Help with College Selection: UIUC ($35k) vs UF ($42k) as a premed student

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I’m currently a high school senior who was accepted into UIUC and UF, as well as multiple programs at each. I applied as a math major with a plan to get into medicine. I am dead set on going to medical school within 4 years, and I want to attend the best medical school I could (as well as be competitive for schools with lower tuition costs/merit aid like Case Western, NYU, and Michigan)

At the end of my application cycle, I was left with two schools that were the middle ground of cost and prestige. However, I’m stuck between the two of them:

UIUC (my instate school) ($35 k a year)

  • Very competitive for biology and chemistry
  • Was accepted as a Chancellors Scholar, James Scholar, and in the Honors Program ($1k a year off the tuition, as well as honors scheduling, extra stipends for research, and so on)
  • Higher premed acceptance rate
  • HOWEVER: no very prestigious or large hospitals with a ton of specialties nearby for clinical experience and shadowing
  • Few opportunities to gain significant volunteering experience connected to medicine
  • Close to home and less travelling cost, could apply and spend time in the summer with UChicago, Northwestern.

University of Florida ($42 K a year → I received $7,500 dollars a year from them in merit aid but they also require me to take a summer term of 9 credits that I cannot avoid, spiking the cost an extra $16,000 for classes that may not count towards my major):

  • Still quite a competitive university with a lot of research grants
  • Accepted to the Honors College + USRP (top 1% of accepted students who they make specialized 3-person classes in your sophomore year with one professor to conduct research and learn about how to conduct research + guaranteed presentations at UF synopsiums)
  • Two huge hospitals nearby on campus, Shands + Veterans Affairs Hospital (so more opportunity for shadowing and volunteering with a lot of patient access)
  • Larger travelling costs, also they force me to travel for registrations days + i’ve been told a lot of programs will favor in state students only

I guess the crux of my decision is on whether or not I can get significant volunteering + clinical hours at these places. I know I can be academically successful at both and score well on the MCAT. The only thing that pushes me away from UIUC is the lack of hospitals and remote location (I have a large fear that I won’t be able to have significant patient experience + hours that are so important for med school applications). I also worry that with so few premed opportunities and so many kids vying for those opportunities, that I won’t get the opportunity to do what I like.

However, the University of Florida offers me those things, but at what I think is not an insignificant price difference + time investment that I would have to put in towards classes like creative writing or history of literature over the summer. I worry about being set aside for instate students and being further taken off guard by new requirements that haven’t been listed on their website.

Do you think hospital exposure/patient interaction (especially serving unique populations like veterans) is worth 7k a year? Or do you think I can pocket that amount for med school and still be a competitive applicant with a background from smaller hospitals around UIUC?

Thanks for your help!

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You can be a competitive applicant for medical school from just bout every four year college in this country, arts conservatories excluded. Aiming JUST for tippy top, low acceptance medical schools is not a strategy I would suggest. Please broaden your thinking a bit. Most medical school applicants apply to 20 or so schools, and a combination sometimes of MD and DO schools. They choose med schools with varying degrees of selectivity and hope they will get accepted to one. 60% of applicants receive zero acceptances.

At this point, please choose the undergrad school where you feel you can do the best, be happy for four years and also find a plan B just in case medical school doesn’t work out.

Both of these options are fine.

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Adding…you will need patient facing experience on your medical school applications. Many students do this during summers and vacations from undergrad. Same with volunteer hours with underserved populations. Plan to do that as well…and shadowing. But really, plenty of kids do this during the summers…or during a glide year after undergrad graduation. IOW, they take a year after undergrad to get these things fully done…and prep and take the MCAT. The average age of first year medical school students now is mid 20’s.

@WayOutWestMom what did I leave out?

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Do you think hospital exposure/patient interaction (especially serving unique populations like veterans) is worth 7k a year? Or do you think I can pocket that amount for med school and still be a competitive applicant with a background from smaller hospitals around UIUC?

You do know that Carle SOM is located in Urbana, within easy walking distance of the UIUC campus. (I know because I lived un CU for 7 years, and I lived pretty close to Carle Clinic and frequently walked/rode my bike to campus for classes.)

