I’m a high school senior and deciding between UT Austin and UT Dallas as a Biochemistry major on a pre-med track. I’ve been accepted into both schools through automatic admission and have been awarded a full tuition paid for UT Dallas plus $1000 every year to pay for Room and Board and books. I am still waiting on my scholarship info for UT Austin though I know it won’t be much as well as my natural sciences honors college result. I know UT Austin will cost me a lot more and the debt will add up as I intend to go to med school. But I’ve always wanted to go to UTA and I was not impressed by the campus at UTD or the fact that it appears to be a commuter school. But will the resources of UT Austin outweigh the cons or should I go to UT Dallas? And which school will better prepare me for the MCAT and get me into a good medical school?
Your (personal) debt as an undergrad is limited to $27K. Anything over that your parents will have to borrow or cosign for you. As far as which will prepare you better for the MCAT, have you contacted each school to find out how grads do on that?
but it’s still a debt in our family either way. They are willing to help me pay for UT Austin but I don’t want to borrow that money unless its actually worth it. I’ve looked at some of their statistics online, which is never a direct answer because they hide the real answer behind a bunch of numbers under different groupings/categories eg exceptional percentage, strong percentage, marginal percentage. So I was wondering if anyone has gone through the actual experience in either school and could tell me how their experience was like.
Try posting that question in the two school’s forums (under Colleges and Universities).
Well, there’s a difference between the different loans, from best to worst:
- subsidized federal loans have a very low interest rate and are your responsibility (your parents are free to pay them for you but they don’t have to)
- unsubsidized federal loans have a low interest rate and are your responsibility
Together, they would be $5,500 for freshman year, $6,500 for sophomore year, and $7,500 each for junior and senior year, for a total of $27,000. This is the maximum recommended limit for undergraduates.
Then you have Parent PLUS loans: they’re on your parents, and they have to be approved each year. Your parents are responsible for them. If you don’t finish your degree or skip town, your parents are still responsible for these loans.
And finally, the worst kind of loans, the co-signer loans, which mean that both you AND your parents are on the hook for the loan. If one of you dies, then the others must pay the loan back for him or her. You can never get rid of them. Ever. Even if it means you lose your house or your retirement.
Different considerations:
- How sure are you about being premed? Because half students say “premed” but most change their minds. Have you shadowed a doctor, been an EMT, volunteered at a clinic? Do you have AP Bio, have you taken all three sciences (physics, chem, bio)? Depending on how sure you are, then one or the other would make better sense.
- If premed didn’t work out, what fields would you be interested in?
- Are you a McDermott Scholar?
- How do your stats compare to the top 25% GPA/test scores at UT Austin?
If you are absolutely certain to be pre-med, UTD makes the most sense.
Has anyone gone through the premed track in either college and could maybe tell me a bit about your experience, how much help you received to get into med school, difficulty to attain research opportunities and internships, class sizes (especially in UTA whether the classes get smaller and how much smaller in upper level classes)?
@student12564 FYI–just for clarification UTA is used to refer to UT Arlington, not UT.
Trying to compare UTD with UT is impossible. They are completely different and will give you completely different college experiences.
If you are a driven, focused individual whose goal is medical school, and you do not want to deal with the typical college distractions, then UTD is your school. From a cost stand point, UTD is your obvious choice, but you will not have what others consider a “typical” college experience–and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Perhaps the compromise would be to attend UTD for 2 years, and then transfer to UT if you are unhappy. This option will reduce your debt, but still allow you to graduate from UT.