Jacksonville U in Florida gave my kid TONS of merit as an OOS student. They have a solid sailing program.
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UVM, Saint Lawrence and Clarkson come to mind. All have merit that could get you there/close. This site has a lot of good information on merit - % awarded merit and average award - that can help direct you. Merit Aid by Institution â College Transitions
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Iâm gonna make a pitch for Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX (30 min from the Austin airport). Itâs a CTCL (Colleges That Change Lives) school. SmallâŚabout 1500 students or just under that. Last year, 100% of their students who applied to med school got accepted. And about a month-ish ago, they announced a really big collaboration with Houston Methodist hospital for Southwestern pre-med/pre-health students to get summer internship experience in the health professions and medical research. Hereâs a link explaining the internship/partnership thingâŚ
Auto-merit scholarship info is available at First-Year Scholarships ⢠Southwestern University.
Based on your kidâs stats, it would be a $27,000-33,000/yr discount on tuition. This would bring tuition+room+board to a range of $35,685-$41,685/yr. You have to apply by their EA deadline in order to be awarded this scholarship.
D24 & I were just there this past weekend. Itâs walking distance to downtown Georgetown, which has a very charming town square with all of these adorable shops and restaurants. The school has a âsweet retreatâ thing every Wednesday afternoon, where they bring in some local restaurant/food truck business and provide all the students with a free dessert treat.
also, St Davidâs Georgetown Hospital is about a 5-10 min drive from campus. Southwestern has pretty much all of their pre-health students do provider/doctor shadowing, internships, volunteering, etc. at St Davidâs.
And Southwestern also has 2 Zip cars which students can rent by the hour.
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I might be wrong in viewing it this way, but it seems to me that at all the schools my C21 and S24 applied to the rom and board and other soft fees were about the same, anywhere from $15-20k a year for living on campus and meal plan. So in my calculations I take that out of the equation and just look at tuition minus merit for my comparisons.
You can play around with this tool to get a quick idea of how food & housing costs vary:
Generally speaking I think you are right that most cluster in a tight range. But unsurprisingly, some NYC colleges, say, are significantly above $20K/year, and also a few other privates.
Then there are actually quite a few below $15K, some even below $10K. BYU is famously cheapâbut of course kinda a niche school. Purdue has been keeping costs frozen, a lot of schools in the Midwest, South, or Southwest are less expensive . . . .
Looking at that list, I was just reminded Cornell College (Iowa) actually has a low list price for a private, and then they have merit that can bring that even lower. Cool block structure (one class at a time) which some find very appealing.
Lots more prominent Midwestern SLACs are around the $12-13K markânot a huge deal but it can add up.
Like, another poster mentioned Kalamazoo. Really cool SLAC in many ways, in a nice decent-sized college town, and although not quite automatic it again has a merit scale based on GPA:
Full cost of attendance only starts at like $79K (this is everything including books and travel and such), quite a bit less than usual private COA in more expensive markets. Then a top award of like $44K would bring that down to $35K. Not bad!
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This sounds very familiar!
âPremedâ brings two things to mind right away. One is that most students who start off university as premed students end up choosing some other path. This is entirely okay and normal. The other thing that comes to mind is that medical school is very, very expensive. If a student is serious about premed, they should budget up front to not only make it through their bachelorâs with as little debt as possible (preferably none), but it would be even better to leave some $$ in the bank or a college fund for medical school. Also, for those who start off premed and end up on a different path, some of the likely âdifferent pathsâ involve some kind of graduate school. While PhDâs are usually funded, masterâs degrees are often (usually?) not, and there are some other options that also are often not funded. Thus if you can save some $$ in the bank for medical school, and if your child chooses a different path, then the $$ in the bank might still end up being important.
Some other things that comes to mind when I hear âpremedâ is that there are a huge number of universities that are very good for premed, and that premed classes are very challenging. At any very good university, including your very good in-state public flagship, premed classes are going to be very challenging. It might be a good thing to come into university in the top 1/2 or even top 1/4 of the incoming students, because premed classes will still be tough (both daughters had majors that overlapped a lot with premed classes).
So âaffordableâ and "arrive on campus in the top 1/4 of incoming students (based on high school stats, perhaps) might mean that university selection for a potential premed student might be very straightforward and even boring.
Which is a very slow way to say that UMD is a very good choice here. Given your childâs great stats, you might think that somewhere with more challenging admissions might be possible, and it might. However, premed classes at UMD will be challenging, and you will save money that can be used to pay for medical school (or a masterâs degree in cellular biology, or a law degree, or something else, if any of these ends up being the preferred path instead of medical school).
Someone above suggested UVM. It is a very good university in a very attractive small city. They have a hospital on campus (or very close by â useful for getting volunteer hours) and are very good for premed (and for pre-vet, which has the same required classes). Merit aid seems quite likely and should get it under $50k/year. It will however probably still cost quite a bit more compared to UMD, and it is not clear to me what the advantage would be over UMD. I might say most of the same things about U.Mass or UNH or one of the SUNYâs.
