talk about the regret he’d feel if he went to Yale and didn’t get in to med school.
What about the regret he’d feel if he goes to Pitt and doesn’t manage to stay in the GAP program?
In the first case, he’d at least have a Yale degree for almost free.
And I don’t think trying to maintain 3.75 GPA is less pressure than going through the regular med school process.
First off my hearty congratulations to your son for securing both places. Though tough place to be, it is a more happier situation to be in. If I was in such a situation in, I will go for Yale. But if he can maintain a High GPA in high school, I would not worry about maintaining more than 3.75 in college. Can you plesae post what was his SAT ACT GPA scores for me to aim for next year.
3.75 GPA is not insanely high. In fact getting into any med school (let alone Pitt) with a GPA less than 3.8 is a struggle. So this sounds to me like it wouldn’t be too hard to get
Medical school admittance rates are considerably lower than Ivy league schools. I’m not sure what Pitt Med’s acceptance rate it, but it is probably a lot harder to get into than Yale college
Maintaining a 3.75 at a decent college or better on the pre-med track is considerably harder than getting close to a 4.0 at a regular HS.
Yes, you need a high college GPA to have a good chance at med school. That’s why most undergrads who start out thinking they will become a doctor don’t actually manage to get in to med school.
My cousin is in her second year at Duke Med; she graduated with a 3.9 but had to work a year and retake the MCAT.
She received a nice aid package and will graduate with less than 50k in loans. Pitt would be a bad financial choice.
@Deming If your DS, can get into Yale, he can surely meet 3.75 GPA at Pitts. Yale would not be any easier to maintain a high GPA to get into regular medical school process.