I have a high stats S who is also interested in med school. Here’s how we did it.
We had the financial discussion very early, sometime in junior year. With med school on the table, we told S that finances trumped everything else, and there must be no debt for undergrad. He would still have a choice of schools, but we had the right to veto any school we deemed unaffordable. He could apply if he wanted, but he couldn’t attend if the financial package didn’t work.
S was allowed to add any school he wanted to the research / visit list. He was interested in UT. Research said he’d never get the aid we’d need to make it work. No visit. He was interested in Tulane. Research said full tuition was likely, and a full ride was possible, but highly competitive. It stayed on the list.
We knew S had a good chance of making NMF (he’s NMSF right now), so we researched the big money NMF schools and visited four of them (UNM, Texas Tech, OU, UT Dallas) during spring break of junior year. Three of those schools have med schools attached with pipeline programs offering anything from an early read to guaranteed entry. The fourth school, UTD, is a STEM school with an excellent record of sending top graduates to a variety of medical schools. All of them have well regarded honors colleges.
When we toured the first four schools, two strong contenders emerged. In fact, S was so happy with the fit and feel of his top two that he decided he didn’t need to see the rest of the schools we planned to visit, including Bama, UAB, Michigan State and Tulane.
Disclaimer: I don’t have nearly as much expertise as some of the folks here. This is my first rodeo. We’re a middle class doughnut hole family; your financial situation may be different from ours. That said, I thought you might like to hear our path so far.
In other threads, it does look like the OP is an Alabama resident, based on mentioning in state Auburn. Plenty of big automatic merit choices in Alabama, like 3 UA campuses, ASU, Troy, and private Tuskegee.
There is value in both pre and post acceptance visits. We did pre visits in order to come up with a very tight and focused app list. Because the app list was tight, we did just two post visits once we had the acceptance and aid info in hand. Comes down to how much time and money you have to devote to visits, and also how focused/unfocused the app list is.
FYI, if you are playing regular decision you typically only have about four weeks in April of HS senior year (proms, finals, AP tests, pre-graduation stuff) to do post-accept visits. Often, kids and families have a very tough time being able to actually do much post visiting then. Much easier to do post visiting if you are playing rolling or EA. Since you can plan and schedule visits for Jan, Feb, March. My kid’s final two were both EA, so we had plenty of time to do those post visits.
When it comes to med school, the most important thing is to have a plan B. The med school track is like trying to become a Navy SEAL. 85% of those who start don’t make it.
And don’t get mis-led by the school stats that 50% or 80% or whatever % of their kids get accepted to med school. Those stats are usually measuring the med school acceptance for the kids who were still there at the end of the gauntlet. Which is totally different from the kids who were there at the beginning. Some schools actively weed kids out of the pre med track. But even if there is no weeding, all schools have massive self-selection/drop outs as kids realize that med school isn’t going to happen or really isn’t what they want to do. To me, the only stat that matters is how many kids a school puts into med school year after year. If a school puts 200 kids into med school year after year, that tells me they have their pre-med act together more than the percentage they quote.
The cheap, lower ranked school that gets you the higher GPA is a great strategy – IF your kid winds up in the 15%. But think about whether that path is wise if your kid winds up in the 85%.
My two cents is that you should pick a school that would still be a fit even if med school does not work out. Kind of like telling an aspiring college athlete to pick a school that would still make sense if they would suffer a career ending injury on the first day of practice. That might be the cheaper/lower school. Or it might not.
If you get tapped out for undergrad but your kid does get into med school, you can always opt for having the military pay for med school.
That is assuming that the student wants to practice medicine in a military context, and is eligible for military service (only about 30% of young Americans are eligible, with many being ineligible due to medical conditions).
^^ agreed. If one takes this route, make sure one is comfortable with the post-residency options available. There are other aspects and risks that one needs to endure in military medicine that go way beyond the obvious (including lengthening of the number of years one needs to serve). The good news is that most of these issues are researchable online. If you know what you’re getting into and you are eligible, it can work out but…
I personally don’t understand the expectation that parents will pay for med school. There are a few doctors-in-the-making in my extended family, and none of their parents is helping with med school tuition/costs. The idea being, we paid for undergrad, you got your BA/BS debt-free, now it’s your turn to finance your education.
Is this weird? Do parents actually think they should be paying for undergrad AND med school? (Provided they’re not the 1-percenters, that is…)
@katliamom my bad, in interest of full disclosure, I forgot that the bank of mom and dad did pay for moving S to and from med school, travel during holidays, travel costs related to residency interviewing, but med school COA, Step exams and prep,etc are on him.
We are in the camp of paying for undergrad and not med school, like others who have responded. HOWEVER, since my D is going to U/G for free (including room, board, fees, etc), we are making all of her college savings and a portion of the income/savings that we planned to use to pay for u/g available to her for med school. This is her reward for making a cost-savvy undergraduate decision.
Not us. We can’t. That’s why we insisted that S pick a no-debt option for undergrad. We might be able to offer some assistance in the form of travel costs, maybe something involving a vehicle, etc., and the current plan means his (small) 529 plan should be intact and available for med school. Med school, or grad school if he goes that route instead, are on him.
Here is another school option with excellent academic reputation to at least look at on line - know students who have graduated from here, including one that is in medical school. New tuition policy…
"Is this weird? Do parents actually think they should be paying for undergrad AND med school? (Provided they’re not the 1-percenters, that is…) "
Many people (including me) say the kid’s 529 can be used by the kid. You can use it for undergrad and/or grad/professional school and/or seeding the 529s of the kid’s kids or a house down payment.
Seems like an uncommon expectation, though it is possible that if the student chooses an under-budget undergraduate school, some parents may offer the unspent undergraduate money toward professional school costs.
I agree that brand doesn’t really matter, except for the top colleges that also have top medical schools, and this is because Med schools ten to give a bump to undergraduates from the same institution. For example I know that Harvard Medical School definitely gives a bump to Harvard College people and Penn Med also gives a bump to Penn undergrads.
That said, ff the dilemma involves money, i would go with the cheaper option for undergrad and save the money for med school.
I totally understand the thinking that ‘undergrad is on the parents, but med school is on the student’. It’s a natural way of thinking
The reality is that med school, and all of its associated costs is crazy expensive, and residents don’t earn that much…i think the years of residency have salaries in the 60k-70k range…not a lot when having to pay high rent in pricey areas and making loan payments…or letting the loans further grow…ugh. Our goal was to minimize any loans that our son would have to take for med school, step exams, applying for residencies, traveling for residency interviews, and moving to the new location. In addition, we also paid for another car after his was too old, car insurance, health insurance, cell phone, etc.
That was one reason we minimized undergrad expenses so that we could help with med school. There’s no way we could have justified paying out for both undergrad and med school, particularly if those schools were privates. That would be along the lines of $550k+…yikes!!
We have seen a few posts over the years from students whose parents are still paying back their college+med school loans. Ugh
We gave our kids a budget. If they don’t use it up for undergrad, then whatever is left is still theirs for graduate or medical school. This sounds like exactly what @ucbalumnus described a few posts back.
