@ClarinetDad16, I’ll take your word that it’s a fact, but so what? What is your point? It may be a fact that UF has more premeds than Bama, but it’s your OPINION that it’s relevant to the discussion.
UF is a more selective school and no doubt has more high-stats students on campus. That would likely correlate well with having more premeds and premeds who actually end up competitive for med school. Nonetheless, if you take two students with identical stats and resumes, one at Bama and one at UF, I strongly doubt their medical school outcomes would be very different from each other.
“Currently, the top choices are: UA (full ride+), UPitt (20K scholarship) & UCs (low in-state fees: decision pending, but she likes all six UCs she applied to).”
If these are your choices, I would probably would attend the best UC you get admitted to. A 20k scholarship to Pitt still means that it costs over 25k a year. Berkeley or UCLA would be only a few thousand more than that. The students who get a full ride at Alabama get a great deal, but there aren’t very many of them. If the price is close, choose the better academic school. If the price is not close, the decision gets harder, and depends on how much money you have and want to spend.
Even if cost is equal, I wouldn’t recommend any student just blindly choose the highest ranked school. That’s terrible logic. Fit and overall experience all day!
@LucieTheLakie
You said:
“Plenty of Bama students go on to medical school. My impression is they have excellent pre-health advising for students who are truly competitive for medical or vet school (or whatever).”
Rather than saying “plenty” it is more useful for the OP to understand different flagships can have a much greater emphasis and produce far more medical school students. Outcomes matter.
Do you consider University of Colorado Boulder a much more selective school than Bama? They too have four times more kids actually applying to medical school than Bama.
It depends. If you had two students from UF and UA that were residents in their respective states with the same GPA, MCAT, etc, and they were applying to a private medical school like Emory or Vanderbilt, it would probably not make a difference. However, if they were applying to in-state public medical schools, the results would be very different.
Public medical schools rarely take OOS students, and when they do, it is usually because the applicant has a connection to that state. The UF grad and Florida resident would have six public MD schools to apply to, and the seventh, Miami, gives preference to Florida residents because they accept state funds.
The UA grad and Alabama resident would only have in-state access to two MD schools. In general, seven potential in-state schools to apply to offers more choice than two. That is one of the challenges attending an OOS public schools as a pre-med.
Thanks, @Zinhead. That’s a very good point, although it’s hard to tell what the odds are within each state. Florida is a densely populated state, Alabama is very small in comparison. Not sure how that affects the odds.
@ClarinetDad16, I have no idea how many kids from any of these schools apply to med school. I don’t have a kid going to medical school, so it’s not germane to me.That doesn’t change the fact that Bama seems to have good pre-health advising, or are you going to dispute that now too? I am sick of arguing with you. I can’t post a single comment about Bama without your jumping all over it. I think I gave the OP reasonable and balanced advice. I certainly never told her to send her kid to school there.
There are additional med schools applicants from smaller schools, but the AAMC does not report them.
There are three general rules for med schools admissions:
1 - Elite private med schools give preference to elite private undergraduate schools with med schools.
2 - Catholic med schools give preference to graduates of other Catholic institutions.
3 - Public med schools give tremendous preference to in-state graduates and/or residents.
When you are picking a school for the bachelors degree, it is important to keep these in mind as they will shape med school opportunities.
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Regarding med school, UF has a similar number of undergraduates as Bama. But UF has 4x as many kids apply to med school than Bama. Just saying UF is probably feeding many more kids into med school than Bama.
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? So what? Who cares that they have 4x the applicants.
At some point, attending an undergrad that has TOO many applicants to med school is a negative.
UCLA and UCB have 800-900 med school applicants each year. BUT…being a med school applicant from those schools is not a great thing. No committee letter, inadequate advising (impossible to have good advising with THAT many applicants), and an unimpressive admit rate.
Last time I checked, UFlorida had a tiny premed office with only 2 or 3 advisors. I saw no evidence of any Committee Letters from UF.
Bama, according to you, has 25% the number of med school applicants, yet it has at least 3 premed advisors. Enough said.
The goal should be to find an undergrad that has enough med school applicants to justify an adequate advising office, but not so many that an office can’t really give any personal attention.
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Catholic med schools give preference to graduates of other Catholic institutions.
