Potential pre-meds need to be very aware of their undergraduate college costs.
Medical school is expensive and as noted above there is little FA except for loans. The BBB has eliminated Grad Plus loans which med students previously used to help pay their medical education expenses. Now professional students have lifetime cap of $200,000 in federal student loans, an amount that includes any undergraduate loans you have taken out.
Talk with your parents and get firm budget for undergrad, and hopefully one that will not require you to take on any loan greater than those offered as federal students loans. Once you have a budget, ask your parents if you go to a less expensive college will they be willing to kick in some those saved funds to help pay for medical school. Right now most private and OOS med schools are running in >$100,000/year. In-state public med schools are less expensive but still cost in the > $70-85K/year range. You should expect that med school will cost even more in the future than it does right now.
Also med school admissions is very grade focused. You need a high GPA for med school. That may mean going to a highly competitive undergrad where there are tons of very strong students is a bad idea. Pre-med majors tend to attract the strongest students–and those students will be your competition for the limited number of top grades in your science and math classes.
IOW, you don’t want to go to an undergrad where you will be in middle 50% of accepted students. You want to be in top quarter of accepted students. Keep this in mind as you choose which schools to apply to.
One more consideration–the vast majority of freshmen pre-meds never actually apply to medical school. Only about 18% finish the pre-reqs. The reason they fall off the pre-med pathway vary. While some can’t hack it academically and don’t get that 3.8 GPA, many more quit because the path to med school is very long and even longer once you get there. ( 4 years of med school followed by 3-15 years of residency & fellowship once med school is finished.) Many students decide they don’t wan to give up all of their 20s and half of their 30s to become a physician. It hard to postpone your life when you see all your friends from high school and college getting married, having kids, settling permanently in one area… and you’re still eating ramen in a crappy student apartment.
So when you’re choosing a college, consider if you will be happy there and will you have the opportunity to study another field you find interesting and would be happy to have a career in.
So priorities for choosing an undergrad:
- Cost
- Cost
- Cost
- top 25% of accepted students
- other majors that interest you