Chance me for Cognitive science/ Neuroscience/ Pre Med

Medical school is expensive. UC Berkeley as an out of state student is expensive. It is also not necessarily the easiest place to maintain a “medical school worthy” GPA.

Right now medical school can be over $80,000 per year. With 5% per year price increases, given that you would not be getting an MD for a bit more than 8 years (best case), if you go on for an MD then we are looking at over $100,000 per year by the time that you are done. Four years at UCB plus four years of medical school could very well cost $700,000, or possibly a bit more. Can your parents handle this without taking on debt? If not, then you might want to pay attention to the likely cost of your undergraduate university.

The same might be true of most of the other schools on your list. Have you run the NPC for Stanford and Case Western? I do not know how likely you are to get financial aid at the other out of state public schools on your list.

You will find premed classes to be academically challenging at a wide variety of universities. You will have very strong students and very good professors at a wide variety of universities. Maintaining a high GPA in premed classes will be tough at a wide variety of universities.

If you do get into medical school, you will find that the other students in the same program come from a very wide range of undergraduate universities.

I hope that you are also applying to Arizona State University.

One daughter, with high school grades very similar to yours, got her bachelor’s at a university that is very similar to ASU in ranking. She was pre-vet. This meant that a large number of her classes were the same as premed classes, and many of her friends were premed students. She found the classes to be very challenging (for example she told me at one point that organic chemistry was the most difficult B- that she ever got in her life). She had long hours of studying and was taking exams in rooms full of very strong students. Having attended a university very similar to ASU in ranking (but way to the east and north of you) she ended up being accepted to multiple very good DVM programs (she is current studying for a DVM).

Admittedly her patients are mostly furry and have four legs, and her clinical experience involved animals. However, the process is otherwise similar to medical school admissions. You can get a very strong education and be very well prepared for medical school with a degree from ASU, and you could save a bundle of money to be put towards the cost of medical school.

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