WashU vs. ASU Barrett Honors College

Colleges and Universities A-Z Washington University in St. Louis
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So I’m in bind…

I really love WashU and they are really good for what I want to do (Pre-med), but the biggest thing that is holding me and my family back is the cost. Looking over some of my options, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to justify spending the full tuition at WashU when I can go to ASU honors college for SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper. The thing about ASU’s honors program that attracts me is all the opportunities they give to their Honors students. It would take me some time to write out all the perks at ASU so for the sake of brevity, I won’t include them in here.

With that being said, WashU is kinda my top right now and ASU is towards the lower end of the pack just because of ranking and recognition. Lets be real, ASU does not have a good reputation and I would take quite an ego hit if I do end up going there. On top of that, going pre-med at Barrett can be considered a leap of faith when compared to going pre-med at WashU.

My major at ASU is Biomedical Engineering while my major at WashU is Biology (however they do provide flexibility, enough for me to potentially transfer into BME if I wanted to).

If you are confused as to ANYTHING I just mentioned, or want more clarification or anything, please let me know!! I need all the help I can get :slight_smile:

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Oh, and here is the link to Barrett if you guys are interested at looking at it.

https://barretthonors.asu.edu/

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@sc30coach

I am going to make a couple of assumptions that you can correct if wrong. First, I am assuming that you are probably looking at a total cost difference after 4 years of about $200,000. I presume that to attend WUSTL might involve some loans.

Second, I am assuming, as demonstrated by my presumption about loans, although this could still be true even if loans are not involved, that this $$ difference is not something that is trivial to your family, that it involves some level of change to the family lifestyle.

If this is true, and given your current desire for med school, I would have to recommend Barrett. The cost savings are just too high, and despite the difference in reputation you will still get a fine education at ASU. BME is tough everywhere. Now I certainly won’t tell you that your classmates, even within Barrett, will be as academically accomplished as your WUSTL peers would be. But a Barrett student isn’t like the average ASU student either, by a long shot. And within your major, after they weed out the chaff freshman year, you will be around a bright group, I have no doubt. And there certainly isn’t any reason you can’t have a fabulous time enjoying the other side of college life at ASU, who let’s face it are far more professional at that than WUSTL students could ever hope to be. So there is every chance you can have, if not the best of both worlds, at least an excellent balance between them.

FWIW, my D was potentially looking at a similar decision 6 years ago. She loved WUSTL, and she was impressed enough by Barrett and the low cost it would have been, to go ahead and apply after our visit there. She also got no merit from WUSTL and no doubt would have gotten no need based aid if we had applied for it. But in her case she also loved Tulane equally to WUSTL and they gave her a full tuition merit award, so the decision was easy. But she always said that she thinks Barrett would have been an interesting choice, with all the resources a large school like ASU has.

IMO, there is no school worth $200,000 more than Barrett, not even Harvard or Stanford. If you choose Barrett, I can tell you now you will always wonder what it would have been like at WUSTL, right up until you are paying $200,000 less for med school. Undergrad is still far more what you make of it rather than the school itself. By taking advantage of what Barrett offers, what the rest of ASU offers, and what the Arizona area offers (my D says one of the draws of Barrett was desert hiking and rock climbing) and maximizing that, you can do extremely well.

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Thanks for the advice, I’ll definitely take it into consideration. I really like the Barrett atmosphere and vibes but again one of the few things that I am hesitant about is their past acceptance rate to med school. Obviously, WashU has an extremely high med school acceptance rate which is a huge draw, but ASU, specifically Barrett, has not provided me with enough data to make a conclusion on this front. I called ASU and all they told me was that their med school acceptance rate is on par with the national average (roughly 40 percent), but thats for the whole university, not specifically Barrett.

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ASU is a research I university (one of 115 in the nation; WUSTL is also on the list) and the Barrett Honors program is well known and respected. Achieve a high GPA and result on the MCAT and you should have no worries about med school admissions.

If the cost differential were 20-30K over 4 years, I’d say bite the bullet and go to WUSTL. For 200K and med school in the future, ASU is the smart choice.

Congratulations on your acceptances!

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@sc30coach I am also a graduating senior who choose between WUSTL and ASU Barrett. In addition, I am going into Biomedical Engineering as a pre-med. AND I had no financial aid at WUSTL and close to a full ride at ASU. Weird, how similar…

I choose Barrett, aside from the money, because I would enter as one of ASU’s top students rather than an average one at WUSTL. I have already gotten staff emailing me about internships and research and advice and it has been great. Although I loved WUSTL when I visited, ASU Barrett is the more practical option. I am going to be funneled into a path for success at Barrett compared to WUSTL where I would have to make my own. I hope to see you next year at Barrett, cheers!

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@sc30coach You probably have made a decision by now, but I just came across your thread today. I went to med school and know how expensive it is. Also, I have a son who is applying this year. He may very well wind up at Barrett, but I don’t believe his goal is to go to medical school.

My son was the valedictorian of his class of 350 students, had 15 APs, high standardized test scores, NMF, lots of school competition and department awards, extracurriculars including 4 years of 2 sports and varsity level at both sports and a musician playing 2 instruments… He applied to 7 private colleges and was rejected by 3 and waitlisted at 4. He was waitlisted at Dartmouth (where his father, grandfather, and uncle did their undergrad) and Tufts (where both myself and his father went to medical school), as well as Harvard (the salutatorian got in) and Rice. Of course, the odds are slim to get in to begin with and the waiting list odds are even worse. As of 4/1, he had no acceptances. He has since secured admission to our state college and to ASU. He has to complete the Barrett application in the next 2 weeks. He had 8 AP exams the past 2 weeks so he has not been working on it.

ASU has been very receptive and Barrett is a select group of the ASU students. Yes, it is a big public university, exactly where I was steering him away from. I went to Cal Berkeley and I could have fallen off the face of the earth and no one would have known! If I am spending over $200K for my son’s education, I wanted him taken care of. That’s why I did not have him apply to any public schools, In retrospect, it was a big mistake. I do believe ASU will take care of the Barrett students. I would never have guessed with his numbers he would not have gotten into Rice or Tufts. Since my son is NMF, he gets free tuition at ASU, so we would be paying $14,000 a year for his college education. ASU would take a lot of his APs, so he could get up to 60 semester credits for them too. At any of the private schools where he is waitlisted, it is $65,000-$70,000 a year. We have the money, but we worked hard for that money and try to spend money wisely. Besides, it makes my stomach turn to see what these private schools have put my son through these past few months. They are asking us to beg and plead for the privilege to pay them $280,000 over 4 years for a student who has the academics to thrive at their institution where they may not even have an opening for him anyway. He needs to go somewhere where he and his accomplishments are valued.

Over 20 years ago, I borrowed $120,000 for medical school education. I would have paid back about 3 times that amount if I didn’t pay back faster than what they scheduled for me. My husband was on a military scholarship, so his med school education was free. He just had to pay back time after graduation. Neither of us had any undergraduate debt. If we had undergrad debt and double the med school debt ($120K for each of us), we probably would have finished paying back just in time to start paying for our son’s education! My brother went to law school and borrowed $90,000 (he also had no undergraduate debt). He graduated the same year I graduated medical school (1995). He is still paying off his loans today.

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@m22boys ASU Barrett will be lucky to have your son. Best of luck to him!

The Dartmouth wait list is very shocking.