Stuck!

<p>I'm having some trouble deciding between Penn (CAS) and Umich (LSA)...</p>

<p>I was accepted into the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program, as well as the Roy Vagelos Scholars in Life Sciences program at Penn. These and the $20,000/year in grants offered make Penn quite enticing, but still a heavy financial burden. </p>

<p>Umich on the other hand, offered me over $10k/year (in-state LSA scholarship, as well as some other grants), and accepted me into both the Honors program and the Preferred Admissions pharmacy program.</p>

<p>I might major in biology or something on the pre-med track, but I'm more undecided right now.</p>

<p>Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated!</p>

<p>If you're thinking bio or pre-med, both of those require graduate school. Take the UMich money and save for graduate school.</p>

<p>Don't quite a few Vagelos scholars lose their designation after the first year or two?</p>

<p>mini - I don't know if people jump or get pushed, but there is a fair bit of attrition for Vagelos scholars.
To the OP, I'm not a parent but I am a Penn student (for the next few weeks anyway!), and I'd have to say that unless you're really, really excited about the idea of Penn, you might be better off taking the cheaper option and saving your money for grad school. Penn does have a great track record for med school acceptances, but I'm sure UMich does too.</p>

<p>If you are really keen on Penn though, have you tried negotiating your financial aid package? I think they normally only negotiate based on other purely need-based packages, but I'm guessing they would really like you to matriculate since you got accepted into two selective programs - it might be worth a try.</p>