Thanks all! I know it is early, and her interests may change. I am just trying to manage expectations (my own and hers), and do a bit of planning. She is homeschooled so if she aims higher than ds or goes OOS, she may have to take some extra steps like SAT subject tests, and I may have to do more detailed transcripts and supplemental material than I did for ds, which I don’t mind doing at all.
DS’s process has been so stress free, and we’ve all been so happy with the outcome that it seems pointless to take on additional stress. But every child is different, and you’ve given me some good food for thought.
She knows there are budget constraints so I’ll just let her dream for now, and we’ll have more concrete discussions in a couple of years.
I’m leery of even using the word, “dream.” Kids don’t have a good idea of what they need, in early hs (or even later.) It’s always a delight to find great lesser known colleges that turn out bright, motivated, career-able kids. That’s not limited to some category like “elite” or “OOS.” It’s where your kid can be empowered.
I’m not sure why kids in certain states (notably, Texas and NJ,) insist they can’t go off to colleges their hs peers attend. I can’t recall, say, Michigan kids complaining that UMich is full of Michiganites, lol. Or other flagships. It isn’t high school, it’s the big world of college.
Wanting to experience a different location is fine. But not the primary purpose of the college years. You can vacation elsewhere, find an internship, go visit a college friend at their home, etc.
@ucbalumnus "Unfortunately, pre-med students need to see their peer group as competitors for often-scarce A grades
I understand where you are coming from but some top students thrive in an environment with “best in class” students, faculty, and internships/research. Using your above reasoning, no premed student should ever attend a Top 50 (or top 100) undergrad college since their grades might suffer.
Anecdotally, close friend went Yale undegrad and Yale Medical school. Not sure his 4 year college experience in pre-med would have been the same if he went community college 2 yrs and transferred to Long Beach state university for his B.S. would have given him the same preparation for an Ivy league medical school?
I don’t think OOS is necessarily less affordable – it totally depends. My kids overwhelmingly got better merit aid OOS - adding we have 5 kids, right now 2 are done and 3 are in – it is critical to understand where you can get automatic merit based on grades/test scores and like I said my kids got very good offers that way all go OOS – and yes money is an issue with 5 kids
No my kids were not upset by getting a lot of rejections.
My kids were were smart enough to know that if the acceptance rate at a college is under 10 or 15% and you can assume that most applicants are qualified, that rejections are likely. My older son got rejected from his first choice, but I think he ended up being better off where he attended. Younger son was thrilled when he got into a reach early action, so when the other expected rejections came in, it was no big deal. He didn’t end up attending his reachiest school. Actually neither of them did, older so chose the better the department, not the highest ranked school he got into. Younger son thought the place he attended was a better fit.
For my older son the thing I cared about was that he go to a school where the other kids were as smart or smarter than him. He had been coasting too long. He was self-motivated in the areas that interested him, but he got a lot of A’s without working hard at all. Younger son was more of a slacker in high school. It was better for him to be challenged as well.
A safety your child is willing to attend is a must. For older son there were lots of less exclusive engineering schools that would love to have him. For younger son we found some colleges with good IR programs that were less selective than the tip-top programs. Neither one was, in our opinion, well served by the in-state options.
My east coast nephew ended up at Rice because they gave him a terrific financial aid package. He thrived there, and really enjoyed getting to know Texas.
This is only true if the portion of A grades remains constant, regardless of college selectivity, which is not the case. Instead professors tend to give a larger portion of A grades as a larger portion of the class does A quality work, so more selective colleges tend to give more A grades. For example, in the Harvard senior survey, the median reported GPA was 3.8. 86% of the class reported having a cumulative GPA in the A/A- range. Avoiding being among the bottom 14% at Harvard is not necessarily more difficult than consistently receiving the rare A grades at a less selective college that gives few A grades.
@toomanyteens Your post brings up another of my concerns… How do you get find and get a really good feel for OOS schools outside of the HYPS and similar schools that everyone knows.
When I hear, Texas A&M, UT Austin, Baylor, Rice, I already have a feel for what those schools are like and what they have to offer. We have friends who may have gone there or sent their children there, etc. We also know what schools are party schools, not well-respected, etc.
When I hear names like Tufts, Lehigh, etc. - I know nothing. There are many, many schools I had never heard of until joining this site.
So how do you locate OOS schools that may end up cheaper than instate, and how do you truly get a feel for what they’re about by just perusing the website and going on a campus visit?
We did a lot of research. Started off with which schools had strong departments in my daughter’s intended major. then we got a feel for what kind of schools she liked (size, location, focus) and then started making a list. We visited 15 schools and DD applied to 8. She did a general tour, a major specific tour, ate in the dining hall, met with professors and sat in on classes where ever she could. She made repeat visits to the top schools on her list. She got very clear about what she valued and what she didn’t.
In terms of which schools are cheaper than instate, that takes more digging. My daughter’s biggest awards came from her safety schools where she was way above the 75th percentile for GPA and test scores.
Once your daughter is junior and has test scores, CC posters will be able to help too!
Fiske Guide to Colleges. Then you haunt their websites, see the courses in her interest areas, prof backgrounds, particular interests, etc. Then dig into other ratings, more related to the possible depts. Imo.
