So here is my story. I’m a high school senior who is seeking a pre-med path (biology major). I have two options between the university of memphis and george washington university.
Pros for uni. of memphis:
Basically free
Honors college, thus research opportunities (and internships) and shadowing near hospitals like st-judes
No dorm costs, I’ll be living with parents since I’m right close to the university
Cons
Low grad. rate, high acceptance rate
Questionable reputation, idk how that will affect med school decisions
In Memphis, not the coolest city around (no offence)
Pros for George Washington Uni:
In DC. lots of opportunities for internships
Good rep. and in a good standing
Has its own hospital, so I can easily get there and do shadowing + more stuff
Cons
I got lots of scholarships, but I’ll still end up with 20k yearly to pay
In DC. so I probably will have to pay more somehow for expenses like food and stuff like that
Idk how hard courses will be compared to my local uni like for ex: uni of memphis
Any help would be appreciate, please state your opinions and I’ll be reading each one of them carefully
Is your family able to pay the 20k?
Were you admitted to any other universities, like UTK?
A problem is that university of Memphis is not very good, even with honors college, and you won’t be challenged by your peers. The teaching load means professors don’t have much time to do research, which isn’t too bad because for med school what you really need is volunteer experience, but it’d still be nice if ou coule discover another environment with lots of different people (which IS a criterion for med school admissions, so that you can treat many different types of patients). So if you take the full ride you’ll have to really go out of your way to go abroad, study in other cities through whatever domestic student exchanges they have, etc.
However if GWU were to expect you to take loans that’s be an entirely different problem.
Med school admissions is highly numbers based, and the name of the university doesn’t matter. So if U of Memphis is your only really affordable option, go there and be stellar. The professors will love you.
What other options do you have that fall in your realistic budget range?
Well, for GWU, I’d definitely have to take loans. And all the other ones that I got into require just as much as GWU to get in, including UTK. Thus, GWU and UoM being the only options left. I know that with the honors program, I can participate in research posted by professors and get paid for it. Also, there are options to study abroad, or even go to the university of Montreal as an exchange (Which would be great, considering I grew up in Montreal for most of my life). I honestly don’t know anymore. I feel like Memphis is the better option but my ego and parts of my brain are telling me to go with GWU and take on more debts. I really don’t know at this point. I’ve got tons of research on both…
Can you list precisely the NET COST for each university. To do so, you must calculate:
(tuition, fees, room, board) - (grants, scholarships)=…
DO NOT subtract any loan or any work study.
Can you indicate what your EFC is?
Did you get into the Honors Program/College at ANY university beside UMemphis?
Are you a Canadian citizen by any chance? (do you speak French and English or just English?) because you could have a very cheap solution at your disposal if you are Canadian.
All your answers will help us give you the best advice we can.
If you could indicate your stats (ACT score, GPA) it’d help too.
Note: avoid the biology major. There was an oversupply of biology majors and the job market couldn’t absorb them even before the Pandemic. If you love biology, Biostatistics or Biostatistics have excellent job prospects, biochemistry or biotech have a bit more career prospects than straight biology. To go to med school, you’ll need to take a set of classes alongside any other major of your choice.
It appears that with honors college, you’ll have an opportunity to excel, not just in the classroom but with research opportunities and the like. And since GPA is one of the starting numbers-as in, you need a good one to get into medical school-being in honors college should help.
Even at 20K/year, you’ll be glad you have that $80K+ when you start medical school, which is enormously expensive everywhere.
While the name of the school may help a little, it’s not as if GW is going to open many doors for you. Again, you’ll need a good GPA and MCAT, and both of those are up to you. Using U of Tenn medical as an example, the first listed selection factor is academic record; where you went to school isn’t listed. https://www.uthsc.edu/medicine/admissions/requirements.php
I couldn’t agree less. Thank you for the support. I’m also thinking of attending UTHSC. But yeah, you’re correct, it is all based on how hard I work for my gpa and mcat scores.
For GWU: It is roughly 75k yearly for everything (tuition, rooms, etc). I’m getting theoretically 61k which includes federal work study and loans. But as a conclusion, I’m getting 51k in scholarships and grants.
My parents can probably contribute a max of 800-1k a month. But they will have to life with stress if that is the case, which obviously I wouldn’t want.
I only got into the honors college for Memphis.
And yes, I’m both a Canadian and American citizen. I speak french and english fluently as well. I moved to TN 2 years ago so I’m fairly new here.
My GPA out of 4 (weighted: 4.196) (unweighted: 3.761)
ACT: 24 (pretty low since I moved to Canada to TN pretty close to app season, so I didn’t really have a clue/practice for the ACT considering I came from Canada)
Pretty good stats! You’d have been an ideal candidate for a test-optional school, especially since you’re bilingual.
Have you taken AP Bio? AP Chem? AP Calc? Any IB or AICE class?
While university’s name doesn’t matter for med school, keep in mind that the University of Memphis will require targeted effort to be at the level required by the MCAT; Memphis is also a less-than-ideal environment (although the university’s neighborhood is safe AFAIK, OP would know better).
(Classes there are targeted to students who score around 1,000 on the SAT or 23 on the ACT with only Algebra2 or 2 sciences expected for admission; if OP has no other choice we’ll try to help him/her make choices to “make it work”* but certainly a strong student should be able to have some other choice, whether UTK or Rhodes - it can’t just be UM or GWU! I also think that “leaving Memphis” has a value on its own, but that’s a personal opinion. So the issue is trying to find where the student could go that’s appropriate and affordable.)
Take as many honors college classes as possible; access to research opportunities; go on the study abroad tour if it’s still offered; go on NSE (would allows OP to spend a semester at UMass Amherst, UMN Twin Cities, Gustavus Adolphus, SUNY Binghamton, UdeM, USC Columbia…)
Questions to look into yourself:
What major other than biology could you pursue?
