Hi guys! I’m trying to decide between UT Austin ($20K/yr) vs Cornell ($60K/yr) as a premed/Biology major student. I know that Cornell is a great university, but I’m trying to decide if the extra $40K/yr is worth it considering that I want to go to medical school too. What do yall think??
If you like UT Austin, go there. Premed is brutal at Cornell (probably at UT also, but likely less so). Also, med school is wildly expensive.
These are two very good schools, and that cost differential is hard to justify for Cornell – especially with medical school on the horizon. I’d go with UT-Austin in your case. Were you accepted to Plan II, or any other perks at UT? That can make a difference.
Also remember that some of the Cornell schools are considered part of the SUNY system; while I certainly hold Cornell in high esteem, the academics in question aren’t so different as the sticker prices might imply.
Had to jump on this post, my son is a freshman at Cornell this year and on a pre-med track in CALs, he was also accepted at UT Austin and had to make this same decision. Just prior to going up to Cornell days he was convinced he would be heading off to Austin in August. Needless to say he fell in love with Cornell and all it has to offer, and yes he had to weigh the $40k difference plus travel. I don’t think he regrets his decision at all for several reasons. First UT is 90% texans, which we are too but there is far less diversity there and potential to recreate his social environment in Houston. Also 50% of the class is turned over by the time you graduate, not a great atmosphere to form lasting social bonds. Lastly there is almost no mobility at UT to switch majors or modify your career goals while you are attending-you are pretty much locked in. Lastly you get what you pay for, Cornell is a top notch Ivy League school and the experience is amazing. Remember you are making a 30 year decision, not just buying a car. I would also strongly suggest a visit although its getting a little late for that, at least due thorough research.
That is all good and valid testimony, @lonestarvike – but please, do take into consideration that this student and his family may not be in a financial position to spend an extra $160,000 for Cornell, at least without serious handicap. That thirty years of which you speak could be miserable if the financial hardship becomes too great.
It is a luxury which your family could afford, which is wonderful, and Cornell is a very good school. But for the price, with med school costs on the horizon, UT-Austin would be an outstanding option as well.
Fair enough @anhydrite, $160k is a lot of money, still it wasn’t clear from the post if the student was taking on debt or or just weighing the cost from available funds-two very different things. Just keep in mind that even at Cornell only about 25% of pre-med freshman actually make it to medical school, I expect the % to be even smaller at UT. So if a course correction is required there will be MUCH more flexibility to do so at Cornell than UT. Also a consideration for my son was med school in Texas is much more affordable due to state funding and there is a 90% in state acceptance requirement. How many UT applicants do TX Med schools process? how many Cornell, which do you think has higher chance of acceptance all things equal? That $160k difference you think you are saving might just go towards out of state med school tuition, if you get in!
Please note that discussion of Cornell relative to state subsidies, SUNY’s, etc. are off topic and any further posts along those lines will be deleted.
I don’t understand this last point at all. A high GPA and MCAT from UT and the same from Cornell has the same chance of getting into a TX state med school. So if the OP saves $160K undergrad, they then have the financial flexibility to look at med schools like Harvard or JHU. If they already spent that at Cornell, their debt coming out is far more likely to be higher, making that same path less affordable. They are “forced” to only focus on the TX med schools or else have enormous debt that could have been avoided.
@summerlover1, I won’t say this is a no brainer because you don’t go into detail about what your family can afford. But if I assume that the very fact that you asked the question means that choosing Cornell represents either a serious draining of family savings or significant debt for you, then UT seems like the more rational choice. I agree with @lonestarvike that the Cornell undergraduate experience has a lot of things to offer which, if post-graduate school wasn’t in the picture, would probably be worth choosing as long as you could do it without a large debt. Because even without med school as the plan, taking on a lot of debt makes little sense. With med school as the plan it makes no sense.
So it really depends on how sure you are about med school. Obviously as an 18 year old you think you are very sure, but more times than not people that feel exactly as you do going into freshman year end up abandoning med school as their plan. All you can do is be as honest with yourself as possible about your dedication and your abilities. If that self-examination leaves you resolute on this career path, then save yourself the amount of total debt you would presumably have coming out of med school if you spend that much on Cornell now. As lonestarvike inadvertently makes a point of, you will have more financial flexibility choosing a med school (assuming you are able to get into these top med schools) if you save the money now.
I don’t think @fallenchemist understood my point so let me elaborate. There are 9 Medical schools in Texas with two set to open. I do not have an exact number but they probably admit 2,000? students per year, with a requirement to place 90% of their class from TX residents, tuition ranges from $13-$18k per year, obviously tuition is much higher for medical schools outside of TX. The advice we got from a family who were doctors in TX and has a daughter pre-med at Cornell was that because of this structure TX medical schools received far more applications from in State schools, UT, TXAMU, Baylor, ect. and all things equal or maybe even a bit less than equal, a TX resident applicant from Cornell would be looked upon more favorably than one more applicant out of a TX school. This all seems logical to me-hope it helps in decision making.
If I’m reading lonestar correctly, this Cornell undergrad-Texas medical school suggestion is akin to a pay-up-front plan, presuming the OP’s family has an extra $160,000 for Cornell, or wants to take that amount in loans (note: there is a student limit of approx. $5,500 loans per year; the rest must be co-signed by parents). By springing for the extra $160,000 for Cornell, you are (anecdotally, from one Texas-based family of MDs) increasing your chances at roughly one dozen Texas medical schools for in-state tuition come graduation time.
