While this is true, Delaware has an agreement(DIMER) with two Philadelphia area med schools (PCOM, Kimmel/Jefferson) which reserves seats specifically for Delaware residents.
There is a small prestige bump for Ivy grads at Ivy med schools, but it is very minor bump when considered in the context of your total application portfolio.
Furthermore, USC also has a progressive degree program where you can get a masters and an undergrad degree in 4 years !!!
What purpose would getting a Master’s serve? A grad degree won 't help you with gaining a med school admission (adcomms don’t considered advanced degrees when making admission decisions) and it could hurt you unless you perform at/near the top of your program. Also getting a research-oriented grad degree signals to med schools you’re more interested in the research lab than you are in being a physician.
Will going to disadvantage me when applying to ‘prestigious’ medical schools down the line vs going to USC.
Maybe a very small amount. Private, top ranked med schools do take into consideration where you went to undergrad, but it’s not a major consideration when making admission decisions. (See p. 15 of this document to see what adcomms say is important.) USC is a major name school, but it’s not Harvard or Stanford so its prestige probably isn’t worth the price difference.
Is there a major difference between both schools if I want to attend medical school.
I don’t think so. Where you attend undergrad is much, much less important than what you do while you are in school there. Both colleges will offer you the opportunities you need to make yourself a strong candidate for med school. It’s up to you to find these opportunities and take advantage of them.
Which one should I choose? Is USC worth the price difference ?
This is decision only you and your family can make. But if you are set on med school and attending USC will require you or your family to take on major debt…then no.
Let me tell my personal experience–one daughter attended a state university that’s ranked much lower than Temple; the other attended a private research U ranked in the mid 30s. Both had the opportunities to get involved in research, to study under some really good (and some not so good) professors, to be selected to be TAs/SIs, to work as paid peer tutors, to get excellent personal mentoring from their professors, to get involved in campus activities they enjoyed and gain leadership positions. Both applied to med school and both got multiple acceptances. Both choose our in-state (very inexpensive) state med school. Both are now physicians in their specialty of choice. One did her residency at Yale; the other did her residency at the #2 ranked program in her specialty in the West. One is now an attending in private practice; the other is finishing fellowship and will start her “dream job” in September.
The moral: if you have the drive, ambition, smarts and determination, you can get wherever you want via many different routes.
Now, my advice: I always tell pre-med (including my own kids) to take pre-med out of your decision process. Why? Because research shows that only 16% of individuals who start with the pre-med pre-reqs as freshmen actually persist all the way through to finish those pre-reqs and apply to med school. (Pre-meds drop off the pre-med path for many reasons, and mostly not because they can’t manage the coursework. Most find other careers they like better than medicine along the way. Or they decide they don’t want spend the next 11-18 years with their lives on hold while their peers get married, buy houses, build careers.) Of those 16% that do persist and apply to med school , less than 40% get any acceptances. So the odds say that you’re not going to end up in medicine.
Choose a school that offers you the best combination of:
- opportunities --including the opportunities to explore careers other than medicine
- fit–because happier student do better academically. also college is 4 years of your life you will never get back so take the opportunity to enjoy those 4 years.
- cost-- because med school is horrendously expensive and you will be taking out $400K+ in loans to pay for it. Potential pre-meds are ALWAYS advised to minimize undergrad debt.