<p>Friend of mine needs help!
Daughter got in to UR and Lehigh. Got more Finaid from Lehigh, but enough from UR to make it manageable. She's planning to be pre-med. She's visited Rochester and loves it. She got an extension from Lehigh to visit this week because her Finaid package JUST came through on Friday. Rochester is unwilling to extend her deadline past Monday, and sadly advised her that they were unable to increase her finaid package. Rochester's finaid includes more loans and more parents' contribution. Any ideas?</p>
<p>Bump..please help.
Should she just go to Rochester and pay the extra money? Is one school significantly better than the other? Through all the research she's done and the visit to Rochester, she feels that Rochester is a better fit, but wants to satisfy her curiosity by visiting Lehigh first.</p>
<p>Being admitted to med school is going to require (aside from great grades and mcat's) excellent recommendations from profs. The worst thing is to go to a school where she is lost in the herd and does not get faculty attention and support. You might see if your friend can obtain info from both schools on student participation in research and med school admit rates. </p>
<p>The other kink in all of this is that med school is frightfully expensive - attending a stretch for undergrad is probably only warranted if it is much better than the other. For what its worth, USNWR ranks both at 37.</p>
<p>Thank you, Ohio Mom.
I'm biased because my son is at UR, and I know that research opportunities abound and profs are very accessible there. However because of my bias I really hesitate to counsel my friend and her daughter. I was just wondering if anyone out there has any insight on Lehigh or both Lehigh and Rochester to kind of help. Deadline is tomorrow.
The most I can tell her is to go where the money is...Lehigh. But they seem to think that UR is the better school for her...is UR worth it? is the question</p>
<p>I don't know much about the being premed at Lehigh, but my brother attend Lehigh and my dad graduated from Lehigh. Both of them love the school and have tons of pride in it. Both were engineering majors which is a strong department and thought it was rigorous academically. I also applied to Lehigh and seriously considered attending...mainly I was turned off by the large Greek presence, drinking culture, and the surrouding town of Bethlehem. If your daughter doesn't mind the social scene at Lehigh, I think the academics are just as strong as UR.</p>
<p>We visited Lehigh for S (not going there), and altho I know there is a fair amount of Greek, it is still minority. S was not at all interested in Greek, but was still v interested inLehigh. Lots of other things to do on campus. Beautiful, beautiful hill side campus. Got impression of very good faculty-student contact experience. Facutly we met dropped everything to spend time with applicants (we were looking at engineering). Just fwiw.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone. That's why I love College Confidential so much.</p>
<p>Rochester might be somewhat better for pre-med than Lehigh, in part because it has a med school and I think it's not impossible for undergrads to get research projects there. Rochester has always been known as a strong science school. I guess it depends on why she thinks it's a better fit and how important the money is.</p>
<p>So I guess the deadline has passed.. what did she decide?</p>
<p>Would you believe UR? (Yay).
The mom called UR again this a.m. to plead for an extension. They again said "no" (very nicely, and spent a lot of time on the phone with her explaining why, etc.) So, a decision had to be made today. Basically the daughter loved UR on her visit. My S had set it up so that she could stay overnight with a friend on the girls' corridor and she just kind of explored with the friend and on her own. She knew that she would have loved Lehigh had she visited, but it boiled down to curriculum and which school would actually be better for her and her possible major.</p>
<p>archdelux...are you going to UR?</p>
<p>Yes, I am.</p>
<p>I am glad that your friend made the right choice!! :)</p>
<p>YEAHH GO YELLOWJACKETS!! haha</p>