Of course the very top ranked schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford do not have merit based aid, and given that you do not qualify for need based aid will come in way above $50k per year (except maybe for someone going into Stanford with an athletic scholarship). While these schools might get a higher percentage of their undergraduates into medical school, a lot of this, possibly all of this, comes from the level of students who start at these schools in the first place. It is not clear that arriving at Harvard in the middle 1/3 of the incoming freshman class will give you any better chance of getting to medical school compared to arriving at UMD in the top 1/3 of the incoming freshman class.
UMD does not meet your âideally under 10,000â size. UVM would be way closer to this, and is a very good university as long as you do not mind getting quite a bit closer to your $50k limit.
By the way, we did look at highly ranked LACs in the northeast for a daughter with similar stats. The problem we ran into was that the highest ranked and best known LACs in the northeast do not have merit based aid, and are way, way over $50k per year in cost.
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I agree that UMD, particularly honors, could potentially go a long way for setting D up for a career in medicine, especially when considering the costs. Her first cousin with very similar stats was just accepted into honors there. We will certainly apply. D skipped a grade and is a full year younger than her classmates. That is my hesitation about sending her to a huge school like UMD. Her attraction to smaller, self-contained campuses is simply that she feels better there â something I want her to validate. UVM looks like a great alternative which we will visit when we have ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity in Maryland in August. Thank you!
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Yeah, they can be very generous with the need aid, but that is not helping the OP.
That list Thorsmom66 linked is pretty interesting, though. At least at some SLACs, the kid would likely qualify for the highest merit, so even more than average. And the ones with both reasonable percentages receiving merit and high averages in relation to full COA are not the most famous Northeastern ones, but still some really good collegesâBeloit, DePauw, Wooster, Juniata, Ursinus, Centre, Allegheny, Wabash, Kalamazoo, Ohio Wesleyan, Lawrence, Cornell College, Agnes Scott, Hendrix, Rhodes, Knox, Washington College, Whittier . . . . those are just the ones I spotted on one page (ranked by average merit).
Again, not necessarily BETTER than in-state, but lots of potentially affordable options for different.
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Thanks for this. I was just comparing the schools my kids actually applied to which were all in that range for R&B. My husband thinks Iâm crazy though for thinking g about it this way.
Thatâs a great link! Thanks so much â itâs really helpful.
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I mean if you can do ANYTHING to simplify this within the range of schools you are actually considering, good for you, right?
And for that matter, over four years relative costs can change. So if your decision actually came down to a couple thousand difference in room & board, that would not necessarily hold up anyway.
My parents and grandparents attended Miami U. I am very familiar with it yet had not really thought of it for my D. Thank you!
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Definitely check out UVM. For all the reasons above. I would be shocked if they didnât give her generous merit and she would most likely be accepted to the honors program. They have an outstanding club sailing team. Once she sees Lake Champlain, sheâll be hooked.
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Great questions! D is inspired by opportunities to work closely with her professors, do hands-on learning, compete, and explore. She is young and has type 1 diabetes so Iâd like her to be in a supportive community where sheâs not likely to be anonymous. Sheâs very competitive with everything she does and is completely self-motivated. Sporty and party scenes are not her thing. Since sheâs attended Catholic high school, another Catholic school, especially Jesuit would be fine. Sheâd love to study abroad but decisions are not likely to be made based on those programs. Reputation doesnât matter as much as her feeling challenged and inspired by her experience there â partly influenced by her peers.
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Club sailing would be perfect for her. Weâll definitely visit Burlington. Thank you.
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We werenât aware of the Fellows Program. Thanks for that and all of your suggestions. It certainly helps!
This is a little different and is really only a college town. Ohio University in Athens Ohio has very strong allied health professions, a nursing program and a D.O. program on the campus. You might want to look at that if your student is interested in a college town college.
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I think a lot of LACs in the 2-7K undergrads size could work. Most of those will have 10 to 50 med school applicants a year (assuming she stays on that track), small enough that everybody can get support and opportunities. Also small enough that they will usually support and really help if she changes paths. With her high SAT and ECs, one of those with an overall average student SAT in the 1200-1400 range will probably give her a high merit award. Just a matter of finding one in a location that appeals.
Donât be surprised if you get good merit award at CWRU. My Sâs HS grade stats were similar, but much lower SAT and not as varied ECs (his free time all went to soccer), so I would expect yours to get as good or better merit than his offers. He applied to CWRU but didnât visit because it was a long trip and we wanted to get accepted first. Wound up wait-listed BUT the notice said he would be awarded a merit award that brought COA down to around 18K IF we made it in off the wait list. He had decided on another school and didnât want to wait and see by that point, so he requested to be removed from the wait list.
We were mostly looking in the SE though, so donât have any more specific knowledge of the schools others have already recommended in the NE. S wound up at a Christian school in Nashville. Got a good merit award there too, but chose because he felt it would be very supportive and its âheartâ was where his was, which matched why he wants to be in medicine. Itâs been great for him as heâs already (soph.) working in a research lab, doing outreach work with the pre-med club, made great friends, and just today left for a medical mission trip on his spring break.
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