I know someone in a similar situation, and they didn’t go with Yale, party due to the costs and Yale’s pre-med weed out program. If you make the weed out program, you will get good resources for med school app, mcat etc., if not, you’re kind of on your own. It was also full pay for them and no or little play at the other college.
“I suggest that one read Stumbling on Happiness and recognize that we humans cannot predict what will make us happy. I suspect the opinions of an 18-year-old about “liking” or “disliking” a particular U are based upon rather superficial factors and are not predictive of what his actual experience there would be. Every large University will offer a rich set of experiences, peers and opportunities.
This young man may benefit from learning how to make the most out of the opportunities that present themselves rather than beginning this phase of life a sour grapes attitude. The opportunity to attend any of the extraordinarily high quality campuses in the UW system is extraordinary” —
I lifted that from another site and think it’s insightful
Personally I would go to Yale however.
I wonder if you want just to go a medical school or a top research medical school. Which practice area do you plan to specialize in?
I’ve seen some clients having over half million dollars student loan for medical schools. However they have all paid back their loan in few years and acquired nice big residents. I have only one client taking long years to pay down his medical school loan.
60k may be or not a large debt depending on your plan / goal.
I’d go to Yale
Wisconsin is the way to go if you are seriously considering medical school. Medical schools do not usually differentiate between universities at that level, and you want to save as much money as possible for medical school. But if you are not certain, or if you think you may change your mind, as do roughly have premed students, I think Yale may be worth a look, although I am not sure $60k of debt is worth it.
@DecisionHelp – Have you decided? Lots of good info provide, and I think you can justify either decision. Good luck and let us know!! I know you’ll do really well either way!
Assuming that the total debt is going to be 60,000, rather than 240,000, the advice to go to Madison(which is a common theme here on CC) is, in my view, catastrophically poor advice. To begin with, over the course of a succesful career in medicine, 60,000 is effectively meaningless. Just do the math of lifetime earnings of a physician. To turn down a superior opportunity over 60,000 is poor thinking. So, is Yale superior? The posters keep saying it doesn’t matter where you go undergraduate for med school admissions, but that is absolutely false. Yale, as a matter of fact, gets a higher percentage of students, at a lower GPA, then Madison into medical school. Medical school admission rates are as low as Stanford and Harvard for undergraduate. Wouldn’t you want every advantage. And to suggest that because people at Yale are smarter than people at Madison that your grades will be lower proportionately, is also not factual. Top schools are known for grade inflation and helping students. And Madison has many talented students in pre-med. The idea that you can breeze through pre-med weed out courses at Madision and would struggle at Yale is simply guess work. But the flawed nature of the advice, even from a financial perspective, comes out when you take a closer look at med school admissions and merit aid. Top med schools also have better financial aid and better MERIT aid. If you do well at Yale, you will be much more likely to be accepted at a top medical school with better aid and medical school is much much more expensive than undergraduate. And if you want MERIT aid for medical school, you better be a top top applicant. Now, if the amount is 240,000, that is different story because then you may end up borrowing on top of that amount for medical school, and that total number will balloon. I am not knocking Madison at all. Great school. But the poor advice here needs to be addressed.
But it would be kind of a shame to lose the opportunity to go to Yale, when there are tens of thousands of kids out there with Yale being their dream school, who aren’t accepted and can never attend. As a doctor, especially if you end up specializing, that 60K plus the cost of med school really wouldn’t be a terrible burden. You most likely will be able to pay if off a few years into your practice. But if you intend to go into academic medicine or just do family practice, then financially it might become a bit tight. Yale is a brand name giving you opportunities to open up a lot of doors.
It’s not just 60k its that plus 200k for med school. And that is a burden during internship and residency. And depending on specialty for a decade after. Just ask my younger brother.
That is precisely my point—private banker. The bigger financial play is medical school. Medical school is running closer to 80,000 a year or more. I would easily invest 60,000 to go to a university, Yale, that would carefully guide me through the medical school process with personalized advice and great classes to obtain a more affordable medical school education either by admission to one of the low cost great medical schools (Baylor or UT-southwestern) or to obtain quality financial aid or MERIT aid for medical school. That is leaving aside the fact, left out of the advice here, that medical school admission rates at less than elite medical schools are running around 5% and even very strong students are being rejected. If your dream is medical school, why wouldn’t you invest 60,000?
I was also wondering if Madison would have tougher intro courses b/c of weed out mentality at public flagships vs. Yale not feeling that same pressure. My D. seriously considered UNC for bio and got impression that intro classes would be somewhat impersonal, large, and very tough. Prolly similar to Madison. (She ended up choosing an LAC)
Of course all colleges want high med acceptance rates so I imagine they all weed out to an extent at the front end, even Yale. But just seems like Yale might be more supportive environment. But 60k is a lot to pay for that. . .
AlmostThere, a constant theme of CC is unrealistic expectations. Lots of good students expect to get admitted to, pick your school, but dont think seriously about 8 or 9 % admission rate. A medical school with an 8 or 9 % admission rate is a “non selective” school, relatively speaking. George Washington Medical school, for example, had an under 3% admission rate. And they are picking those 8 or 9 % or 3% out of a carefully cultivated group of high achieving students. That is, getting into medical school is just like getting into Ivy League caliber schools and now requires the same resume building stuff for undergraduate but ramped up, research, community service, recommendations. Telling someone whose dream is medical school to give up the advantage that Yale offers for admission in terms of reputations, personalized attention, and research opportunity to save 60,000 is poor advice, IMHO.
As the majority of posters have written, UW-Madison.