The OP is not clear on medical school, nor did he state he’d want to do medical school in Texas. The latter does seem like a good idea – Texas in-state tuition for medical school – because medical school is very expensive. But there seems to be a lot of risk and uncertainty all along this proposed path. The first thing I would think is that a student with the ability to be accepted to Cornell would probably also do very well at UT-Austin, and may have excellent medical school chances. Second, he would save an enormous amount of money, and assuming he wants to go to medical school, he could pick and choose according to where he is accepted. Like, how about Cornell-Weill medical for graduate school as just one example? The money saved on undergrad affords a much greater choice for professional schools financially, if that is what the OP chooses in the end. The third is what has already been pointed out: if the OP doesn’t go to medical school, but opted for this rationale with an extra $160,000 price tag, well, not so good.
Cornell is a very good school, but without some kind of defrayed costs or aid, I have a difficult time recommending it here. There seem to be more potential downsides than upsides for that sticker price. It would be really nice if the OP chimed in to tell us about his finances.
Thanks for making your point clearer, @lonestarvike. However, I still can’t agree with it. The fact that you think there would be an advantage to his being a Texas resident applying from Cornell rather than a state school implies that you think the admissions committee would somehow be favorably biased at seeing a Texas resident that attended an OOS school. I don’t know that is true, and I don’t think there is any evidence to suggest that it is. Your friends have that opinion, but I don’t know that they have any special knowledge to that effect, even if one of them is a doctor. I would need to see some far more substantive proof or at least strong indications of this before wagering $160,000 on rumor and speculation.
Fair enough @fallenchemist but keep in mind he made his decision based on many factors (including our own ability to pay without loans) not just a $160k bet on In-State Med school, that was just one of them.
Oh, I have no argument when the extra money is easily affordable. That’s not really a bet, it’s a luxury. As we all know, money gives you choices. More money, more choices. In a case like that I would probably choose Cornell as well, both because I could afford it and Cornell would suit me better than a large state school. Just saying that if I were a typical middle income or even upper middle income person, then I don’t think I could justify the extra $$$, especially with med school in the picture, despite my feeling that Cornell was a better fit. It’s a judgement call for sure. For $20,000 more I probably pick Cornell. For $160,000 more there is no way. I have no idea where the cut off would be. That would depend on the financial details, among other “softer” factors.
Thank you everyone for the advice!
I agree with fallenchemist and others. Med school is very expensive, you want to avoid debt as much as possible in undergrad. Med school admission focuses most heavily on your MCAT scores, cGPA, sGPA and LORs. Undergrad prestige is rarely taken into account. Besides, Cornell may be Ivy League, but UT-Austin is no slouch!!
If your goal is to go into Primary Care, Internal Medicine, Ob/gyn, Pediatrics or General Surgery, which are lower pay, be especially wary of debt. If you want to go into a specialty with higher pay, then perhaps the residency match program will take into a slight account which med school you went to (but not which undergrad).
At the end of the day, most people don’t know or care where their doctors went to school. They just want good doctors, who could come from anywhere. You don’t get to charge your patients more just because you went to Johns Hopkins as opposed to some little known medical school. The insurance company will pay you the same amount for the same procedure performed.
I also read somewhere that since your undergrad GPA figures heavily in med school admission, you should go to an undergrad school that is less competitive, not more. In 2014, 733 undergrads from UT-Austin applied to med school, that’s 1.8% of total undergrads at UT(close to 40,000 undergrads total); 509 undergrads from Cornell applied to med school, or about 3.5% of total undergrads (out of 14,400 undergrads), i.e. twice as many undergrads from Cornell applied to med school than UT-Austin(as a percentage of total undergrads). I think that’s a sign that competition is higher at Cornell.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321458/data/factstable2-7.pdf.
Last but not least, Austin is a considerably larger city than Ithaca(885,000 vs. 30,000 people), I think that could significantly increase your opportunity for volunteering/research, which also plays a big part in med school admission.
I agree with @brantly in this case. I know several premeds at Cornell who say it is downright brutal, and those are the ones who have decided that they are going to stick it out - I know plenty who have already dropped out of the premed track. The science department at Cornell is just incredibly difficult because it is full of weed out courses with terrible curves. I know nothing of UT Austin so it would irresponsible to say one route is better than the other, but although Cornell clearly has the more prestigious reputation, that in no way guarantees admission to medical school. GPA plays a huge factor, and perhaps you would be better off doing very well at UT Austin and saving a lot of money in the process.
Cornell does give you a leg up in terms of research opportunities; not sure how important that is to your decision.
Do med schools take into consideration the difficulty level of the pre-med education? It’s well-known that As don’t come easily at Cornell. I’m not saying anything about UT since I’m not familiar with it, but in general, wouldn’t something like a 3.5 at Cornell be viewed as highly as a 4.0 at a tier 2 state college? Is it purely a numbers game? Also, some say that due to the rigorous curriculum at Cornell, students may do better on the MCATs than those who had an “easier” education. (Again, I’m not commenting on UT.)