I was accepted to both tulane for pre med (neuroscience) and georgetown for nursing. i applied to georgetown back when i thought i wanted to be a nurse, but have since changed my mind and want to be a doctor. which school is better?
georgetown is more prestigious and nursing means a guaranteed job (in case i dont get into med school), but id have to be a nontraditional med school applicant, and i havent gotten my financial aid back from georgetown and have a half scholarship to tulane. current game plan is to wait for my financial aid offer before deciding. advice?
Nursing programs are usually pretty ‘lock-step’ meaning it would be difficult to get all the pre-med requirements in. You’d likely have to do a post-bac program (with the extra year of cost).
Definitely wait for the financial aid - but keep in mind that being a doctor means even more loans down the way.
With Nursing, you do have the Nurse Practioner option. It does NOT pay the same as being a doctor, but you also have less loans and more time earning income.
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Is there an option to change your major at Georgetown? I would not go through a BSN program unless I really wanted to be a nurse. I would wait for financial aid from Georgetown and then see about changing to a science major and follow a pre-med path there. Or go to Tulane.
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Also, med schools strongly prefer that any applicant coming from another health profession (like nursing) work for 2 or 3 years in the profession they trained in before applying to med school. They want you to understand the possibilities and limitations of the profession before you jump straight into another career and to be able to explain clearly “why medicine and not nursing?”
Nurses can and do get accepted to med school, but they have work hard for it and take additional coursework after college graduation.
At Georgetown, because nursing students have their own separate science track that does not overlap with the courses required for a bio major, none of the science coursework you take for your BSN will be accepted by med schools as fulfilling admission requirements. You’ll need to do all your bio, chem, physics and biochem classes over again after you finish your BSN.
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Agree with the others. Nursing programs are not “MD Lite”. They have their own requirements, their own timetable, and med schools are leery of “I needed Plan B so I studied nursing” since those applicants have essentially taken away a nursing slot from a potential nurse.
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If you want to be premed, don’t get a degree in nursing. If you apply to medical school, I believe you will need to explain why you are switching out of nursing.
Have you considered becoming a nurse practitioner?
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This is likely zero advantage for med school.
You don’t want to be a nurse - so not sure how this makes sense.
So unless you can change the major at Gtown, I’d go to Tulane.
If you have a cheaper option that will help you save for med school, I’d choose that if you’re 100% sold on med school.
Med school likely involves a a lot of loans which isn’t good but you can only get $200K total including undergrad - so hopefully you’re not taking out loans for undergrad. If you are, then those two schools cost too much for a future doctor.
So if you got $36K off at Tulane, that’s still $55K or so a year - can you pay that with no loans? And another $400K for med school?
In this case, though, Tulane seems the better fit academically. But if it’s not affordable, you might actually choose a cheaper (and yes, less prestigious) option in order to better afford med school (which likely won’t care where you went undergrad).
Good luck.
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Becoming a doctor is a very long path. It requires 8 years of university, and 8 years of university are expensive. This leads to two thoughts. My first thought is to agree that waiting to get in your financial aid offer is a very good idea. My next thought is to wonder whether or not you have some realistic plan to pay for a full 8 years of university. Even taking half the cost of medical school as debt would add up to a LOT of debt, even for a doctor. I would be very reluctant to take more than this as debt.
And of course if you go for an MD (or a DO), after you have completed 8 years of university you are still looking at multiple years of residency. My understanding is that residents are paid, but not paid particularly well.
Medicine is a path that you need to be strongly drawn to.
Nurses of course make less than doctors. However, they also get to work as nurses with a bachelor’s degree. This suggests that you start drawing a salary quite a bit sooner, and in many or most cases with a lot less debt.
Prestige does not matter in this case, regardless of whether you go into nursing or medicine. Both of the schools that you mentioned in your post are very good.
And I do find myself wondering both what your overall budget is, and whether you have other possibly less prestigious offers that would also be less expensive. There really are a lot of universities that are very good for either a premed student or a nursing student.
The last thing that occurs to me is either way, whether you go for nurse or doctor, you will be helping a LOT of people. Also, nurses and doctors have helped me an enormous amount, to the point that they are why I am still here in this world (and still doing well). I want to thank you for taking this on.
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For the reasons others gave, I would not advise starting in Nursing at Georgetown if you no longer want to be a nurse. I believe their internal transfer policy requires you to wait at least one year, and that isn’t a good idea for someone who now wants to try premed.
You could contact them and see if they will switch you to Arts & Sciences before starting. The worst they could do is say no.
Otherwise, Tulane is a very good school, and definitely plenty good for premed, so you could just do them.
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I know you said you’re shifting away from Nursing but wanted to put it out there for yourself and potentially others that might be reading the thread that Tulane does have a Nursing program. I believe it’s fairly new.
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