Hi, neuroscience major, girl, interested in premed. Here are my choices:
UC Berkeley: in state, invited to SEED scholarship, no result yet (major nutrition science, similar to neuroscience’s core course, all other schools got in neurosciences)
UC Davis: in state, University Honor, Regents $7500/year
WashU: need to pay full tuition (also got in Emory Oxford campus, pay full tuition as well)
UNC: Honor Carolina, assured enrollment in Pharmacy, no aids
Case: $30,000 scholarship
Rutgers: Honor College, $32,000 full ride that covers oos tuition.
Any ideas?
Visited WashU, Case, UNC, will visit UCB this weekend.
One good place to start would be to list your estimated cost of attendance for each school (rather than the scholarship amounts). For your budgeting, it’s also helpful to note whether the tuition at that school is expected to increase yearly.
Then once you have the COA for each school, you can figure out whether they are all affordable for your family. That might help you to narrow down the list.
Since you are potentially interested in the premed path, it would also be good to find out from your parents if money saved on undergraduate school would mean more money available to help with medical / grad / professional school costs in the future.
$32,000 isn’t a full ride - it covers the cost of OOS tuition like you said. Rutgers doesn’t provide full rides anymore, but I believe this is their highest merit award for OOS students. So congratulations! Not easy to get this much from Rutgers.
You have many excellent choices here, but if cost is a concern (given the potential of med school in the future), you’ll need to strike a balance between COA and quality of your experience.
Maybe this is just my west coast mind, but I can’t see much difficulty in this choice: you’ve been admitted to two of the top institutions in the world, UCB and UCD, and you’re in-state for both of them! While UCB is regarded as more prestigious (and much more prestigious than anywhere else you got in), UCD regents might be attractive as well.
Unless finances are truly of no concern AND you strongly prefer the environment of one of the out of state or private schools, I think either UCB or UCD is a no-brainer. To decide between the two you’ll be checking prestige against finances.
Yeah… but maybe the OP really liked some of the other schools they’ve visited?
Also I don’t know what the financial picture looks like, since the OP didn’t list COA. Many of my kid’s OOS acceptances had cheaper COA after merit compared to UCB (even in-state, its COA is currently listed at $48k, I think).
Try not to be negatively influenced by the rain that is expected for Cal Day. We don’t actually get a lot of rain here… the weather and campus has been quite beautiful this week. I would guess that the folks putting on Cal Day are kind of scrambling around right now changing some outdoor event plans.
Among the public universities, UCD stands out (Regents, etc) as well as UCB (though you might try to keep it for grad school unless you’re fine with Nutrition instead of Neuroscience.)
Among private universities, Case is an excellent value, a great location for science research, a very different proposition than the UCs (smaller classes, more academic flexibility to change majors, add a minor, or schedule courses) and probably not THAT much more expensive than UCB with R&B.
Get rid of the ones you really aren’t interested in. Have a list of three and work from there. Elimination is a great way to deicde. When you get to your final 2, think of which one stand out to you.
If you are interested in medical school, then you should strongly consider staying in state, and saving your money for medical school – which will be very expensive. That is a way to cut down on your list.
I think Rutgers might actually be the cheapest option on this list, but I am not sure. I look forward to seeing the OP’s estimate of COA at each, though.
I’m seeing a COA of $24,702 for Rutgers OOS (on campus), after subtracting the $32,436 cost of OOS tuition. I think I am looking in the right place? Rutgers Students Cost of Attendance - Scarlet Hub
That is just over half the cost of UCB which has a COA of $48,574 (on campus) (source)
It is also substantially cheaper than UCD which would have a COA of $37,296 (on campus) after subtracting the $7500 scholarship that was mentioned. (source)
I did not look at COA for the other options.
Of course, the OP should double check these numbers since I do not know exactly what they were offered at Rutgers.
Yes, noticed the COA difference. Rutgers being the cheapest, concerned the ranking is the lowest #40 vs. UCB’s #15, and all the rest are between #22-#28.
