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<p>All colleges now have Net Price Calculators on their websites; you input a few numbers on income, assets, etc., and the NPC will give you an estimate of what you can expect in financial aid. Harvard has probably the most generous need-based financial aid; families earning up to $65,000 are expected to pay nothing, and above that level it’s usually 10% of income, up to an annual income of $150,000 or so, at which point the percentage contribution starts to increase, with most families with incomes up to $200K or so receiving some FA. Unusually large assets could result in smaller or no awards. Yale and Princeton try to keep pace but are not quite as generous as Harvard. Most of the other top research universities and leading liberal arts colleges (LACs) promise to meet full financial need and are need-blind in admissions (so coming from a family with a lower income won’t hurt an applicant’s chances of admission), but this is really just a few dozen colleges and universities. And keep in mind that each school will have its own definition of what counts as financial need, and most will include loans and work-study in the FA award. The Net Price Calculators are your friend; use them to explore options.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure this needs to be a major factor in selecting an undergraduate school; you want to get your daughter into a school where she’ll get a strong foundation and do well, at a price you can afford. Biggest factors in medical school admissions are college GPA and MCAT scores; the prestige of the undergraduate program counts for very little. If your D wants to do medical research, it’s more important that she use her undergrad years to burnish her credentials to get into a strong research-oriented medical school. It’s also important that she not accumulate a lot of debt as an undergrad, because medical school is costly and she will almost inevitably need to take on large loans at that level. That said, some universities–and some LACs, for that matter–do offer opportunities for undergrads to do biological research. Some schools noted for their strength in biological sciences would include Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), Duke, Chicago, Columbia, and Penn, but you’d need to investigate each for undergrad research opportunities. A step down in selectivity from there, a school like Case Western in Cleveland is worth a look. A number of public flagships–UC Berkeley, U of Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, Texas–are also very good, but unless you’re in-state in one of those states they may be cost-prohibitive since most public universities are not generous with FA for out-of-state students. It is, however, worth checking out your own state’s public flagship, and you may want to include it on your daughter’s list because most of the schools I’ve mentioned are extremely selective and even a lot of well-credentialed applicants don’t get it.</p>
<p>Hope this is helpful for starters, and welcome to CC!</p>