D wants to go on to med school so that is a big factor in where she goes undergrad. She got accepted into UMass Amherst pre-med program, UVM honors college as a biology major and UNH honors program as a neuroscience major. Financially UMass makes the most sense as it will amount to $48,000 over the 4 yrs. if you factor in her scholarships. UVM she would be in the honors program which seems to have a lot of perks and also there is a teaching hospital on campus so that is a huge plus for her. But it would be $140,000 after the 4 years after factoring in her merit aid so is it $100,000 better than UMass?? UNH would be $120,000 and that too would have her in the honors college plus she has a couple of friends going there. She is overwhelmed (and so am I!) with this monumental process…
Distance is a factor for her and UVM is 4 1/2 hrs, UNH 1 1/2 hrs and UMass 2 1/2 hrs. So UNH and UMass best there. Food is also a huge factor for her and apparently UMass has an A+ food rating from CC, UVM an A- and UNH a B.
We will be paying so finances are huge for me and UMass wins there but D doesn’t “know how she feels” about such a huge school… Plus she’s concerned about getting lost and distracted which is why the (relative to UMass) smaller schools seemed appealing.
Any advice/ input/ thoughts on any or all of these 3 schools would be majorly appreciated to help us decide!
If I understand correctly, she didn’t get Honors at UMass?
Can she email and ask whether she may be considered, perhaps send an analytical paper she’s especially proud of?
What’s your “out of pocket” annual budget (from income and savings)?
Did your daughter apply to smaller colleges?
Can you list net costs for each per year?
net price is
(tuition+fees+room+board) - (scholarships+ grants) = $
That’s right MYOS1634, she did not get into the honors program at UMass which, not to sound snooty but sort of surprised me. I thought that she had good enough stats but maybe not? SAT 2120 and UW GPA 3.7, W 4.2 . Great recs and volunteer work. Maybe they just had even more qualified students this year than her though… If she got into the Honors College it would be a no brainer and she’d go there but, because she didn’t get in, we are not sure if UMass is a good fit. Aargghh…
The case for UMass is that it is by FAR the least expensive. She gets free tuition because the Abigail Adams scholarship so she’d only be paying room, board and expenses which would be well within our budget. We saved for this and can afford up to $40,000 per year out of pocket for the first two years until my other D goes to college. And then we’d be eligible for fin. aid.
In your opinion, is UMass a good school for undergrad for a pre-med student who will “just” be in the regular school and not the honors section? I’m torn about this.
Good idea to email the school. Thanks for that advice! Do you know if they ever reconsider students for their Commonwealth college if you make a case for it?
Sorry, I forgot to add that yes, she applied to a few colleges that were smaller but got rejected (BC, Northeastern). Still waiting on Tufts but not holding my breath LOL. This process is ridiculously stressful. I can’t believe how competitive it’s become!!
The Honors College is likely to have an oversupply of would-be premeds. What about if she indicated she wants to major in a science and a less-common minor?
Possibilities include
Anthropology
Sustainable Community Development
Modern European Studies
Arabic
Catalan Studies (if she’s always dreamed of studying in Barcelona :p)
Classical Civilizations
Food Science
French Studies (wants to study abroad in the country with the #1 health care system and intern there)
Scandinavian Studies (she’s always been fascinated by the health system in Scandinavia, hopes to study in Sweden?)
Italian Studies
Japanese
Philosophy
Portuguese
(Is her first name like Taylor or Cameron, you don’t know whether the person’s a girl or a boy? Because girl in science typically helps).
Write a cover letter carefully highlighting how her strengths match the program and how she’d take advantage of it but would also bring something to it; join a scanned graded paper showing her thinking abilities (preferably in History or English, or, if she’s in IB, TOK). Ask if they could assess her application.
Be careful: UMass is a low-tuition/high fees system. Check that the Abigail Adams scholarship covers BOTH tuition AND fees.
When your second daughter goes to college, you MAY NOT be eligible for financial aid. Run the FA forecaster to see if you qualify for Pell with 2 in college. If not, nothing may change. None of the three universities above “meet need”. They wouldn’t care that you have a second child in college and your financial need changed, since… they don’t meet need - run the NPCs to see if the results change if you enter 2 in college, but typically it won’t change.
UMass is a good enough school and its classes for the premed core are as good as any flagship’s… but without the extra support of honors, it’ll be tough to be a premed.
What AP’s has she taken so far?
