<p>My D got into Princeton and Columbia with no financial aid at all. She is also admitted into USC with Mork scholarship (50K/yr). She is majoring in Biology, planning for medical school later on. She really like USC but also very excited at the possibility of getting top education at either P or C. The question is if top Ivy undergrad education is worth $200k more? Especially since she will go, hopefully, to medical school one day which make undergrad school become less significant in the over all picture. I will pretty much drain all of my saving to send her to either P or C. We also have a younger D that is planning to go to UOP next year which will cost a lot too. My plan is if she is going to USC, I will help paying for part of medical school cost too since I only have to pay $10K/yr for USC. Anyway, really appreciate your inputs and I will show D all of your comments to help her making final decision...</p>
<p>I think the choice is pretty obvious⊠you already made up your mind. âundergrad education isnât very significant for med schoolâ so why pay 200 grand more and use all of your savings on it? USC is still an excellent choice as far as undergrad education goes and as long as your daughter does her best either at USC or P/C⊠she will get into an excellent med school. Save yourself the money!</p>
<p>Things you should consider as a pre-med student: (I am reposting from earlier thread and editing for this particular thread)</p>
<p>As you may or may not know, the ranking of your undergraduate school doesnât make a big difference when applying to medical schools. The most important things are GPA, science GPA, MCAT score, and ECâs. </p>
<p>For many, cost of undergraduate education should be as low as possible to deal with med school costs later on. Having zero debt from undergrad is a huge benefit later. This is a personal family decision. Is the P/C name and experience worth a $200k difference when youâd possibly end up in the same place (med school) later on? </p>
<p>You should be looking for the school youâd do the best at because: you are happy, you can get high grades, the pre-med advising is excellent, and there are numerous opportunities to get in med school ECâs.</p>
<p>You should also choose a school youâd be happy at if you change your mind like 50% of pre-meds eventually do. Would you want to be at USC/P/C if you were not a pre-med??</p>
<p>USC has excellent pre-med advising and opportunities for pre-med students. USC does have USCKeck and LACounty nearby for many opportunities. Check out the pre-med advisement Facebook page:</p>
<p><a href=âhttps://www.facebook.com/USCPreHealth[/url]â>https://www.facebook.com/USCPreHealth</a></p>
<p>Prodigyy11: For me it is a easy decision, but seeing how she was reacting to C & P results yesterday, it will be a very difficult task convincing my D to chose USC :-(</p>
<p>camomof3: Thank you so much for your comments. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with so many valid points. Hopefully D will realize that USC is a logical choiceâŠ</p>
<p>I would appreciate more comments from everyone else âŠ</p>
<p>A studentâs perspective here:
To be honest, I do not think you have to do any convincing. No matter how you look at it, $200,000 is a lot of money. She should be able to comprehend the situation. I just know I would never make my parents pay $200,000 for any school.</p>
<p>I would sit her down and explain the circumstances. I think itâs very fair you are willing to help her out during medical school if she attends USC. However, if she decides on P or C then you need to let her know she might have to bear more of the financial responsibility later on even if she does not decide to attend Med school. I assume she is mature enough to understand the choices you are offering her. </p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>USC Alumni parent here-
DS was accepted in 2006 at 13 great Uâs, including 2 Ivys, but made the decision to go to USC, in great part due to his Trustee scholarship. He is now at Cal Tech [ recently rated the #1 University in the world ] doing his PHD. The support he received at USC as a Trustee scholar was unbelievable! His equally smart friends at USC were accepted at MIT and Oxford for graduate studies. The Valedictorian of his graduating class is now at Harvard Med school.
