My best recommendation for potential pre-med students is to consider 3 items when making a college decision.
- Cost. Med school is breathtakingly expensive. Most med schools are in the $75K-$135K/year COA range. Grant financial aid is rare. Mostly FA is only loans. The new BBB has now capped the maximum federal loans available to professional school students at $200K over a lifetime. This includes any undergrad fed loans a student may have already taken out. This means a student needs to conserve as much money as they can during undergrad to help pay for med school later on. Med school will still require significant private loans. (Unless the family is wealthy enough to pay for med school outright.) Even a physician will have great difficulty repaying $400K+ in loans. (Plus private loans ae not eligible for loan forgiveness programs or other favorable repayment options.)
- Fit. Academic fit in important. Science and engineering classes tend to attract the strongest students at any university or college. Since med school requires a high GPA for consideration, you want to make sure student is competitive with the other students who will be in their Ochem or physics 1 class. Science classes often are graded on a formal or informal curve so the number of coveted As are limited. It’s probably wiser if your student is in the top half (or even better top 25%) of admitted student academically. Social fit is also important. Your student should be happy at their school. Happier students do better academically than unhappy students–and there’s research to back that up. Their school should present them opportunities to get involved with student activities, engage in leadership roles, make friends and get to know people from a wide spectrum of beliefs, cultures, SE backgrounds, etc that are different from their own. As a physician, your child will be ministering to wide variety of individuals who will have very, very different backgrounds and belief systems than their own. Med schools are not just looking for good students; they’re looking for people who are strong leaders and excellent, empathetic communicators.
- Opporunities You’ve focused in on clinical opportunities, which is just a small part of what makes a good pre-med school. Pre med advising is easy to find on the internet or through national mentoring organizations like AMSA or affinity group organizations for pre-meds. (Honestly most pre-med advising is pretty perfunctory at most undergrads.) Other opportunities a pre-med should consider is (1) the opportunity to form a good relationships with professors–since it’s those professors who will be writing their LORs for med school, grad school, internships. (2) the opportunity to pursue other interests besides medicine. The vast majority of pre-med will never apply to med school. (Research says only about 18% will even complete all the pre-reqs.) Most fall out of pre-med because they find a career that is better suited for their strengths and interests. And one that does not require 11-18 years of education and training before they get their first actual job.