She likes the idea of the defined campus. Makes me want to look at the visuals more closely.
@thumper1 I tried responding in a DM - surely not doing it correctly! :-? First time I’ve EVER been on a group chat.
I’m not sure Loyola MD is quite the same academically as the others though (I don’t think it’s comparable to G’Town, except for the Jesuit philosophy). Premed will be tough everywhere and there’s plenty of medical or community service that can be done in the Baltimore area, though.
She’d have to dig into this choice more.
Have you received other news (some university decisions have been uploaded in the past few days)?
I agree that if you’re in Europe, the flights to get to the West Coast can be an extra burden. Since your child applied to several West Coast colleges, what’s her opinion? I assume she’s well-travelled and knows about airports, long flights, etc.
Lake Forest is Chicago which adds a few hours to the flights, but still easier than the West Coast.
That being said, the strongest academic choices remain on the West Coast and she’ll only fly home for Christmas and for the summer.
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We didn’t! Our kid flew home for the winter vacation and for the summer once (she worked on campus after that). We never visited…but we did go to graduation! She survived.
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Tap on my avatar on this post. You will see “message”. Tap that and a dialogue box will come up. Type your message and hit reply in the blue box. That will get a message to me.
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I’d love to know what it is that makes the west coast schools the strongest academic choices for a young woman with an interest in pre-med.
Occidental is certainly much artsier and for someone who wants to connect with the arts and literary scene in LA, this would be a great choice. Santa Clara’s Silicon Valley location certainly makes it a better choice for someone who would like to do an internship at Apple, Google, or the like. But for pre-med?
All of these schools report a 90% +/- acceptance rate to medical school for their students with high gpa and letters of reference from the college. So, it’s student performance that determines success getting into med school, not which college.
How do students at these 3 colleges do overall? In a recent (2020) data based study, stacker.com published a list of the top 100 private colleges based on return-on-investment. Santa Clara ranked #36, Loyola ranked #58, Occidental didn’t make the list.
In another recent (2020) study, payscale.com tracked alumni earnings - both early and mid career. Santa Clara placed #16, Occidental placed #102, Loyola placed #113. Santa Clara’s engineering and high tech students give them a clear advantage, but otherwise Loyola graduates do quite well in the comparison.
See the links below for these 2 studies.
Career earnings don’t tell the whole story in an undergraduate education, but they certainly provide important data. Loyola must be doing something right as they seem to be turning out graduates who go on to successful careers. I don’t see how they can be written off as clearly not as strong as the 2 west coast schools being considered.
I think that everything you say about Occidental and Santa Clara is true. If location were not an issue, they might be preferable. But Loyola is also a very good school and I personally don’t see what advantages the other 2 provide that are significant enough to justify doubling the length of distance from home. Some young adults sail smoothly through their college years. But in other cases there are unanticipated family crises of a wide variety that can occur during those 4 years or crises for the student that make distance a serious consideration.
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I don’t know anything about Loyola Maryland, so it may be that it is the perfect choice here, but I just wanted to say again that I don’t think distance is that big a factor. I recall starting off our college list focusing on schools near an airport that had direct flights to Asia, but that was wildly optimistic with a kid who was only interested in LACs. We ended up focusing on schools that were close to a regional airport that had good access to hubs, so that our son could always get home with one domestic leg and one international. He’s two years in now, and we’ve certainly had some unanticipated crises, but it really hasn’t been that big a deal and he’s had some adventures. When one of his domestic flights got in late last year on his way home, the airline arranged for him to be driven directly to his international flight on an exciting trip across the tarmac. And when one of his flights back to school was delayed this year, he got put up in a hotel overnight in Los Angeles. He’s gained confidence, as well as some stories, by learning that he can deal with these bumps in the road. I can understand this wouldn’t be the right approach for every student, but it’s worked for our son and I’m glad we didn’t make this a limiting factor.
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Thank you for sharing this. How lovely for your son that he had those experiences!
It’s good to have these sites, stacker and pay scale. Love your comment about high gpa and letters of reference. That’s important for her to keep in mind. Reading these posts have been so informative.
Not non-stop, but there are probably connecting flights from SJC airport.
Non-stop destinations from SJC are listed at Nonstop Destinations | San José Mineta International Airport
It would be better to look at post-graduation pay levels by major, since (for example) SCU’s engineering graduates’ pay levels do not help those who are not engineering majors.
College Scorecard at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ does have post-graduation pay levels by major, but only for students who received federal financial aid.
Biology (which about half of medical school applicants and matriculants had as a primary undergraduate major) generally shows low post-graduation pay levels. The colleges named here are no exception (e.g. SCU $35k, LFU $30k, Occidental $27k, Georgetown $35k).
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Obviously, this is contingent on earning a very high college GPA and being recommended by the college’s pre-med committee (if there is one). Pre-med committees will advise those with little chance of admission to pursue other plans. This can be a good thing in that these students need not waste time and money futilely applying to medical schools, but it also makes medical school admission rates for the college look better since the likely or certain rejects are discouraged from applying.
I agree, but that’s not relevant to my point. I was trying to show that Loyola has credentials as a pretty good college in its own right. The lists were a data based way to show that.
Exactly.
@JLPatterson Am curious what the final choice was as my child is looking at some of the same schools.