One thing to do also is to try to narrow down types of schools/fit /feel . Large big ten VS small liberal arts schools or somewhere in between. We live in Chicago so we have many choices to see a varying degrees of colleges and size. Then we knew my daughter really only wanted Small Liberal arts colleges and my son wanted larger like Big Ten schools. Then we looked at majors etc. We visited about 6-8 schools each maybe a few more for my daughter and those were pretty much the school’s they applied to adding a few more here and there.
Usnews world report, niche, admission blogs etc etc. Word of mouth, talking to other parents, This crazy site, college data, Naviance, talking to his counselor at school. Actually calling colleges and asking questions. Etc
If you think she is serious about premed, you might ask her to look at those Texas colleges which offer preferential admission to their own students for theit medical school. TCU does, and maybe UT does now too.
My daughters both went to college out of our state (Wisconsin). D1 went to a small private university that I had never heard of before she applied. She learned about it, as well as the other schools to which she applied, using various college guides. One of the main things she was looking for (if not the main thing) was nontraditional grading, e.g., tests not required. The school she attended had this and she thrived there.
I’ve yet to see a med school care which state an applicant’s undergrad is in. For schools that have a bias toward their own state (as many TX med schools do), only the applicant’s state residency matters - and that doesn’t change when one is in college. It’s entirely likely that having gone out of state for undergrad could give a TX resident an advantage if the majority of med school applicants stayed in state. Often some sort of diversity is desired - geographical included. In general though, MCAT scores, GPA, ECs, and interviews will matter the most. If there’s a geographical component, that would likely tip the scale among otherwise equal applicants.
My own three lads enjoyed going OOS for college and exploring other areas of the country. For two of the three the OOS option was also the cheapest. Those two were homeschooled for 9-12 and 7-12 respectively so that seemed to make no difference.
ETA One of those two is also now in his second year of med school.
Be careful when posters say it doesn’t matter what undergrad school you went to for med school, because like all things it depends. Top med schools accept most or their applicants from top undergrad schools. All med schools lean heavily on grades and the MCAT scores. If you just want to go to med school and be a practicing doctor (IOW not a research doctor) then yes go to a good (but not great) undergrad school where you can get a 3.9+ GPA. If you want to go to a top 10 med (MD) school (not a DO school) then you need to go to a “reach” university to be competitive for admission.
For example, University of Michigan Med school by institution applications:
University of Michigan 587
University of California - Berkeley 226
University of California - Los Angeles 224
Harvard University / Michigan State University 139
Duke University 108
Washington University - St. Louis 107
Stanford University / Ohio State University 104
Wayne State University 93
University of Wisconsin / University of California - San Diego / Cornell University 92
University of Pennsylvania
Acceptances:
University of Michigan 67
Harvard University 25
Stanford University 16
Yale University 14
University of California - Berkeley 13
Duke University / University of Pennsylvania 10
Washington University - St. Louis 9
Columbia University / University of California - LA / Northwestern University 7
Cornell University / Dartmouth University / University of Notre Dame 6
Brown University / Johns Hopkins University / Massachusetts Institute of Technology / University of Chicago 5
OP’s daughter is a hs freshman. A long way to go before applying to college, much longer to get through college, cement her directions. There are kids from all sorts of colleges who make it to med school. And many who either discover new interests or don’t manage to do well enough.
The fact a large number of kids apply from some big names-and get into med school- is not an indication one must go to a big name undergrad.
As for Harvard gpa, it still struggles with the perception it’s a grade inflation school. Thst alone isn’t enough to get into med school.
The goal should be a college where she can thrive and one that’s cooperative as opposed to competitive (where they purposely weed out the majority of kids with premed goals.)
But really, this is a 9th grader. Far too soon to be advising on med school. She’s probably not even started on healthcare experiences. Let her (and OP) breathe.
“4) Internships, research opportunities matter when choosing undergrad colleges;”
This would be the only reason to choose a more selective college, and pre-meds are encouraged to save money when attending undergrad and that typically means the affordable public in-state school. A blog on admission summarized it well - if med schools think you can be a good doctor, then you’re in, regardless of where you went.
“Anecdotally, close friend went Yale undegrad”
There are a lot more people that start out at Yale pre-med that switch out because there’s a weed out process, even at Yale. Now if you survive, Yale will help you with med school apps and in come cases admission to their med school.
You are mixing up cause and correlation. Students who attend a “reach university” are far more likely to be stellar students who test well than the general college population. Students who attend selective colleges for undergrad are also far more likely to apply to selective colleges for grad that the general population. As such, they are expected to be overrepresented at selective graduate schools, including selective medical schools. However, that does not mean that attending a “reach” university for undergrad is required or preferred for admission to a selective graduate school.
You listed the 10 colleges with the largest number of Michigan Medical School admissions in a 5 year period. If you instead look at the most recent class at https://medicine.umich.edu/medschool/education/md-program/our-community/students-faculty/admitted-class-profile , the 10 undergrad colleges with the most acceptances also include less selective colleges like Grand Valley State and Wayne State. Both of these colleges have a ~80% acceptance rate, so they are certainly not “reach universities”, yet they still received multiple acceptances.