<p>I’ll give you my story related to the thread’s title. I come from a lower middle class background and didn’t even consider applying to private colleges in the early 70s. I went to a neighboring state’s flagship U and graduated summa cum laude with a 3.94/4.0 GPA. Out of state tuition was about $1200/yr and my mom took a job to pay for it (thanks mom!).
I was pre-dental and got into almost every dental school I applied to. I know I could have gotten into med school if I was interested since just about any student at my school with a GPA higher than 3.6 did. I wound up going to a top dental school and accumulating 40K in debt, which didn’t take me long to pay off as a practicing dentist.</p>