<p>I got accepted into WCAS at NU with $18,900 in financial aid. $13,000 of the financial aid is the NU scholarship, and the remaining $5,000 is work study or loans. Northwestern is my dream school, and I intend to pursue Biology and international studies if I attend NU.</p>
<p>However, I also received a full scholarship to my in-state state university with a stipend. In addition to this generous offer, I was also accepted to the state university’s prestigious guaranteed entrance to medical school program. In this program, I would benefit from shadowing opportunities, clinical work and research activities. </p>
<p>My dilemma is to either attend the state school with little financial burden and guaranteed entrance into medical school or to attend NU and broaden my academic and social horizons. At this point, I’m not positive about pursuing medicine so I don’t want eliminate other career choices. My parents income bracket is $140,000-$150,000 so they could support the $45,000+ tuition, but I don’t want to force that financial burden.</p>
<p>Please comment and give assistance! Advice from parents, students, or alumni would be greatly appreciated!!</p>
<p>It would really really depend on which state school. Are you talking Arkansas? tOSU? UVA? Cal? Big range, big range of answers.</p>
<p>I can only relate what happened in our D’s case. She was admitted to Cornell as well as to a few of the 7-year medical programs (after HS) with generous scholarships. Though she was pretty set on doing medicine, she chose to do her undergrad at Cornell. While there, she switched (from Pre-Med) to Economics major (after 2 years) and completed her B.A. degree. Yet, she took her MCat, sent her applications to Medical schools and is now in one of the same medical schools where she had gotten admission earlier!</p>
<p>When I asked her whether if she were to go back in time, will she make the same choices as before and her answer was an unequivocal “yes”. She continues to maintain (and I have to agree) that she can never replicate the stimulating environment and the overall growth she has had as a student (at Cornell) when compared to a 7-year med program. On top of that, she got to do what she loved - Econ major.</p>
<p>So…take it what you will from our experience.</p>
<p>“My dilemma is to either attend the state school with little financial burden and guaranteed entrance into medical school or to attend NU and broaden my academic and social horizons. At this point, I’m not positive about pursuing medicine so I don’t want eliminate other career choices.”</p>
<p>Medical school is expensive. If you decide to stick with medicine, it would be a real advantage to enter medical school with little or no debt from your undergrad studies, or without imposing a financial burden on your parents. The same consideration applies to other types of professional schools. </p>
<p>I’m assuming you would retain your scholarship at the state school, even if you decide not to pursue the medical school route. Also, as long as you complete the basic pre-med requirements, you can pretty much major in whatever field you want (well, generally, in a liberal arts & sciences or engineering major).</p>
<p>Why do you think you wouldn’t expand your academic and social horizons at a state school, but you would at NU? As another poster indicated, there is quite a range of public universities, so a lot depends on which state university is offering you the full scholarship. As long as you were admitted to a reasonably good one, I think you will find that it can offer incredibly diverse opportunities to expand your social horizons, and a top student most likely can obtain an education as good as or better than what he would obtain at NU across a range of fields. If one of your areas of interest is international studies, I easily can think of a dozen or more public universities that can match or better the options at NU.</p>
<p>OP – the first question is what is your family’s financial situation, and how much will the difference in tuition mean.</p>
<p>Other than that – is it a true guaranteed medical admit, or are there minimum GPA/MCAT requirements. If there are such requirements – is the situation such that if you meet them, you’re highly likely to get into Med school anyway (there seem to be many programs like this – not much a guaranty IMO).</p>
<p>Assuming it’s a true guarantee and finances are not an issue, you have a very very hard choice. If the state U is a good school in its own right, and feeds into a top medical school, I think this would be very hard to turn down – but people may differ on this.</p>
<p>Just because it is free, doesn’t mean it is the best undergrad education. All 15,000 National Merit Finalists are offered a 4 year free college education (tuition, room and board and Honors, etc) at U of Alabama but less than 500 students accept their generous offer. Of course, most of the NMF are offered less generous scholarships elsewhere, so it is a tradeoff, just like your $13,000 offer from NU. You still get NU at a discount.</p>