Commuting is WAY less than ideal for a premed: is there a way you could afford the Honors LLC? (Rates would be $6,600 a year for a single, $5,800 a year for a double; the most appropriate meal plans would likely be $1342 or $728 a semester.) https://www.memphis.edu/honors/getinvolved/housing.php https://www.memphis.edu/honors/members/honorscourselist_f20_42420.pdf
Questions to ask the Pre Health program/Honors college:
Is 504 the average score for students in the premed program? (If not, what is it? what percentage of ALL students who declare a premed intention score 504 or higher?) *
Are there honors seminars/sections/labs for the sciences?
Can premeds study through NSE?
Are Honors students guaranteed housing all 4 years?
[*committee letters are restricted to students who score 504. It could be a very generous cutoff that 90% meet or… a pretty low number if it’s “typical”.]
Where else have you been admitted? And how much do they cost?
Did you apply to HOPE? Aspire?
Did you get into Rhodes - unaffordable? didn’t apply? didn’t get in?
So, basically, your budget is $8,000 [a bit more than $650 a month]+ whatever you’ve saved/you earn if you can find a job (hard right now) + $5,500 in federal loans. In other words, GW is $6,000 short. There may be something to do about it. I need more info though.
What’s your deposit deadline, May 1 or June 1?
Have you tried contacting GW for a FA review already?
Has a parent been furloughed, got his/her hours cut…?
Note:
If you’re from Quebec, you could apply to one of the CEGEPs; they’d be TUITION FREE; then you could apply to med school in Quebec based on your CEGEP results. So, 2 years of general education for free then low-cost Canadian tuition ($5,000 tuition&fees at McGill Med School for instance – any American reading this will just explode because Med School in the US costs twenty times that amount per year.)
I don’t know if CEGEPS are still taking applications for science though; the French speaking CEGEPs are less competitive than the English speaking CEGEPs.
Wow! First of all, thanks for the long answer, I really appreciate it.
In the past 2 years of my stay here in TN, I did take AP french, APUSH, AP Lang, AP lit, AP calc bc, and APphysics 1. I also did apply to rhodes and UTK but I’m unfortunately getting 30k in grants from rhodes thus 29k yearly to pay left and UTK i’m only getting the HOPE $$ which basically makes me pay 25k yearly, which isn’t much a difference than the others, compared to the fact I can go to UoM for free for the 4 years of my undergrad.
Also, I was actually considering NSE because I just discovered that the honors UoM allows students the option to go to the university of montreal! Which is great.
I will also be living with my parents to save up more money that would’ve been spent on dorms considering I live a very close distance to the university of memphis.
I’m just afraid that the university of memphis is going to cause a bias when the time comes and I apply to medical school.
I am definitely willing to work hard to keep a high GPA and study for a good MCAT score though if I do attend UoM.
I have done some research for the honors college at UoM and seen that there is definitely research opportunities from professors and hospitals around me like Lebonheur and St-judes for shadowing and so on…
This is a difficult decision. I don’t know Memphis very well, other than visiting it for one weekend.
But what I can tell you is that you should have a good college experience. My roommate worked really hard and went to med school. He’s now a surgeon after many years of med school, residency and an internship. While I felt a bit bad that he was always studying, he found ways to have fun (we were in a fraternity). GW will likely give you a better college experience. You have the rest of your life to work.
Honors colleges are great partially because of the opportunities presented to you that general university students don’t have. My daughter is entering one in the fall, passing up higher ranked schools. We loved our visit to the school, which combines a small school within a very large university. But to get the most out of an honors school, I believe you should live there, as you are surrounded day and night by similar minded students.
I believe that most grad schools, med school included, really focus in on your GPA and test scores–MCATs in your case, and will also look at your extracurriculars. I think school name matters a bit but really not as much as people think. There are good students at every college who are there for a variety of reasons. Grad schools want diversity and to cast a wide net with a variety of schools they accept students from. I wouldn’t think Memphis vs GW is that big of a difference. Maybe Memphis vs MIT, but even then, it’s not a huge difference.
I don’t love the fact that you will be tied to $80K in debt from GW for 20 years, and really longer since you will be deferring it to after med school. And then there’s the med school debt…ugh. My roommate told me he hated the med school debt that both he and his wife accumulated, which was 25+ years ago.
I love the idea of the CEGEPS program, which I have never heard of. Montreal is so great, and McGill is well respected. If you get out of McGill with $5,000/year of med school tuition, all I can say is WOW!
Yeah… thank you a lot for your insight. I don’t know honestly. I see GWU as being more recognized and you know, more prestigious. But 20k yearly is too much. I feel like with honors UoM, I can get lots of research opportunities with shadowing and so on. I’m just not sure since I don’t really have anyone to get insight from…
Can you answer the other questions in #8 (financial appeal)?
If you attend UMemphis you should live on campus.
First, for the experience and independence you’ll learn. (you DON’T want to discover what it’s like to live on your own without your family at the same time you start Med school).
Second, a lot of the things you’ll need for your resume will be on campus. Review sessions and study groups are often in the 7-10pm time frame. Librairies are open till 11pm or midnight because serious students are expected to spend time there. In short, by commuting, you’ll be missing out on a lot. You could have the double room +$728 meal plan and be within budget without jeopardizing Med school.
I agree with living on campus if you decide to go to Memphis. An extra $6500-$7,000/year for room (and considering you would easily spend $1500 commuting so it’s really an extra $5000) won’t kill you. You will spend money on food no matter where you live. You could make enough money over summers to pay for living expenses. Like this: https://www.memphis.edu/honors/opportunities/biology.php