OP, the only thing that’s tugging at you is the brand name of Yale. Funny thing about college choice: it is both a significant but a not-so-really life-altering decision as people think. The decision about where to attend seems bigger than it really is. For instance, many, many students wish they could be in your shoes and attend Madison.
Another issue, and I hope this isn’t too personal. But if you are expected to pay full freight at Yale, this means that your family is full pay. I understand that some full pay families are right on the bubble, expected to cover the complete COA even though a family might feel that this is beyond their means. However, if I am reading things right, your family is willing to pay 220K towards your Yale education, and you are expected to handle the remaining 60K?
Question: why aren’t you or your parents suggesting what strikes me as the obvious? “Son (or dear daughter), you will attend UW-Madison, and we will finance your medical school costs up to 220K.” In other words, if medical school is in your future, why spend so much of everyone’s money (yours (in the form of future debt) and your parents’) on undergrad? Am I missing something?
If your family could comfortably afford Yale, that would be different. If the debt were lower (let’s say 30K, which many students do take on; debt is the reality for most college students), maybe that would change things, too (even though I don’t think Yale is worth 30K in debt, not when the other option is practically free). I wish you the best, though.
The 200K is presumably constant despite whatever undergrad one attends. So would you go to Yale with 260K debt or to Madison with 200K debt? Not much of a difference in the grand scheme.
@manyloyalties I think Yale is worth the investment. In nearly all instances But for medical school applications many top med schools love the stars coming out of state flagships. If the kid is this bright, I would be surprised if they weren’t uber elite at their flagship and get into the better med school. I think top undergrad school Yale coupled with inexpensive but good med school is less valuable long term tha. UW coupled with a top 15 med school. When discussing your dr do you mention wher they went undergrad or med school. For me it may not even come up where they ent undergrad.
But it’s no mistake going to Yale of course. It’s Yale. And for all the obvious reasons. But I do believe that people underestimate the quality of education and guidance available at a school like UW.
I would go to Yale myself. But I’m not writing the checks So it’s easy for me to say.
Re-read the posts, may have missed some still but – OP says they have to personally borrow $15 a year , as a student, to get through Yale, and family will struggle but manage the rest of the cost of full pay at Yale. The alternative is full tuition award at Madison, so costs are room and board, books, travel to MN which would be about $12-15k a year, total. If the med school goal is unwavering and committed, then UW seems the only affordable option (and a great one at that). OP cannot borrow $15k a year personally, and it sounds like family paying the remainder of full pay at Yale may well involve debt, since OP says it will be a struggle. Substantial debt for undergrad or using family resources for undergrad which could be preserved to contribute to med school, just does not make sense. And, if the merit award at UW includes any perks – research access etc., so much the better. If not, OP should apply to participate in the UW undergrad research scholars program, which gets freshman and sophomores teamed up with faculty research.
If a student were saying Wall Street/finance/ consulting – then yes, Yale could make sense, as that name opens doors. But med school? no.
Madison is a great school and its stars will do well. On the overall scale, going to Madison to go to medical school is a fine choice. But this is a comparative question and the posters who say going to Madison is the “easy” choice, or that 60k in debt is too much are simply ignoring the exceptionally low admission rates to medical school now and the possible financial benefits to being a top applicant. The facts are simple: as strong a school as Madison is, going to to Yale provides a far better opportunity for admission and for medical school money. I will pick an easy example. Baylor is a great medical school and very very affordable. If you get into Baylor, you will save 200k in debt for medical school. Getting in is very very hard with incredible competition. You have a much better shot of getting into Baylor from Yale than Madison. Case Western has a FREE, five year medical school. You have a much better chance of getting into the free top medical school from Yale than Madison. And, I’ll say it again, you can’t simply go to class, get good grades take the MCAT’s and get into medical school now anymore than you can go to high school, get good grades, take the SAT’s and go to Dartmouth. You need a four year, programmed, organized, supported effort including research, community service, recommendation letters and top grades and test scores. That grueling process is much more likely to result in admission from Yale than Madison. Again, not knocking Madison, but if your dream is medical school, and you want to lower the cost of medical school, going to Yale and investing 60,000 is the easiest of easy choices.
They might not have the 60k period. And I politely disagree that high gpa high mcat score student from uw with research has any disadvantage to Yale. The same scores perhaps a little. It’s just not the current experience. More students at Yale are bright enough to get into med school so more will go. UF Sent the 2nd most students get into med school last year nationally. As an example. Yale will have better support in general and is a more prestigious undergrad. If you don’t end up going to med school as the vast majority end up deciding the Yale degree means more over time. Assuredly.
Im not knocking Madison, and the state flagships do well. But at 3% admission rates mean that even slight advantages have a great impact on the outcome. And I don’t mean “prestige” in the abstract, I mean the opportunities, professors, and support. Log onto the pages of the top medical schools and see where the students come from, Yale is always well represented. I didn’t go to Yale, or Madison, and like both schools. But I don’t think reasonable people can disagree that Yale outperforms Madison in medical school placement, with greater margin for error in grades, better research opportunities, and more personalized support. The question is, is that worth 60,000 when you can earn far more than 60,000 in reduced medical school cost and a better chance of admission. It seems to me that it absolutely is. If they don’t have it all, then why pose the question. Life doesn’t always give easy or obvious choices. Borrowing the 60,000 has some element of risk, with a great benefit, personal and financial. Not borrowing, has other risks, such as more expensive medical school, maybe no medical school, or a school you don’t want to go to. Or, if you switch careers, less opportunity. I just think measured against the posters overall earning capability and in light of ambitious goals, aiming high is the right way to go.
Most kids entering college as a premed do not stick to their plan. Either they find something better, or the premed course work is way too difficult. Coming out of Yale, again, will open up a lot of doors and resources for your other options.