<p>Wow, you’ve got a lot to chew on there.</p>
<p>I don’t know that I can offer you a lot of advice, except for the following:</p>
<p>(1) If you think you can’t afford it, you probably can’t. Don’t take on a mountain of debt. The University of Chicago is a great college, but you can become a great doctor without going there, and taking on a lot of debt will definitely affect what you do for graduate school and beyond.</p>
<p>(2) Your ideas about your future goals are a lot less clear than you think they are. You say you want to become a great orthopaedic surgeon or a pathologist, and an MD/PhD. From the standpoint of an adult who knows a bunch of doctors and something about their careers, that tells me you don’t have much of a practical sense of those things. You might as well have said that you want to be either an NFL linebacker or a priest. As personality types, orthopedic surgeons and pathologists are about as far apart as any two specialties within the medical profession. And there may be orthopedic surgeons with PhDs, but I doubt there’s many of them, and I have trouble imagining who they are.</p>
<p>Anyway, my point is that you don’t really, really know what you want to do with your life yet. That’s OK. But don’t make decisions as if you had firm plans.</p>
<p>(3) If you are going to go to Case based on its great medical school, you had better research what percentage of medical students there come from its undergraduate college. I would also check out just how many Anthropology PhD/MDs it produces, and from what type of applicant pool.</p>
<p>Case may well be your best option, but make certain you will be happy with it even if your plans change, or if you have to look elsewhere for your MD and/or PhD.</p>