<p>100K in debt for your undergraduate education strikes me as way, way too much if you’re planning to pile med school debt on top of it.</p>
<p>If you’re not crazy about Drexel, a gap year might be a good idea, but do it for a positive reason, because you have a solid plan, not just as an avoidance move. Maybe you could deposit at Drexel, stay on the waitlist at Rice, and meanwhile start making plans for something interesting and worthwhile to do next year. Then if those plans seem to be working out, you could defer at Drexel and/or reapply elsewhere next year. But if they don’t, you still have the option of starting at Drexel in the fall. The only thing you have to lose this way is the deposit.</p>
<p>Also, Rice might come through after all. It received an unusually large number of applications this year, and such schools are, I suspect, going to have to go deep into their waitlists because the increase is not caused by an absolutely larger number of high school seniors, but is the product of students applying to more schools. The tippy-top students who get in everywhere can only attend one school each, and their decisions will shortly produce a cascade effect for the waitlists at the other schools that admitted them. On the other hand the financial aid situation at Rice may be no better than it was at Emory.</p>