Greetings college-bound kids and parents: I’m a new user, a dad with a high school senior, and just looking for any tips / advice anyone has in two areas.
Is it better to visit ten colleges first, then narrow the list down to a final five or six to apply to, or better to apply to all ten first, then only visit those that accept my daughter to help with the final selection?
For a daughter with top grades (including six AP) and ACT scores and interest in medicine, is it better for her to attend a top tier undergrad and perhaps a second tier medical school, or better to attend a lower cost, second tier undergrad and put the money saved toward a top tier med school?
There is no "better" -- do what you can afford or what's most convenient.
All that matters for medical school are very high grades, MCAT scores and medicine-related ECs. Your daughter should go to where she can succeed in all three. Medical school tiers aren't all that important. Yes, some are better known than others, but medical school is medical school and I've known those who have gone to med schools without a "top tier" name and still ended up getting residencies in highly prestigious hospitals.
A little unsolicited advice: the majority of premeds, including top students, change their minds about going to med school. Don’t limit your criteria or application strategy based on the iffy proposition that your daughter will become a doctor. Focus instead on the usual factors such as fit, price and opportunities.
Visit schedule depends on how critical aspects that can be determined only by a visit are, and your money and time budget for visits both pre application and after decision. Some visit safeties early, but wait until later for non local reaches to avoid wasted visits.
Medical school is expensive, and most pre meds get shut out. I.e. they may have one choice if they are lucky, with no choice on costs. So keeping cost and debt down for undergraduate makes sense.
Even if you can afford or convenient to visit the select colleges, be sure to run the Net Price Calculator before doing so. There's no point in visiting any colleges that you know you can't afford to send your kid to. FWIW, my strategy was to only visit the colleges that my son was admitted to. Once the admission results were in, my son already chose one even before the visit but we ended up visiting two since they were located in near proximity.
See @katliamom's posts above, including her unsolicited advice.
But some folks might argue that you should visit colleges prior to acceptance offers in order to show “demonstrated interest” that could enhance your kid’s chances. Instead of visiting, my son showed “demonstrated interest” through social media, email sign up, college rep visits locally, and especially through his essays, none of which cost me any. He was accepted to 7 colleges, none of which we had visited.
It depends on how committed she is to a medical career. If she is 100 percent sure, then the cheapest college will likely be the best. If she a medical career is a soft lean, then pick the school that will offer the best outcome if she does not go to medical school.
If the student’s criteria for college desirability includes some aspects which can only be determined by a visit, it may be a good idea to visit safeties beforehand to ensure desirability (if not desirable, they are not suitable safeties), since they should already be known for admission and affordability.
Of course, not all students have criteria that can only be determined by a visit, so visits may not add enough value for such students to make them worth the effort. Some other students may be too easily swayed by trivial coincidences like whether it was sunny or rainy the day of the visit, so visits for such students may add worse-than-useless information.
Regarding visiting: We visited multiple schools before either daughter applied, but we limited visits to “far away” schools to those which were all of academically very good, likely to be possible wrt admission, and affordable. Schools that were very near by and easy to visit we in some cases visited even if they were not likely to be affordable (eg, there is one that we drive by all the time in this category which was hard to NOT visit). I think that the visits allowed our daughters to narrow down their choices before having to fill out all of those applications, and also made the process more “real”. There were a couple of schools that were more than 1000 miles away that we never visited.
Both daughters visited the school that they ended up attending at least twice: Once before applying and again after being accepted.
Regarding choices of schools, I agree with the comments above. If medical school is likely then don’t take on large loans for undergrad (and it would be great if you don’t fully use up your college savings for undergrad if possible). Be aware that a LOT of students think that they will be premed about the time that they graduate high school, then end up finding other plans once they have a couple of years in university.
Or they apply to medical schools and get shut out (about half or fewer medical school applicants get shut out). Then they have to make other plans. Those who chose to major in biology often find difficult job markets in competition with numerous other pre-meds who did not get into medical school, and additional non-pre-med biology majors (i.e. undergraduate debt can be a significant burden in this case).