Carle Healthcare offers residencies in 3 competitive specialties vascular surgery, OMFS, and cardiology (along with IM, ob/gyn, psych, neurology, surgery). Carle has 2 large hospitals in CU, and is one of only 3 Level 1 Trauma Centers south of Chicago in the entire state of IL. (The oihers are Carle Hospital in Peoria and OSF St Francis is Carbondale.)

CU has another hospital system too-- OSF Heart of Mary Hospital that’s just a few blocks west of Carle’s main medical center. You could also volunteer on campus at UIUC student healthcare system.

Plus, if you are from the Chicago area, you could apply for volunteer positions at hospitals closer to home.

You don’t need to shadow a thousand different specialties or highly competitive specialties. Med schools are looking applicants who have shadowed in the basics (primary care fields), not exotic subspecialties.

The prestige of the hospital you volunteer at or shadow at has zero bearing on getting a med school acceptance. Any hospital or clinic is fine. The important thing is that you get direct patient contact through your clinical exposure. Many premed will work as scribes, EMTs, CNAs, PCTs, or phlebotomists to get their clinical exposure. I’m sure you can get one of those jobs at Carle or HoM if you want.

I say keep the money in your pocket and go to UIUC (great school, btw). You can get the coursework you need, clinical exposure, and there are opportunities to get involved with community service groups off campus. And needless to say UIUC has plentiful opportunities to get into the research lab.

If you really want to work specifically with veterans, there’s a VA hospital in Danville–which is about 40 minutes east of CU via I-74. (I used to commute daily from CU to Danville. Lived in CU, worked in Danville for a year.) There’s also veterans health clinic in Mattoon, which about 50 minutes directly south of CU. (It was on the route of the book mobile from the library in CU where I used to work.) Of course, you’ll need a car to get to both Danville and Mattoon, but the veteran option is there if that’s important to you.

There are lots of rural healthcare opportunities not far from CU. CU is smack in the middle of corn country. Rural healthcare exposure is something med schools find very attractive in applicants, even if you don’t plan to go into rural health post residency.

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The Carle Heathcare system in Urbana-Champaign is huge and has expanded greatly in the last 5-7 years. I’d think there are lots of opportunities there.

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Okay, thank you so much! This is exactly the information I was looking for. Many of my friends in my huge Illinois school have told me that medical volunteering only existed in the student health center, and that the student health center was very overcrowded with student volunteers and limited opportunities.

Since the medical school opened in UIUC, Carle Medical Center does not allow shadowing from undergrad students anymore. So that was a HUGE concern of mine since the largest hospital in the area doesn’t allow students to shadow with them. I worry that summers may not be enough time to develop a meaningful connection with a physician or receive a LOR as many students do.

Because of that stipulation, I’m not sure how amiable Carle might be to part time work (as undergrad students would be required to do) for EMT, CNA, or any other position, as I know for sure that the comparable Shands hospital at UF does not allow it.

Do you (or anyone else) have any more insight into OSF or the rural positions in that area for shadowing? Volunteering I could for sure do with Carle.

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Illinois is a far better school than Florida for math if that matters.

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hmmmm - really? Both large flagships, both would be fine.

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no i definitely recognize that. It’s my contingency plan off of medicine, where I would still be involved in healthcare but figure out something with grad school and work behind the scenes.

I already have an A in Calc III from UIUC as a part of my senior year class, and I have a 5 from Calc BC, so I would be set to go on that track for UIUC. I might just take Honors Calc III instead of transferring the credit from UIUC to UF if I were to attend there.

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Unless you will be applying to osteopathic medical schools, you don’t need a physician letter for a med school application. Typically med schools ask for LORs from professors who have taught you in class. (2 BCPM and 1 non-science)

As for working at Carle–that’s something you’ll need to check. The health professions advising office at UIUC can advise you. You are far from the only pre-med on campus

https://www.careercenter.illinois.edu/prehealth

Beside Carle isn’t the only place that need scribes, CNAs, EMTs, and other volunteers. You can try local nursing homes/assisted living centers, eldercare & Alzheimer day programs, stand alone clinics (like Planned Parenthood of Champaign or Avicenna Community Health Center for the uninsured and underinsured) and similar facilities in the smaller towns just outside of CU–like any of the several nursing homes in Savoy just south of Urbana. Check to see if any of the nearby small towns accept volunteer EMTs for their ambi=ulance service… Your clinical volunteering doesn’t need to be done at a hospital.

