HI GUYS,
I have been accepted to many universities, but I narrowed down my decision to these three schools. Im planning on majoring in Biology and taking the pre-med route. While Emory is the most selective and the obvious choice (it has better pre-med/bio), it is also the most expensive. Emory- 55 k , UIUC - 30 k (estimated maximum), NYU 52 k per year. Im leaning more towards UIUC and Emory. Which should I go for? And will Emory really be worth 25 k extra a year compared to UIUC (total 100k EXTRA!!!)
anyone?
UIUC is a fine school. Emory is good too but for an extra 100k I don’t think it is worth it.
If you’re sure to stay pre-med, no, I don’t think it’s close to being worth so much extra money. Actually, unless your family has close to 8 figures socked away, in general, I don’t think it’s worth it.
But won’t going to a prestigious school, like Emory, raise my chances to being accepted into a top med school?
uiuc purely off cost. Prestige isn’t everything
No, it won’t. The first thing they consider is your MCAT score.
I know my friend’s brother didn’t go to a prestigious school (I don’t even remember the name), but with TONS of volunteering (500+ hours), a good MCAT score, and research/shadowing, he got into Emory’s medical school.
I also have a friend who recently graduated UC Berkeley with a HIGH GPA (her science GPA was around 3.8), decent (but not incredible) MCAT score, and decent volunteering. She currently has no prospects of a “high ranked” medical school. It’s not about the name, it’s about what you do and how you score.
UIUC is a simply amazing place. Have you been there? Everytime NYers say that the SUNY schools are “just as good as the flagships elsewhere” I want to suggest they take one walk through UIUC, one through Madison and one through ann arbor and then see if they can spit those words out again. UiUC is a fantastic school with a great reputation. Their resources are outstanding. The school is well supported and maintained. Any med school will know the quality of UIUC. I think that UIUC has a better rep for academics than Emory even though Emory is higher ranked on the US news rankings.
I’ve visited both Emory and UIUC and both are truly amazing schools. I was mainly concerned with the size of UIUC. Their student to faculty ratio is 20:1, where as Emory is like 8:1. Wont there be a lot of competition at UIUC as well? I think ive chosen UIUC for now, and because Emory is not worth 100k extra.