Whenever I see “premed”, three things immediately come to mind:
The first is that there are hundreds of universities that are very good for premed students. If you look at the students currently studying in very good MD programs, you will find that they have attended a very, very wide range of universities for their bachelor’s degree. You can attend any one of a few hundred schools and still get a very good preparation for medical school.
The second thing that comes to mind is that medical school is insanely expensive. You need to budget for a full 8 years of university, where the last 4 will be expensive. It is going to be way easier to find an affordable school for the first 4 years than to find an affordable school for the last 4 years.
Third, the large majority of students who start university thinking “premed” end up doing something else. Some cannot maintain a medical-school-worthy GPA in the very tough premed classes. Some students just find something else that they would rather do. As one example, one daughter got into the multiple lab classes that were required for a biology major, and just decided that she would rather be in a lab doing research rather than be in a medical environment with patients. This sort of change of plans is very common and very normal.
Exactly. Budgeting for a full 8 years is critically important. You do not want to take the full cost of medical school as debt, and even half the cost of medical school would be a lot of debt even for a doctor.
UC Irvine and UCSD and UCLA are going to be expensive as an out of state student, even if you do get in. The only way that you should even consider attending these schools would be if your parents are fine spending something north of $800,000 over 8 years with no debt and with no hardship. I do not think that the cost will get to $1,000,000, but costs are increasing over time and you might get closer to this total over 8 years than you might expect.
Similarly Stanford has no merit aid at all. They have some athletic scholarships. However, this would require that you qualify for one, and would also require putting a lot of effort into athletics once you get there. I do not see how this could be possible in addition to doing well in premed classes plus doing the necessary premed shadowing. There are only so many hours in a day. Classes at Stanford are tough even without medical shadowing or a sport (I got my master’s degree there and loved it, but it was a LOT of work just for the academics).
Also, premed classes are tough. Even at a university ranked in roughly the 100 range (more or less), you are going to find very strong students in very tough premed classes. One daughter for example attended a university usually ranked in the 100 to 120 range, completed the premed / pre-vet requirements (she was pre-vet, and is now a veterinarian), and in one of her premed classes met a boyfriend who had never had a B in his life (he is an MD now). This is normal in premed classes at a wide range of schools. At UCLA, Stanford, USC, or WUSTL you would find that pretty nearly all of your classes are similarly full of very highly competitive students who have had very few B’s in their lives, if any. Competing for grades at these highly ranked universities would be brutal.
Congratulations on your acceptance to Evansville. I do not know much about it but what little I know is very positive, and suggests that it would be a very good choice for a premed student.
Assuming that IU is Indiana University Bloomington I think that your chances there are very good. Given your very good stats and being in-state I am expecting that it is probably a safety or near safety. I also think that it is likely to be very affordable, and a great choice for a premed student. It might very well be the best choice, or one of your best two choices, for a premed student among all of the universities on your list, even if you were to somehow get accepted to all of them (which seems unlikely). Purdue I think is also likely and a good choice, although I know nothing about your chances of getting merit based aid there.
I notice that you have quite a bit of medical-related experience for a high school student. This is very good. To me this suggests that your probability of sticking with medical school as the plan is probably significantly greater compared to most students who start university thinking “premed”. I also note that your high school stats are actually very close to the stats for my daughter who is currently a veterinarian. Also, the premed and pre-vet required classes are the same classes, and the difficulty of getting into medical school is somewhat similar to the difficulty of getting into veterinary school. To me all of this suggests that you really can do this if you want to. It will be a lot of work. It will require a lot of determination. I believe that you can do this.
One last thing that might be worth mentioning. I have seen some students who are reluctant to attend their in-state public university. They think “everyone goes there”. They think “all of this hard work in high school should allow me to go somewhere else”. However, this somewhat misses the goal, and the point of all that hard work. The goal is to become a doctor. IU can get you there, so can Evansville or Purdue, and one of them might be the best route to get you there. The main point of all of your hard work in high school is not which university you attend. Rather it is that all this work has gotten you prepared to do very well in the tough premed classes. All of the work that you have done up to now (including the medical shadowing) is part of the process of being ready to handle these tough classes.
Also, I have heard that different students find different required premed classes to be tough. Some breeze through required math and physics classes and see these as solid A’s, and then get to organic chemistry and struggle and work very hard to get a B- or a C. Some breeze though organic chemistry and get to medical shadowing and decide to do something else. This is a hard path. Being determined and really wanting to do it is important. Putting in the effort when you get to the tough classes is important.
Overall, I think that your “lower probability” and “low probability” schools are unlikely for admissions, and not likely to be worth the cost. I think that your toss-up schools are also unlikely to be worth the cost. I think that IU and Purdue are very likely for admissions, and relatively likely to be economical and maybe (?) allow you to save some college funds for medical school.
I also think that you can do this, and have seen someone with very similar high school stats succeed in doing something at least similar.
Best wishes.