RE: Math. Both my daughters were math majors who went to med school. (Actually each had a double major and one of their majors in both cases was math.) Math gives you plenty of directions in which you can go should med school not be in your future. If you want to stay in health care: biostatistics, data science, epidemiology, biotechnology, radiation therapy are all viable pathways. If you have some physics background-- nuclear medicine technology or medical physics.

D1 had applied to a MA/PhD program in medical physics at the same time she applied for med school. She had already been accepted to the medical physics program (with a scholarship!) when her first med school acceptance came through. D2’s back up was to get a MPH in biostatistics then go for a PhD in public health policy (with an emphasis on mental health policy), but she got multiple acceptances to med school so never needed to pull the trigger on her grad school app.

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You can do a paid internship and get that to count for your summer credit requirement.

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Unfortunately, based on my emails to multiple advisors and academic aids within UF, that work around via internship is only available to engineering majors, which I don’t qualify as since math is in LAS.

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I am surprised to hear that. I say that from the perspective of having a son who was at UF for 2 years before transferring and another son who graduated in December from a different state university in Florida. My son who went to the other state university in Florida twice got course credit for paid internships and he was not an Engineering major. Perhaps something has recently changed.

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This is from the LAS website:

https://www.advising.ufl.edu/resources/newstudents/additional-useful-information/

How do I meet the Summer Term Enrollment Requirement?

Students must complete nine credits before graduation during summer terms at State University System institutions. Coursework at UF, UF coursework via the web while in another location, coursework taken at another Florida SUS school, earning UF credit for an internship in Gainesville or another location, or coursework taken via an approved overseas study program all apply to the Summer Requirement. The coursework does not have to be completed in one summer term.

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My academic advisor for math and the resource officer from the admissions department both told me my only options were to take the 9 credit hours or to take 6 credit hours abroad. I had asked about the internship or research section both times and neither responded to the question so I had believed that it wasn’t an option.

I had seen the summer internship as an option to waive the requirement, not to fill it, based on this website:
https://www.eng.ufl.edu/students/petitions/#:~:text=Summer%20requirement%20waiver%20petitions,hardship%2C%20or%20other%20extenuating%20circumstances.

However, I didn’t want to depend on the petition since I’ve found that UF moves really slow with a lot of my requests, and send them to the wrong people. Plus, it’s possible that they would simply deny it and I would be forced to pay anyway.

How did you son receive credit for his internship, if you don’t mind me asking?

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The student is correct - I kept stressing this to both kids who applied to UF - and I wonder how many who apply to UF or any Florida State school in general are aware of the requirement:

"The State of Florida requires that undergraduate students complete 9 hours of summer credit at a Florida state university. Summer hours at a state or community college do not count toward this requirement. Please review the official university policy in the catalog.

Engineering students who complete a full-time engineering summer internship, summer research, or 6 credit hours of summer study abroad can petition to waive some or all of the 9 credit hour requirement once they have completed at least 76 credit hours. Documentation is required.

The summer requirement can also be waived for military obligations, financial hardship, or other extenuating circumstances."

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I just posted the link from UF LAS saying the opposite.

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If I recall correctly, he did 2 different things. One summer, he registered for a course through the college of business that allowed him to receive course credit for an internship (and this was a paid internship in a different city). The 2nd summer, there was a course offered through the Career Services office that gave him course credit for his internship (again, a paid internship in a different city) that filled an elective requirement. While this was not UF, it was another large public university in Florida.

I am confident your belief is incorrect. I encourage you to call both the UF career services office and the dean’s office of your academic college to get a definitive answer.

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Focus on these aspects of each of your offers. You should do well at either school.

Congratulations !!!

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I definitely was! Unfortunately, I was just hit with something new. UIUC just gave me another 12k a year today, BUT I have to keep my major in the department of mathematics.

I keep getting told that it’s impossible to do math and premed classes while also doing well with the other volunteering and things. I’m really excited about this scholarship, and am touring uiuc tomorrow, to see if it could be a good match.

Obviously now uiuc takes the cake with finances, but I’m very nervous about trying to juggle engaging with the department of mathematics meaningfully while also doing premed. Does anyone have any expertise on this subject?

Thanks again!

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