Med school FA is a whole different animal than undergrad FA.
Most med students attend med school on a combination of federal unsubsidized students loans and Grad Plus loans. There are no subsidized loans for professional school and there is very little merit aid for medical school.
There are only handful of “meets full need” med schools, (Harvard, Yale, Prizker, Stanford, Cornell and Columbia), but only Cornell and Columbia meet full need for low income students without using “unit loans” (typically $30-45K/year) which students are required to take out before any institutional aid is awarded. Additionally all ‘meets full need’ med schools require something similar to the CSS profile from parents, step parents, non-custodial divorced parents & their partners, regardless of the age of the student or the ability/willingness of the family to pay.
Institutional aid only is awarded once the family EFC has been paid AND the unit loans has been taken out.Institutional is not all grant aid. Institutional aid often includes low cost loans offered by the school itself, work-study, and one time non-renewable grants.
Aside from the meets full need med schools, there are tiny number of tuition-free medical schools–basically only NYU, and for the next 3 years Kaiser Permanente (class size 40 students) in CA. Mayo (class size 45) is reputed to offer full and half tuition scholarships to about half its incoming class every year.
Note: NYU is tuition-free for all students regardless of need, but students are responsible for paying all their COL expenses in Manhattan.
UIC COM does not claim to meet full need. It chiefly offers unsubsidized student loans and Grad Plus loan as FA to med students. Expect to be full-pay once you enter the professional portion of GPPA. (Partly this is because you are already committed to attend UICOM and they don’t need to entice you to enroll and partly because UICOM has very little grant aid to give out.)
There are 2 programs that will pay for your medical education–HPSP and NHSC. Both are service-for-scholarship programs.
HPSP requires 4-6 years of full time active duty in a branch of the US military following the completion of military residency. Service payback begins only after after residency is completed. Choice of medical specialty will be constrained by the needs of the service at the time of medical school graduation. Scholarship recipients receive full tuition and a living expense stipend…
NHSC offers 2-3-4 year scholarships with a 2-8 years of service payback working in nationally designated health profession shortage area. All scholarship recipients are required to complete a residency in a primary care field (FM, IM without sub-specialization, pediatrics or OB/GYN) Service payback begin immediately upon completion of residency. Scholarship recipients receive full tuition plus a monthly living expenses stipend.
@HKimPOSSIBLE I’ve been following your story for a while. I can’t answer your question, but I have 2 friends who participated in this program. You need to complete service in an underrepresented region afterwards; both of my friends completed their service in a rural region. I don’t know if it would be a possibility, but it’s worth looking into. https://nhsc.hrsa.gov/
Highly unlikely. UICOM doesn’t have much an endowment so they have very little grant aid to award. Higher education finances for the state of Illinois have been in precarious position for years. (Funding issues are part of the reason why UI closed the UIUC medical campus 2 years ago. It was a cost-savings measure.)
FWIW, UICOM has THE highest OOS COA in the entire country–currently over $125K /year. They wouldn’t be charging this if the school had adequate financial resources.
I just checked. Per the AAMC, Illinois produces a large number of med school applicants–some 23,000/year-- and only 526 matriculated at all in-state medical schools combined (UICOM, SIU, Carle, Feinberg or Pritzker)
UICOM doesn’t need to attract MORE instate applicants. It already has plenty and it doesn’t need to incentivize students to enroll in-state since in-state costs are so much lower than private med schools (average tuition is now in the $70+K range) or OOS state publics.
Per the AAMC, the average med student graduates from a state med schools with ~$200K in loans and grads of private med schools with ~$250K.–not including undergrad debt or any personal debt. This number is skewed low by the fact that a full 15-18 % of medical students graduate with ZERO loan debt due to the Bank of Mom and Dad financing or service scholarships.
If you plan to pursue medicine as a career you need to be prepared to assume a scary amount of debt.
There’s cost analysis floating around on several pre-med and med school blogs that shows that going to work for UPS straight out of high school has a much better lifetime ROI than going to medical school. The UPS guy out-earns a physician over a career.
And you need to be prepared to be paid a low salary during residency and fellowship. ($53K/year is the median) for working 80 hours/week. So you may not be able to start paying down your loans until after residency/fellowship. Many residents pay only their annual interest costs (or $14,000/year at 7% interest on $200K) so those don’t capitalize and incur additional interest and penalties.
The new budget being considered by Congress will eliminate the PSLF program and all federal loans for professional and graduate school. While I don’t foresee the elimination of federal loans for med school in the near future, PSLF is a goner. It’s a matter of when, not if, it will be cancelled.
@WayOutWestMom I just want to add a little nuance to your comments about PSLF. There have been proposals to modify or eliminate PSLF every year going back to the Obama administration, but so far it has survived due to bipartisan support. You may be right that it may eventually be modified or eliminated for new loans, but existing federal direct loan borrowers have provisions for PSLF in the terms of their notes so they’ll be grandfathered.
You are getting good info early here. Med school—any professional post under grad programs have a whole other situation for financial/merit aid. Most young doctors I know either have a whole lot of debt or got money from some program (I’m sure named above) such as military or under served region service grants , or Paid for by parents, family.
Because most young people your age are focused on getting into college and getting financial aid and merit money for their undergraduate years, and because getting ACCEPTED to a medical school is tough thing, paying for it is a long term concern. For you, having an near certain acceptance in hand for Med school and with possible combined undergrad/Med school expenses in the near future, it’s wise for you to start digging for info in this area.
There are a lot of resources on this forum regarding combined college/Med school costs and financing options. How it pertains to UICOM, you need to figure. It’s great you have such an early start on this.
2,300 applicants are from Illinois. There are over 53,000 applicants nationally for just over 20,000 seats
Med school applicants typically do not “fire off” 30 applications. The median is 14. Only 22% of applicants report sending 25 or more secondaries.
(Per AAMC MSQ report for 2019)
@itsgettingreal21 Hmmm that is the thing - I don’t think I’ve been awarded anything yet (on the portal it does say they received my FAFSA and got everything) so I assume they’re just working on it!
@Eeyore123 Well I don’t think my chances are looking so hot since I changed from ED2 to RD, but even if I get in, I’ll probably go to GPPA or if I miraculously get into a non-MCAT required BS/MD program go there. But I’d like to keep as many options open since my applications are all in.
Hopefully the aid from UIC is great, but all I know atm is that I was selected to receive the Presidential Award (PAP Scholarship) which is IIRC $5000 per year - and this is on top of any financial aid I’ll be getting.
Usually, when it comes to “stacking” merit scholarships and need-based aid, you don’t get to keep any extra money that goes above the “full ride” level - the need-based aid will adjust downward to swallow the scholarship. But, if there’s a gap between your need-based aid and your full documented need, then scholarships will definitely fill the gap. Hopefully the need-based FA that UIC offers you will be within $5K of a full ride!!
The med school guarantee with this program is wonderful (it’s great how they don’t have such high GPA/MCAT thresholds that there would have been little doubt about getting into med school anyway!) and assuming the undergrad financial aid is good, terrific that you get the four full years of undergrad with normal undergrad need-based aid, vs. being rushed into the out-of-pocket med school years.
Happy for you, and hoping even more good news keeps rolling in (particularly generous aid at UIC!).
