<p>If you want to go become a doctor is MIT or Northwestern HPME worth $300,000 more?</p>
<p>MIT $200,000 4 yrs + med school $250,000 = $450,000 over 8 yrs
Northwestern HPME $450,000 over 8 years
UMKC 6 yr medical school $150,000 over 6 yrs (in-state tuition)</p>
<p>MIT or Northewestern HPME worth $300,000 extra debt?</p>
<p>NO of course not.</p>
<p>Nope. It’s still an accredited medical school.</p>
<p>Do the graduates of UMKC medical school get positions in places you think are desirable? If the answer is yes (as I suspect it will be), then there is your answer. While KC is not Chicago or Boston (or Cambridge and Evanston, to be more exact), 300K pays for a lot of nice trips during breaks.</p>
<p>However, I do have one question, or qualm: what if you decide medicine is not for you after all? If you have any doubts about that career choice, you might want to think twice about passing on MIT and Northwestern.</p>
<p>99.9% sure wanna be a doctor</p>
<p>If you are 99.9% sure, then you should go the cheap/fast route.</p>
<p>If you want to see what your life will be like, go to [FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org%5DFinAid”>http://www.finaid.org), the loan calculator, and plug in your numbers.</p>
<p>Extra debt will seriously restrict your choice of practice and opportunities down the road.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks for the calculator.</p>
<p>MIT or Northwestern HPME route:
Loan Balance: $450,000.00 Loan Interest Rate: 6.80%
Monthly Loan Payment: $5,178.61 per month for 10 years
Cumulative Payments: $621,434.04 Total Interest Paid: $171,434.04 </p>
<p>UMKC route
Loan Balance: $150,000.00 Loan Interest Rate: 6.80%
Monthly Loan Payment: $1,726.20 per month for 10 years
Cumulative Payments: $207,144.85 Total Interest Paid: $57,144.85 </p>
<p>Looks scary! so Northwestern HPME or MIT will be $414k cumulative more than UMKC if I calculate the interest that has to be paid. Worth it?</p>
<p>^^^Let’s round that up and call it a Half Million. </p>
<p>Can you think of anything to do with a half-million dollars?</p>
<p>HighHope:</p>
<p>As an HPME grad, I’d warn against trying to combine undergrad/med in just 6 years. Way too short. Simply not worth it. Too much lost, too important a time in your life to rush to this degree. If you choose the UMKC route, I’d make absolutely sure it’s possible to stretch the program to 7 years - at a minimum - and find out what you’d be allowed to do with that one more year.</p>
<p>I’m also confused about why you’re calculating Northwestern on an 8 year basis? The program is typically 7 years, accelerating one year the typical 4/4 undergrad/med, allowing for significant savings. Even at HPME, I’ve advised considering stretching to 8 years if possible. Depending on financial constraints, one could spend that year pursuing some passion, completing a second major, doing research, travelling the world on the cheap, volunteering, etc. </p>
<p>Are you getting any financial aid? And if not, I presume your family has significant means. Would they really be expecting you to take out 100% of costs in loans? That seems quite unlikely.</p>
<p>MIT seems the least reasonable option given your 99.9% commitment to medicine and the fact that this path would be the most costly of all your choices.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, my advice is to not rush through school. You can’t get back these years. Enjoy 'em while you’ve got 'em.</p>
<p>“Loan Balance: $450,000.00 Loan Interest Rate: 6.80%”</p>
<p>I doubt you’ll get 6.8%. More likely 8.2% to 11%. And did you assume (for undergrad) a 5% increase each year?</p>
<p>Why would you need to be taking 450,000 of loans to cover that? If you are making enough money to not be considered for FA, then your family should be able to afford it without excessive borrowing. If you can’t afford such a large amount without loans, then you should be receiving FA from both Northwestern and MIT. Simply stated, there is no way Northwestern or MIT could determine your aid to be 0 if you cannot afford a single cent of their tuition, housing, or other fees.</p>
<p>I’m not terribly impressed with the help given to the OP. Don’t scare them into thinking they will have so much debt without making them consider need-based aid or their family’s financial situation and consequent ability to pay.</p>
<p>amciw – FA assumes an entire family will sacrifice financially AND impair income and bank balances meant for retirement.</p>
<p>There are plenty of families with around $140,000 annual income that would get ZERO financial aid but absolutely cannot “afford” to spend OR BORROW $52,000 per year for 6-8 years.</p>
<p>High Hope and DunninLA posts are quite revealing wow. I think is makes UMKC an even more obvious choice.</p>
<p>They would not be forced to take on the full cost of loans, as he was assuming. If a family is making $140,000 a year and has sizable assets, as in your example, they won’t need to borrow the full cost of a college education in order to cover it. I was merely pointing out that his loan load should not be anywhere near what he is feeding into the calculators, and posters with experience here should be helping correct that, rather than telling him of increased interest rates in order to further feed the image of inescapable debt after his education is completed.</p>
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<p>The OP used the word ‘debt’. 300K extra debt. </p>
<p>As far as I can see, there is no information on this thread that allows us to assume the poster’s family can or will be contributing a significant portion of the cost.</p>
<p>shall we take a vote on whether we think OP’s family has “sizable assets”? If so, I agree this is more doable.</p>
<p>Just don’t sacrifice assets that will be needed to fund retirement in 20 years.</p>
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<p>Yet no one attempted to ascertain why the original poster thought they would be forced to borrow for every cent of their education. That doesn’t seem responsible, considering most situations would not force such excessive borrowing on a prospective student.</p>
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<p>Are you sure you have the numbers correct for HPME?</p>
<p>But anyways, you’d be better off with Northwestern HPME or the MIT route. This decision is much more complicated than a simple issue of cost. This has to do with the quality of medical school to help you achieve your specialty goal -esp. if you’re thinking of something competitive.</p>
<p>The opportunities and match possibilites with Northwestern is much better than UMKC. Even if you did the MIT 4+4 route, you’d be better off than at UMKC, not to mention you may go to a cheaper school after MIT so $250,000 for med school is not an accurate number. You can’t be 99.9% sure with UMKC, you have to be 100% sure. Seriously, don’t listen to some of these morons, telling you to go the UMKC just based on cost alone. Seriously once you’re in the UMKC program, it’s a crapshoot. These people know nothing about UMKC - they’re just going based off one number.</p>
<p>There are a lot of elitist morons out there who would assert that going to a college like MIT is worth someone having to actually pay $500,000 for it. These are the world’s most idiotic people. Fortunately because they are all nerds, this is nature’s way of dying them off while the rest of us procreate.</p>
<p>Should you go to MIT or Northwestern and give them $500,000 when you could get a medical degree from UMKC for just $150,000? The answer is hell to the no!!</p>