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I would also add that Catholic med schools give a preference to Catholic applicants. My son applied to two Catholic med schools, was admitted to one (SLU), and he declined the interview invite to the other (Creighton), because at that point he knew he was going to go elsewhere.
I have a UA premed FB group, and so far this year, we have at least 2 students accepted to SLU Med.
The UA grad and Alabama resident would only have in-state access to two MD schools. In general, seven potential in-state schools to apply to offers more choice than two. That is one of the challenges attending an OOS public schools as a pre-med.
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It’s not that simple.
The state of Alabama’s med schools do give preference to OOS students who attend an AL undergrad. Simply looking at numbers of public med schools a state has (2 AL vs 6 FL) doesn’t tell the whole story. The state of FL has a much larger population and many more med school applicants. Simply having more med schools doesn’t necessarily mean that an OOS applicant has a better chance getting into a FL MD SOM than he/she would elsewhere.
Somehow this thread migrated from an undergraduate prestige vs. cost discussion to a debate of Alabama vs. Florida med schools. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just amused
No kidding, @stencils. According to post #36, point #2, however, this is of primary importance.
I’m still trying to figure out who exactly inquired about UF. The only reason I commented on Bama was because @Mom22DDs in post #29 mentioned her daughter was considering it as a potential premed student. Apparently my use of the word “plenty” was a grievous overstatement. Whatever. @Zinhead was nice enough to provide some hard numbers. Hopefully that will help @Mom22DDs decide for herself.
I do not necessarily disagree, but high school kids should consider likely outcomes when entertaining OOS offers. Earlier in the thread, @Mom22DDs discussed being a CA residential and considering UC’s, Pitt and UA for premed. When considering UA, she should also consider that the most likely destination of a successful UA pre-med would be UAB or South Alabama med school, and they need to be comfortable with that outcome.
Also, they need to be aware that less than 1/4 of potential pre-med’s eventually make it to med school, and they should be comfortable with the non-pre-med options that the undergraduate school offers.
A full ride from a top 50 school would be an incredible achievement and it would be hard to justify the 280k difference of an ivy league school.
I come from a wealthy family at above the 500k a year mark in a decent cost of living area, Dallas. My parents are completely able to pay for an ivy league education, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to.
My dad wanted me to apply to a couple like Cornell and Stanford, but I told him no. He wanted me to do it in a “just to see if you get in” mentality, but I know if I got in, we would be having the conversation of this forum in real life.
I’m not exactly sure when your income could be high enough to justify full tuition private school payment.
Not sure if I’m taking this off topic (from the med school talk) or back onto the thread topics hahaha
It is my impression that most folks are not choosing between a “full ride” and $280k but rather somewhere in between. My S received a full scholarship from a 50-100 school but that was for tuition only. He still had to pay room and board and fees. Luckily, the top 10 school that he chose offered some need based grants so the difference between the two options will not be $280k but probably $120k. It’s still a lot of money but not 280k I don’t know if our experience is typical. Love to hear from others.
@Zinhead The same charts also show that Florida’s seven medical schools had 937 matriculants, and Alabama’s two schools had 261. Seems like the Alabama odds are quite a bit better.
When considering UA, she should also consider that the most likely destination of a successful UA pre-med would be UAB or South Alabama med school, and they need to be comfortable with that outcome.
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I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. Of the many OOS premeds that I’ve known who’ve attended Bama, I’ve only known 2 to go to an Alabama med. The rest went to UMich, MSU, Wayne St, UTexas Southwestern, UTexas Houston, Arizona St, Emory, Vandy, Columbia, SLU, GWU, Tulane, LSU, Ole MIss, UNC, UFL, FSU, UCF the med schools in GA and SC, and more.
Last year’s applicants were accepted to 40 different US MD schools.
@CollegeAngst I would say it vastly depends on the financial ability of the family and the tier of the university. I believe no college is worth going into huge debt for, not even the tippy top ones. However if the family has the ability to pay, maybe with some very small assistance from loans or by making some small sacrifices then I would say top 10- top 15 schools (HYPSM, Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Caltech etc) are worth choosing over the full ride.
Usually however these very top schools have generous financial aid policies that are mostly need-based, so a family with great need and a brilliant student is likely to have their financial need met by these schools.