Your D would be making a huge mistake in thinking her education will be that much better or her opportunities will be that much greater at Columbia or Princeton than they are at USC. She will get as great an education as she wants to at USC, and the ability for UGâs to do research there these days is virtually unlimited. There are more NMFâs at USC than at any other university, save Harvard so she will not have a hard time finding equally smart students. </p>
<p>Tell her to go to USC and make the most of it there. She wont regret it , and both of you will sleep easier over the next 4 years!</p>
<p>@menloparkmom
I am facing the same dilemma, and I want to ask you about the exprience for USC Trustee scholars, cuz from what I know, there is a honor housing and some specific activities and programs. But what are these programs? It will do me great help if you can tell me some supports for Trustee scholars.</p>
<p>menloparkmom: Thanks for sharing your own stories. Our situation is getting much more complicated now since she also got into Stanford which is her dream school and several of her friends that also got into S are planning to go there!! But I still plan to ask her to read all great inputs on here and other threads to help her get a better perspective before making the decision. Thanks again for your helpful comment.</p>
<p>@Menoloparkmom and her Sâs experience is not unique⊠Hopefully this board will share their similar experiences.</p>
<p>We too were in a similar situation and my S roommate was in almost the exact situation. My S passed up other top schools (not Stanford) for USCÂs Presidential scholarship and his roommate passed up Stanford and Yale for the Trustee Scholarship. He lives in the honors dorm and has many friends who were in similar situation as your D. Our family debated back and forth as we reviewed the options. We had saved for college so we were trying to take the money out of the equation. Actually it was my S who said mom we canât pass up that kind of money. But that did not happen until a few weeks after the decisions came in. Anything we are not using for undergrad, we plan to use for his graduate school which he has already expressed interest in going. Similar to Menloparkmom S, my S has high ambitions and USC has only encouraged him to go for it.</p>
<p>On the other side, he had many friends who did go to Stanford or an ivy (Columbia and Princeton) that he still very close to and they too are all having an incredible time and loving their school choice. </p>
<p>During the Christmas break I asked if he regretted his decision. He said NO. If he knew what USC was really like, he would have made his final decision faster. USC has far exceeded his and his friends expectations. He loves it there. </p>
<p>Go with what is right for your family and what she feels most comfortable with. If she is not as familiar with USC, help her understand the full breath of what they have. Try to understand her concerns. The delta between Stanford and USC shrinks every year. </p>
<p>Your D is in a wonderful position and we understand this is a very hard decision. Spend a bit of time to enjoying the moment of her recent acceptances. </p>
<p>Feel at peace that there is no wrong decision. If she decides on Stanford or blank, she will be very happy and very sucessful. If she decides on USC, she will be very happy and very sucessful.</p>
<p>Good luck. We feel your pain.</p>
<p>HogieOR,
You should be very proud of your mature S. I am confident he will be very successful in whatever he wants to achieve in life. Thanks for your understand and thoughtful comments.</p>
<p>MitchAPalooza,
Very much appreciated a perspective from a mature student.</p>
<p>Same situation here⊠Son bumped up to trustee! Also accepted to Brown, Cornell, Georgetown, and NotreDame. Main decision is USC Trustee vs Brown. Any Advise will be greatly appreciated. Thanks</p>
<p>My S (trustee scholar class 2012) turned down many schools including Duke and WashU w/full tuition merit scholarship to attend USC. </p>
<p>Reasons to love USC:</p>
<p>You should know a little about the atmosphere around USC for great intellectually driven students. Among the 900 or so Trustee/Presidential/Deans/NMF Pres freshmen students are the very same top talented peers they would find at any ivy. The fact is, in large part all these high achieving kids have turned down ivys and Stanford to come to USC and they really love it there. The education at USC is warm, caring and one of service to the student. If a student wants a double major, USC welcomes it. If they have a research idea, it can get funded. If they want to travel (paid) to collaborate with European students, visit top businesses in Shanghai, intern with Disney, Google, HBO or thousands of other top companies, listen to amazing concerts on campus (Thornton), act in a musical (auditions are openânot limited to Theatre BFAs), sing a Capella (one USC group recently won national title), work with inner city children, watch football w/adoring fans, get offered 3 jobs before they graduate (typical among my sonâs friends this month!), or go to that ivy they dream of for grad school-- every minute at USC will be packed with decisions on which amazing opportunity to take advantage of. </p>
<p>Of the seniors we know, one friend (majoring in mathematics and physics) was awarded an Astronaut Scholarship, the largest monetary award given in the United States to science and engineering undergraduate students based solely on merit. Several have been admitted to special grad programs with full funding. Lots of happy stress as many are deciding which offer of employment is best for them. It certainly is up to the student to make the most of the great help USC offers, but the warmth and caring of the Trojan family is very real.</p>
<p>Reasons to love an ivy:</p>
<p>They really are special places. My son has friends that attended Harvard and Stanford and they loved their time there. </p>
