<p>@par72, I know that you are a huge fan of Holy Cross and always post in favor of HC, but I would think that Villanova, Boston College, Santa Clara, Saint Louis (has its own very old med school), Fordham and some other Catholic schools would not think that
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<p>@walsh101 </p>
<p>Your child needs to determine whether she wants to keep her options open for med school. And, if so, you need to spend some time in the premed forum after fall semester where you will see hopes dashed when very good students who got into top schools and their BCMP GPAs are no longer med-school worthy.</p>
<p>Your quoted post does NOT address any of that. More likely, it is addressing students who are in some sort of liberal arts majors. </p>
<p>Do yourself a favor and visit some of these schools and see what is going on today…rather than 25 years ago.</p>
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<p>Her test scores are very good, but not high enough to risk her GPA at a school where many/most will be stronger than her.</p>
<p>A better strategy for a premed is to be well in the upper quartile for the school.</p>
<p>Walsh, it’s apparent that you think that an expensive, unaffordable for your family, elite college education is the only way for your student to be a successful applicant to medical school in the future…if indeed the student even sticks with that career path. </p>
<p>Again I’m going to say…this is not necessary. There are many excellent schools that are well within your price point of $45,000 a year where your student will be sufficiently challenged, and will thrive as a student.</p>
<p>I hope you can open your mind to these options because if you (the parent) can’t do so, it is not likely the student will.</p>
<p>I really think you should take a close look at Ursinus. It may be exactly what your D is looking for. Your D will be in the top 25% so she should get some of Ursinus’ great merit aid to make it affordable for you, but she’s only slightly above the middle 50% so you can have confidence that at least a quarter of the kids will be her intellectual peers (or better)! Ursinus also has one of the best medical school acceptance rates in the country. The students I personally know who have chosen Ursinus these last few years have all been excellent students. I think its strong merit aid policies have really helped it attract some very bright kids.</p>
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<p>I had to read the above a few times before I understood what was written. Her stats just barely penetrate the upper 25%, so that is why about one quarter of the kids will be her peers or better. (of course, the ACT 30 kids are also her peers…)</p>
<p>This sounds good, but it seems like the OP doesn’t think 25% is good enough. Sounds like she wants nearly the entire campus to have stats in the upper 90 percentiles. That just isn’t needed for someone who would be premed.</p>
<p>I think when people get this mindset, they think that all the smart kids are spread out like frosting on a cake…no they’re not. They are concentrated within a small % of majors.</p>
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Well, to be fair, a little of the frosting gets spread around the rest of the cake…</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for your replies. I very much appreciate all of the information and point of views that are being shared with me. The information is definitely making me think. My daughter may decide to go to medical school but she is not sure that is the path that she want to take. She is interested in psychology (at least for now). She may decide that she wants to go to medical school to be a psychiatrist. Her father is a doctor. However, it is much more likely that she will go on to get her doctorate in pscychology so that is the focus for now. She simply wants to keep her options open in case she decides that medical school is for her.</p>
<p>I know someone who teaches at Ursinus and asked him/her about whether my daughter should go to Ursinus (or an Ursinus type school) rather than reaching for something more selective. His/her response was that she should reach … that the intellectual level of the students in her classes will substantially affect the education that she will get. </p>
<p>Oh please! There are smart students at Ursinus.</p>
<p>Absolutely do a reach or two…but remember that those reachy schools are expensive and out of your price range. You don’t want your daughter to be in the same boat as you were…having to transfer at some point because the cost of the college is too high.</p>
<p>Again I say…you have $45,000 you can afford per year. In addition to the $65,000 unaffordable to you colleges, you need to start looking at schools that you can afford to pay for all four years, where your daughter will excel, and stand out, and have opportunities.</p>
<p>thumper1, please read my message. I did not say that there aren’t smart students at Ursinus. Of course there are. P</p>
<p>I go to Carlow University in Pittsburgh, and it’s pretty expensive.
The tuition went up by $1000 this year, and it’ll continue to do that each year. Stupid idea because A) Not a lot of students have financial aid, and B) It was already expensive to begin with.
I lost most of my financial aid, so I’ll be going to community college for two years. Way cheaper- it’s $104.75 per credit for Allegheny County students (applies to me).</p>
<p>My kiddo loved Seton Hill, which is Catholic and has merit aid. We drove up the driveway and she said “Oh my god, it looks like Hogwarts!”</p>
<p>She also really liked Duquesne. </p>
<p>I was impressed on my visit to St. Anselm. I had no expectations going in, but I loved the students, the campus, and the members of the leadership I met. Definitely an overlooked sleeper.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to Salve Regina in Newport. A very nice, tight campus community. And she got a great scholarship too.</p>
<p>Mt. St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland has a number of merit scholarships:
<a href=“Financial Aid | Mount St. Mary's University”>http://www.msmary.edu/admissions/financial-aid/scholarships-grants/index.html</a> COA $48k, and they say 99% get some sort of FA or scholarship.</p>
<p>College of Notre Dame is along college row in north Baltimore, near Goucher and Towson. Good friend’s D went there (OK real-world SATs, good grades), found her niche, did extremely well as an econ major and is now an investment banker. They also have a nursing school and a pharmacy program, so they would have a lot of what pre-med or allied health folks would want. COA $42k.</p>
<p>Merrimack College in North Andover, MA is definitely worth taking a look at. My daughter is in her 3rd year and loves it. Definitely an up and coming school that offers great scholarship money. Recently found out my dentist graduated from Merrimack many years ago. Majored in Biology and went on to UConn Dental school. </p>
<p>Gannon University has a great XC program. Also, check out St. Bonaventure University. Good luck.</p>
<p>My son attends Duquesne. He’s in honors college, and double majoring. He’s bright and motivated. A couple reasons he chose Duq were that he wanted to go to school in a big city and he did not want to go to a ‘party’ school. He received a four year academic scholarship that pays for some of the tuition but not all: he was at the head of his class in high school.</p>
<p>There are about 9,000 students at the school, not too big or too small for him. I like that all or almost all his classes are taught by professors and not teaching assistants. He’s the type to benefit from smaller classes rather than the big impersonal lecture halls in more populated colleges. My requirement was that he choose a college within a three hour driving radius from home and that included quite a few choices.</p>
<p>The benefit to being in a big city is ability to find work in his chosen career. He has a part time internship. Also, the city adds interest to the college life. Yes, that was important. I never went to college and I wanted my son to have more experiences in life than just hanging around our home town of 5,000. The college community gives son a sense of place with lots to explore in the city. If he choses to move back home after college, at least he realizes how much more there is out in the big world.</p>
<p>Oh, I applied to Rosemont and got accepted! The dorms are beautiful, and they have a lot of career opportunities if you want to go for medicine.
I heard the lasagna was fantastic…and then some of the students had to go somewhere else because they were sick of it. But the salad bar is good.</p>
How’s Caldwell? Good? Bad? Mediocre?
Dominican of Blauvelt–did a drive by coincidentally as I was in the area. it looks really small from the drive by . The tuition is close to $13K per semester which I guess is not that high, the campus is in a very expensive crowded suburb in Rockland county NY so I imagine cost to live off campus would be quite high. there were several soccer fields nearby but not sure if they belong to the college or the town, very little outside of it aside from a strip mall and a holiday inn.