<p>Thanks Stanley1- Your summary is excellent. </p>
<p>My daughter is on wait list with UMKC but she is going to SLU Medical Scholar Program. It is a difficult decision because there is this “dream sexy school” in her mind. As her parents, we have to assess the reality such as how competitive she will be four years from now versus what she can receive from this SLU decision. It sounds you are in the same boat. The “drop out” rate of SLU is not a “con” because as you said it is the same for premed everywhere, if not worse. </p>
<p>If your kid is truly competitive independently, I mean the kind of talent kids with GPA 4.2 and AP everything with 5.0, the kid who thinks about research a lot, the kid who can ace interviews; he/she can go anywhere and likely enter a better med school. Realistically I have to ask myself how much of my daughters success today in high school was from hard work and help from the dedicated parents. Will that level of success transfer to her college success by herself? My daughter is a leader in high school and I supposed she can have a little fun at SLU. With six year UMKC, she probably just study all the time. These are our decision criteria.</p>
<p>In going to SLU’s campus visits and events, I found it is a wonderful school. Even the university is a religious school, it focuses on humanity side. Maybe that is why it is so low key. The medical school is the oldest west of Mississippi but very few people seem to know about it. If you say Saint Louis, people would say Washing U, yeah? That is frustrating I am sure. The SLU med school has a good ranking even exceeding some BS/MD feeder school arrangements. In the long term does it really matter? Probably no. She will be a doctor anyway from a very reputable medical school. If she were to get side-tracked, she will have a SLU degree, not Emory or Vanderbilt. We are not counting on that to happen. </p>
<p>Your point of “Chance of getting into better med school if you work hard” may not be clear to some people. SLU Medical Scholar program said if you choose to apply out to other medical schools, you will be withdrawn from this program meaning you will lose your med school spot that you have already received. When this happens, you will be just a plain “Pre Med” student then. Personally I think this agreement is fair. I guess if my kid will be that competitive, she can choose to drop out of SLU Medical Scholar and apply to Harvard, Vanderbilt or WashU or whatever. I do not get the sense that will happen but in theory it is possible. </p>
<p>Standard medical school admissions seem to be a big “if”. Today my daughter can choose to go to Vanderbilt or Emory for their premed program. Based on my math, in addition to accepting its own medical scholar students, SLU medical school still admits 70 - 80 medical students from all over the country per year. So, I wonder what would be my daughter’s chance of entering SLU Medical School four years from now from outside such as Vanderbilt or Emory?</p>
<p>Many premed students seem to be happy just to receive ONE medical school admission anyway. They don’t have a choice with money matters. I heard some horror stories but I don’t know how difficult it really is if somebody were to enter Vanderbilt or Emory and ended up with no med school, even with reputable GPA 3.5+. Therefore is it sounds probable for students with lower GPA’s to fail to enter any med school from these supposedly better universities? I am curious but truthfully it does not matter to us now in going the SLU route.</p>
<p>Another disadvantage, aside the name recognition, could be cost. State medical school will cost about 35% less. My kid can go to state college for free for the BS degree. Altogether the SLU decision will still cost a lot. I hope in the end she appreciates the benefits of SLU medical scholar program as the better choice.</p>