<p>If the $200,000 is not of prime concern to a family, and the S/Dâs program/major is strong at the ivy, that decision isnât hard. But if you would like to know about the quality of education, peers, opportunities, and advanced degree matriculation if your student selects USC, they are amazing. Almost every parent and student who you will ask will say they would make the same choice again.</p>
<p>I am a former Trustee Scholar who graduated from USC a few years ago. I studied biomedical engineering at USC and am now in medical school. I think the other posters have all made great points about USC. Iâll just add a few additional thoughts of mine here.</p>
<p>Entering medical school without any debt has been a huge blessing for me. I will still accrue a good amount of medical school debt by the time I graduate, but the debt would have been far worse had I not had my scholarship. This has taken away much unneeded stress from me right now. I also do not expect to finish residency training until I am 32-33, so itâs also good to not worry about making excessive debt payments during residency training. Regardless of what career your daughter chooses to pursue, being $200,000 down in cash will be a huge problem to overcome when she leaves college.</p>
<p>I know many people at USC who are now attending top medical schools around the country. Attending USC over the other schools you mentioned should not affect your daughtersâ chances of getting into a good medical school. She will have plenty of opportunities to pursue whatever extracurricular activities catch her interest. Many of my medical school classmates did their undergrads at Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, and other top schools, and I feel my USC education prepared me just as well for medical school as their educations did.</p>
<p>Your daughter clearly worked extremely hard in high school to be in the situation she is in now. Getting to choose between all these great schools is her reward for the hard work she put in, and I imagine it must be frustrating for her to have to âsettleâ (for lack of a better word) for a less prestigious school due to a factor she might not even have thought much about until now. I hope she attends wherever she feels the happiest and most at home, whether it be USC or elsewhere. But I do know many USC students who chose USC over higher ranked schools, and they are all happy about their decisions. USC is a very special place, and most students who choose to attend, regardless of what brought them to USC in the first place, grow to love it.</p>
<p>Dave61,</p>
<p>Not sure if affordability is the issue or simply cost-benefit analysis. If latter, let her follow dream and go to Stanford. If former, USC is the obvious choice. It is a very good school with a growing national reputation for something other than football, and will set her up for a fine med school (maybe even better than some of the others, since by offering her this huge scholarship they think she will be a star, which means special faculty attention and opportunities others will not get there)</p>
<p>âMain decision is USC Trustee vs Brown.â</p>
<p>DS [ who was also bumped up], in the end had to decide between Brown, Dartmouth and USC.<br>
Never had any regrets about his decision.
USC. Its a no brainer.</p>
<p>Thank you for your inputs and advise. Son accepted to USC trustee, Brown and Cornell. Narrowed to USC vs Brown. Son decided to go back to Brown on admitted student day and compare this with his recent experience during Explore USC. We think itâs a great idea, so that he can decide on his own. However, weâre leaning towards USC for now. One missing factor is USCâs premed acceptance rate⊠we canât seem to find this data online. Brownâs site has a 81% in the past 5 years. Granted this is not the only factor for the decision, yet itâs also nice to know USCâs rate. Any CC members know? Thanks</p>
<p>^^Relying on a factor such as the schoolâs published acceptance rate is probably not in your Sâs best interest. Schools report this number any way they wantâ some include alumni in the rates, some donât, some are committee letter schools who wonât write letters for all students. others are not. Each of these factors into reporting an âacceptance rateâ. If your school already pre-screens who applies to med school by choosing not to write a committee letter, this obviously would increase such a score. BTW-- I have no idea how either Brown or USC reports as I have never looked for it. </p>
<p>There are some extremely knowledgeable and helpful people on the pre-med thread on CC who are in med school, have kids in med school, etc⊠You can ask the USC (with Trustee) vs. Brown in that forum and get more answers.</p>
<p>My daughter was accepted to 7 colleges and has narrowed her choice to Stanford vs. USC trustee scholar. She was accepted into the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication. She loves to write and will likely take a number of literature course as well. What i was mot struck by is how happy, vibrant and engaged the students were at USC when we visited for two days for the trustee interviews. It seemed surreal and I am referring to all the kids we saw and I spoke with on campus, not just a select group for presentations. There is also a Thematic Options Honors program for selected incoming students which has a dedicated faculty and provides interdisciplinary courses in lieu of required core courses. That said, Stanford has a pull like a moth to a flame, but based largely on reputation, rankings and admit rate (though for what it is worth the admit rate as a trustee scholar is likely lower than Stanford or Harvard. We will spend spend more time at Stanford in the next few weeks. I agree both are excellent choices. The key I think is what is the 2012 status and character of the classroom and broader broader college academic environment and student body? Which is a better fit for the incoming student?</p>
<p>going for premed?? definitely brownâŠ</p>
<p>I mean, the cost difference is just huge! If it were me, I would have to go to USC. I was accepted to an Ivy, where I am planning on attending, but I would give that up for another great school that was a lot cheaper. USC is an amazing school.</p>