A condition of the scholarship is Emory Oxford, which is quite rural.
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Is it first 2 years or all 4?
First 2.
It said original campus. I had no idea that Emory original campus is Oxford.
I would still go with Emory.
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I am fascinated by the aversion to the “sane” adjective. Apparently, it is completely sane to recommend spending $374k over a 4-year period while the OP isn’t the parent and is not the one who is going to pay. That $374k will be worth ~$475k by the time OP finishes their full ride undergrad at Emory. To be clear, parents can choose to make that decision but I don’t think it is responsible (is that a more appropriate word?) to push someone else’s child to pursue that option.
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The “Oxford = original campus” point was explained upthread.
FWIW, I agree that Emory would be my choice, if it were me and if I were premed. The smaller campus for the first two years, making friends among that cohort and using that time to focus on knocking the med school prereq classes out of the park in the more intimate setting at Oxford, sounds perfect. The shuttle to Atlanta is there if monotony needs to be broken. Then, moving to the main campus with my whole cohort for the upper-division years, and pursuing everything the university has to offer… it sounds like a perfectly-balanced, best-of-all-worlds experience to me… and free! BUT, it was clear from the very beginning of this thread that the OP is not me, and that this experience doesn’t sound perfect to them. They’re obviously most drawn to Hopkins and/or Yale, and to the Scholars group at WashU but less so the campus community as a whole.
So I tried to look at it from that perspective, and given that context, I would say JHU. Yes, Yale has been The Dream in the past, but IMHO, “I think I might like the more expensive option better” is not a strong enough preference to pay double for. Full-paying for Yale is a valid choice for those who can and whose preference for the school is unambiguous. The ambiguity here, which if anything tips toward Hopkins, says JHU to me. Yep, if it were me, it would be Emory, but the goal here is not to persuade the OP to be me.
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Any time a student (not parent) makes a statement like this - it’s really unknown.
Affordable but desirable to the parent?
Affordable but for 6 or 8 years?
I think OP has enough opinions since likely every school was noted as a good fit multiple times - but OP really needs to sit down with mom and dad and go over the economics.
And of course not every mom and dad will do this with students - but hopefully OP can share enough with them that they could at least look at the 6 and 8 year big picture and other possible things - such as other siblings which @renaissancedad just noted.
Of course, OP can pick the right school for them - which in their first thread was JHU (great vibe) or Yale (love the environment).
They just need to ensure the parents desire and ability and willingness to pay (for up to 8 years) match what OP thinks. Truth is, in many cases, kids don’t know - parents typically don’t have them intertwined in their overall net worth, etc.
Looking forward to seeing where OP lands.
I would still bring car (or buy car if allowed to keep one in Oxford) and go with Emory. It is not that rural… 30 miles from Atlanta… With car you can get to Atlanta at any point. You are not 2 hours from civilization…
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None of us understand the family’s financial picture or the parents attitudes toward money, their ages, the relative security of their jobs, whether they have a paid up home or still paying a mortgage, have adequate life insurance and disability, etc. None of us know if the mom’s tech startup is set for an IPO in September or if dad is about to sell his anesthesiology practice to a large hospital group and take early retirement with his rather large windfall.
So truly- telling a kid that his parents would be insane to spend X if the parents have told the kid that they are willing to pay- that’s a bit presumptuous. And if every kid who thought at age 17 they were heading to med school actually ended UP in med school- we’d be awash in primary care physicians in rural areas (still a popular way to get your med school loans paid off) and geriatricians in inner city hospitals. Which is not the case. Most premeds don’t end up in med school.
So once a poster had told the kid that they themselves would not pay for Yale-- one and done. Then you really need to pipe down. Message received.
One of my kids guidance counselors was astonished that we weren’t chasing merit or looking for need based aid. The few times we’d met- well, I guess my Walmart handbag and spouse’s Costco wardrobe doesn’t exactly scream affluent. But honestly- one should assume that if a family is financially literate enough to have enough assets or cash flow to be a “full pay” family, that they understand how to model out four years of college expenses.
Lots of folks on CC have told me that I should have had the kids go for the lowest ticket price so I could pay for weddings, buy them condos, save money for grandchildren’s education, etc. They likely did not figure out that people who have saved enough to be full freight understand that money is fungible, and that a dollar spent on X won’t be available for Y (taking into account imputed interest, time value of money, etc.)
OP- you have wonderful choices and good luck to you and your parents figuring this out.
Posters- YOU wouldn’t pay for Yale. YOU would buy the kid a car so going to Atlanta was convenient. YOU would take the money and run. Fortunately for the OP, y’all aren’t making this decision and so we’ll never know how it all worked out for you in your fantasy baseball college game.
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Thousands of people attend Yale full pay every year. Almost all of them can or could have much cheaper options.
And some people spend $400k on a car.
Nobody is encouraging anybody to do anything with anybody’s money.
Whether spending $400k on Yale is insane is up to the family. They can decide.
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I completely agree with your post. While I understand finance is important these discussions sometimes just revolve around the finance.
People spend on what they think is best whether it is college or a vacation or down payment or a car.
I haven’t seen anyone articulate the incremental benefits of Yale premed over JHU or Emory for that matter other than vague expressions of prestige.
I have often said prestige is a valid fit factor but in this case the trade off between perceived prestige and vague benefits comes nowhere close to the cold hard reality of money. And the 40% of people at Yale who went full-pay I’d like to know how many of them had the options OP has in John Hopkins and Emory, and how many of them were planning to spend another half a million on med school after undergrad.
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I think the OP’s feelings about diversity and a big melting pot are valid. I’m a northerner who has lived in the south. There are some cities where the ‘melting pot’ system works, but a lot where it doesn’t. St. Louis is very much a southern city. Atlanta (proper) is more diverse and mingled, but I don’t think that’s true of all of George and I’m not familiar with the Oxford area. I lived in Jacksonville FL and it is very segregated, both in schools and city governments and churches. What bothered me about it was how accepted the segregation is.
Baltimore is still segregated into neighborhoods, like Little Italy or Dundalk (German). One of my favorite things about Baltimore when I lived there were the ethnic festivals held every weekend in the summer - Luthianian, French, Italian, German, Irish. JHU is in an area with many colleges nearby (Loyola, Towson, Goucher, not far from U. of Maryland professional schools, U of Balt.).
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Is Rice even a consideration?
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How is the premed grade curve?
I don’t think students at any of the schools OP’s been accepted to have issues with grades/gpa keeping them out of medical school. Medical schools seem to know the schools that have grade inflation and those that grade on a tougher scale.
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FYI, depending upon which languages you are interested in learning, there are alternative ways to learn them, if theyre not offered at the oxford campus. You can get one on one instruction online, and summer instruction.
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If one looks at the feeder list, adjusted for enrollment, Yale is #3, JHU #7, WUSTL 21, Emory 22. It’s third party but I’ll assume accurate or at least directionally.
I can’t imagine schools are diminishing their kids chances - and all these schools seem to be placing in medical school. Diminishing kids chances would hurt their business model.
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Unless things have drastically changed since I was visiting the Oxford campus, given your obvious strengths, you may not find a peer group at Oxford that you click with. And 2 years of college is a long time. I also wonder why you aren’t considering the Rice offer.
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