Note, however, that pre-med does not require any specific undergraduate major, as long as the pre-med courses are also taken. About half of pre-meds applying to medical school major in biology, but that still leaves the rest with majors in social studies, humanities, physical sciences, math/statistics, etc…
To your point…I know a head of transplant surgery at a well-respected flagship school research hospital that majored in Theater (but took the necessary bio and did well on the MCAT).
^^ I know a young doctor in Boston who got her BA in English… she said much of her medical school interview was about Shakespeare, the subject of her Honor’s thesis, and a favorite hobby of one of the guys on the ad com!
A lot of students think they want to be a doctor and then change their minds or don’t make it through the prerequisites. Conversely, many students start out not knowing, take the prerequisites, and decide their junior year to go this path after going through a series of career twists and turns.
For medical school your D will need a high GPA, high mcat scores, medical related EC’s, etc.
Your D should attend an affordable school where she can maintain a high GPA. As for visiting schools… we visited them all before applying. None were on the opposite side of the country.
The last time we went through this process, 5-6 applications seemed like enough. My S knew just what kind of college he wanted. Many schools that interested him were within a day’s drive; the others were similar enough that we thought we could delay visits until after decisions rolled in. So we didn’t need to pile on more applications just to compensate for uncertainty about what he wanted. If you’re less sure about what you want, if you’re counting on competitive scholarships (or on need-based aid with estimates all over the map), if all the schools you like are too far away to visit conveniently, etc., then you may need as many as 10 (or even more) applications.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as a “second tier” medical school, but virtually all of them are very expensive (with little/no aid available other than loans), unless you get your medical training from the US military. So for many families, net cost is an important (maybe paramount) factor in choosing a college. For many upper middle class students who are serious about med school, the choice to beat is your state flagship. If your family income is below $60K or so, a very selective private school may offer a lower net cost. However, you don’t have to attend an Ivy to get into a “good” med school, nor should you need to attend a low-ranked school in a distant state just to get an adequate GPA. Try to identify schools with affordable net prices, then from those, use your judgement to find the best combination of quality and personal fit.
We’ve been thru this and this is how it worked out.
Son went to his state flagship for undergrad and received a lot of scholarship money for his stats (free tuition plus $4500 per year), so our remaining costs were less than $10k per year (we wouldn’t qualify for any need based aid).
For med school, he went to our state’s best med school, which is well-ranked. He received a half-tuition merit scholarship for his MCAT/GPA.
National Match Day for residency was in March and he matched into the #1 program for his specialty at Harvard’s Mass Gen Hospital (MGH). So, keeping costs down for undergrad and med school didn’t hurt him one bit.
I think lots of kids who want to be doctors who go to huge ivies get lost in the shuffle including big classes. My own thought is that it is easier to get the help you may need in a small elite LAC, but that’s just my own thinking and advice on strategy.
I agree about looking to immediate education ‘match’ - what is student interested in studying for UG? Want to have top grades, and include the courses required for medical school application. Also consider the range of student interests, so student goes to a school where they can change their major (or add to their major) if so desired along the way.
There is a ‘formula’ of items for medical school application, but the two ‘numbers’ are GPA and MCAT scores. Correlation between strong ACT score and doing well on MCAT, but of course depends on what student does in UG education/applying themselves.
Have student attend where they can do extremely well and where they want to attend/what fits into family budget/what makes sense. Keeping costs down for UG helps with the long stretch of higher ed costs.
Sometimes a student will get merit at a smaller/private school that makes more sense if state flagship is more costly.
High stats could mean OOS flagship may be cost effective due to merit opportunities - such as KY or maybe AL (UA has shrunk some of its merit money - 40.6% of the 7407 freshman class scored 30+ on ACT and avg HS GPA was 3.72, with 34% having HS 4.0 or higher GPA).Certainly look into the range of schools in your geographic area. Some states have ‘reciprocity’ - for example MN and WI (but need to apply for it to get in-state tuition rate).
Friend’s DD went to in-state non-flagship – was a solid student in HS, but achieved strong enough to now be in optometry school. UG school was a match for her to achieve more stellar and take advantage of EC and educational opportunities at her school.