<p>So I got 0 financial aid. Basically I am deciding between 0 aid Duke and 31k aid Vandy.</p>
<p>Duke costs $50k/yr. My mom can pay $10k and my dad can pay $30k (employer reimburses $15k). Therefore I am left with $10k. I got the $2500 National Merit Scholarship, so I’m left with $7500/yr x4 = $30,000. I’ll probably work for my spending/food money (i can’t live on 2 meals a day)</p>
<p>Vandy is giving me $31k/yr, so I probably would get an allowance from my parents also and don’t have to work.</p>
<p>Duke: better pre-med, more prestige, better environment</p>
<p>Vandy: cheap, money</p>
<p>I don’t know how loans really work, do you borrow $30k and wind up paying off $100k?? I plan on going to med school, so I dont know how bad having $30k of loans is… Duke has a almost 90% acceptance rate to med school, and lots of top med school matriculants, while Vandy is barely 60% with not many top school matriculants…</p>
<p>If that aid from Vandy is need-based, you should contact the financial aid office ASAP. There shouldn’t be that much of a discrepancy in your EFC.</p>
<p>30K in student loans is very modest. My wife and I have a combined 60K or so of student loans and we elected a graduated repayment plan (330.00 per month for 7 years, 450.00 per month for 7 years and 5??.00 per month for 14 years). 330 per month is very manageable. The average physician graduates with 150-200K in student debt. I wouldn’t stress out about the 30K you expect in loans if you do end going the clinical medicine route. What I would be worried about is- you say that your father can kickin 30K per year for 4 years. You should get a really good handle on how he expects to pay 120K over 4 years.</p>
<p>I didnt get any aid at any colleges that consider noncustodial parents. Vandy doesn’t consider the noncustodial, so I got fin aid. As you can tell my dad wont have problems paying the 30k a year, plus his employer will reimburse 15k.</p>
<p>1) Is the national merit scholarship 4 years of $2500 or just a one time award. When I got mine, it was for only one year. </p>
<p>2) The terms of the loans depend on what loan it is and whether it’s subsidized or not. Usually subsidized loans have deferred payments until after you graduate and the federal government will pay your interest until then. Unsubsidized loans have the same deferment period but will accrue interest during that period. Those are the terms I remember from the loans that Duke gives out for in its financial aid package.</p>
<p>well they offered me some federal loan for like $2000 or somewhere around there… so… yeah i will have to take out the worse kind of loan then :(</p>
<p>wow, you got into Duke and cannot figure out the loans? You can go on the internet and figure in the 6.9% rate for unsubsidized stafford loans, and the interest starts when you borrow it. i think you will be surprised how much it adds up to.</p>
<p>Am I understanding correctly that the cost differential between four years at Duke and four at Vandy for you would be $124,000? And the question is whether the qualitative difference between the two - if any - would merit spending an eighth of a million dollars?</p>
<p>That answer would not merely be “NO,” it would be more along the lines of “WHAT - ARE YOU KIDDING? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!”</p>
<p>I have to agree with SBR. Even further, I disagree with you. “Duke has a almost 90% acceptance rate to med school, and lots of top med school matriculants, while Vandy is barely 60% with not many top school matriculants.” In some cases, the eighth of a million dollars can be worth the difference between Duke and Vanderbilt. It depends on the person and the situation, but it sounds to me like pyn just might be one of those cases.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, Duke only had a 70% med school acceptance rate last year and Vandy, from their website, had a 70% med school acceptance rate in the nineties. The caliber of students at Vandy has been steadily rising, so I don’t know where you got the “barely 60%” acceptance rate. If you could post your source, that would be great. If that is in fact true, it’s reather troubling.</p>
<p>I went to MOSAIC and at their pre-health session they said they had like a ~62% or something acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Yeah, my parents told me I should go to Duke and have some loan b/c it will motivate me to do better rather than go to Vandy and party and end up without a med school acceptance.</p>
<p>Well, I doubt Vanderbilt’s atmosphere is any less party-oriented, and I’m almost positive that it isn’t any more studious. Also, I’m sure the loan that he would take to go to Duke helps keep him focused.</p>