Maybe I’m cheap, but I think you should absolutely choose the schools offering scholarships. If you are an MD, does anyone care where you got your BS in whatever at?
My DD is a freshman at Alabama who is on the pre-Med tract. Alabama has a ridiculously high acceptance rate into med school among those students who declare pre-med and work with the Pre-health advisors. They do a fabulous job of working with these students and guiding them throughout their undergrad. It might be worth looking at it from that perspective. All of these schools can give you acceptance figures for their graduates.
As an aside, my DD was not NMS but got full tuition as a presidential scholar. Their merit based scholarships have become a huge draw for many of the brightest kids across the country. One of her peers was one of the kids who got accepted at all of the Ivies and chose UA for the money. College is what you make it and you get out what you are willing to put in, no matter how prestigious. (And the Honors dorms are awesome!)
The money saved at Bama or UK would pay for medical school. The only real alternative, IMO, is a program with guaranteed med school admission like Rice or Brown but that is not on your list. I’d pick between the two low cost options but would lean toward Bama honors college for the small difference in cost. I think it is exceptionally important not to incur debt because a doctor’s earnings in the future will be far lower with the advent of socialized medicine and/or government cost controls. This will severely restrict your son’s options for specialization too - hard to pay off $300K in loans on a pediatrician’s salary.
@disshar Do you belong to the UA Facebook group of Bama parents of premed preprofessional students?
Re: Washing out…
I have been following the premed forums for several years, and those who “wash out” tend to fall into a few different categories:
-
Didn’t have the academic talents or real science interests to do well in the premed prereqs (Many high school kids are told, “you’re an A student, you should become a doctor,” but their high schools were weak and their grades highly inflated.)
-
May have the natural smarts, but had a poor high school foundation, and therefore immediately floundered in Bio and Gen Chem.
-
Attended a univ where their stats were “average” for the school. Other premed classmates were much stronger and grabbed the A’s.
-
Tried to do “too much”…too many hard classes in a semester, particularly fall frosh semester…chose a major that wasn’t their forte…Took on a second major. Involved with a demanding EC (sometimes pledging can be overwhelming).
-
Anxiety and depression issues often flare up in the 18-20 year old age group and grades suffer.
@mom2collegekids Yes I do! Thanks for checking!
If you can’t hack the premed…organic chem, etc. Then you aren’t doing well on MCAT and won’t get in med school.
If you can get into med school you should be able to do the pre med at any school.
@leftygolf I’m really surprised no one has mentioned Oklahoma, which has roughly the same package as Alabama. From what I’ve read, Oklahoma actually treats their NMFs a bit more like royalty. I think most of us in the Southeast hear the word “Oklahoma” and conjure up an image of tumbleweeds, longhorns, and duststorms. But every NMF who has ever attended has raved about it.
Oklahoma offers five full years, including summers, and this includes medical school. For a student who already has 30 or 40 hours through AP or dual enrollment, the chance of a free medical degree is there. If he has good grades he can do his residency in lots of places, and if he does well there he is likely to get a good fellowship. Since it sounds like you are willing to foot a substantial bill and provide him with a comfortable lifestyle, if he, and you, like Oklahoma at all you might dangle a hundred thousand or so in front of him. You save, he saves, everybody saves! And he lives like a king and hopefully has some money left over to start out in life.
p.s. Some of the colleges that you are listing as full pay do in fact have a few full-ride scholarships. I suspect our children will be competing for some of them! Good luck and may the best pampered child win.
<<<
Oklahoma offers five full years, including summers, and this includes medical school. For a student who already has 30 or 40 hours through AP or dual enrollment, the chance of a free medical degree
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
“free medical degree” how would that be?
Highly unlikely anyone gets in with only 2 years. At best, and still unlikely, getting in after 3 years…and that would still be unlikely and would require being admitted to OU’s med school (do they accept many/any OOS)?.
At best, that would leave 2 years of tuition towards med school, not 4.
Just an aside - no one cares or even asks where a doc or rn got their degrees…people don’t even read the diplomas. My dad got his UG at Notre Dame and MD at UTMemphis…Not one person ever asked where he went. Take the easiest and cheapest route to get there because its the MCAT scores and then passing the boards that proves you know your stuff. Recently, our son broke his arm…his doc was a sweet lady who graduated from Duke then med school at Vandy. She works alongside a UK grad who went to UT Memphis. HUGE difference in student loans, I am betting, and they probably make the same amount of money.
^ In my experience, your med school does play a role in the type of residency you are able to land and your undergraduate institution plays a role in the type of medical school you can realistically expect to be accepted to. Virtually every single neurosurgery resident at Mass General has an MD from Harvard Med. That’s not a coincidence.
^ Not necessarily. My cousin is a renowned specialist in his field, go-to guy for the toughest cases. Went to SUNY schools for undergrad and med school, did residency and fellowship at UVa. His SUNY background didn’t hurt him at all.
@nerdychica While Harvard Med is well-represented amongst those in Mass Gen’s neurosurgery residency, it is not the only source of their neurosurgery residents. Med school grads from Tulane, Stanford, and UCSF are also amongst the Mass Gen neurosurgery residents.
I suspect that one reason that 5 of the neurosurgery residents are from Harvard Med is because Harvard Med is only 15 minutes away from Mass Gen, so it’s convenient for Harvard Med students to do Away Rotations there.