Your dtr can apply for Honors program after 1st semester. My dtr didn’t get in the Honors program at UMASS but was told she can apply after the 1st semester and that it wasn’t too difficult.
Thanks MYOS1634. She has a definitive “girl” name so that’s not an issue (but good point!)
Funny, I was just checking the Abigail Adams scholarship info right before reading your response and now I don’t think it DOES include fees. My husband seems to think that fees are included in this scholarship but, after what you posted and from what I’ve just read, I don’t think it is! That put it in the SAME financial ballpark as UVM honors and UNH honors.
Ok, so now based on THAT ^, looks like we have a choice of 3 schools that look promising. UVM honors college, UNH honors and UMass Amherst regular college. This now kind of makes UMass look bad to me but not sure as we haven’t visited the other two yet.
In your opinion, are the honors colleges better for going on to pre-med?
Are you instate for Mass? For instate the coa (includes books and such) is 28K and the Abigail Adams scholarship is about 2K. Final price 26K. Did you receive the Abigail letter? It states exactly the amount and it is actually a bit less than 2K.
Honors is helpful for premeds because
1° it creates a smaller community, it’s less anonymous than the universiy at large, and a support network is important for students enrolled in competitive majors.
2° there’s excellent, personal advising
3° Honors students learn better in the style/format of honors classes and thus do better in those - always good for morale and for the all-important premed GPA.
4° prioriy registration is a godsend, worth its price in gold-> choose classes with the best professors (using RateMyProfessor, keeping things in perspective and with a grain of salt), at times where you’re most likely to succeed (at 9 am if you’re a morning person, at 11am if you’re not…)
5° often, it means honors dorms and thus more comfortable, quieter dorms- important for quality sleep and no nasty/noisy surprise the night before an exam.
am9799, We are instate. And no, I never received the letter personally. I got a letter saying that she got the scholarship but not the actual scholarship in person. It is on file at guidance in her school. But honestly, we probably WON’T be using it now that I’ve looked into it. UMass is looking worse and worse the more I look into it and realize that we got no aid, no honors, and it’s huge. IDK, maybe it will look better for D after we visit, who knows. Thank you for your help!
MYSOS1634, THANK YOU! This is really helpful. My D does much better in the type of environment that you described! Now that I know that the net price will be basically the same for all 3 schools, I personally like UVM the best (for her). I’ve heard that it’s sort of a hippy school and, even though D wouldn’t consider herself “hippy-ish” I think she’d mesh well with this type of attitude. Plus the teaching hospital on campus is really great! It will be ultimately up to her and we have yet to visit the schools. I am hoping it ends up being as good as it sounds. Thank you SO MUCH for taking the time out to respond to me and for all of your valuable input!
Please tell your friends to check about fees, too, as this mistake is very very common. It’s almost false advertising from umass…
Many students accept the scholarship thinking they only have to cover room and board, and find out too late that in reality it’s just a puny scholarship and they have to pay for much more than they’d budgeted.
Yeah. I know. Lots of people fall for that. As a Mass resident, it’s an embarrassment. I’ve gotten in trouble on CC before for discussing where that came from, so I won’t.
So it’s about a $40K difference, not $100K difference.
UVM Honors sounds great if you can swing the extra $10K per year. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous school with lots of kids from Mass.
If you can afford the difference, I agree UVT honors is your best choice. Only exception would be if your child is thinking of computer science, where umass really has the edge.
ClassicRockerDad and MYOS1634, After looking at the UMass scholarship and finances page and finding out that yeah, the Abigail Adams scholarship only covers something like 20% of the total “tuition” I was shocked and thought the exact same thing: “This (pretty much) amounts to false advertising!” It was a huge turn off tbh and one of the reasons, besides getting ZERO aid from them that they have now become last on the list. D isn’t too fond of the enormous size of the campus to begin with.
D got the maximum merit aid amount of $64,000 total for 4 years from UVT ($17,000 per year as long as she maintains a 2.8 gpa 1st year and 3.0 the remaining years). So it’d be basically the same price as UMass… She also got invited into their honors college which I’ve heard was very selective, dorms are nice etc.
I’ve also heard that the UVT campus is beautiful. I’ve never been there. I am actually pretty excited to visit Burlington and the campus next month!
MYOS1634 yes I’ve heard that comp science is great at UMass. I just read a (USA Today I think) report that ranked UMass Amhert CS dept as 3rd in Ma., right behind Harvard and MIT! If she was going CS I’d say “go for it” but she’s doing pre-med.