Which LAC for premed?

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21

And of these she has an offer from Colby, right? It seems to me that if money was not an issue, that would make it pretty easy–choose Colby! This would seem to at least knock out all the ones where she didn’t get much if any merit.

OK, but you are right to be wary about blowing her entire 529 on undergrad if med school might be coming as well. I can’t really tell you what to decide about that, but in terms of other schools to consider where she did get merit . . .

I agree it would be helpful to see actual COAs, but is College of Wooster clearly the least expensive? If so, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. Fine choice for premed, small, definitely not urban, not what I would describe as a particular “weird” school . . . in fact this is a purpose for which looking at Niche’s “What one word or phrase best describes the typical student at this school?” poll might be helpful, and for Wooster it is 32% “Well rounded, upbeat, smart, compassionate,” 29% “Friendly, outgoing, fun, and helpful to each other,” with “Unique” a distant third at 11%.

So, the decision tree could be as simple as Colby if OK with full cost, Wooster if not. That would be reasonable!

But for options in between, I’d also recommend further investigating St Olaf, which is quite academickly, in a charming small town, and I would suggest has a very “normal” vibe. Grinnell would also be a contender in my view–maybe a little quirkier, but not too far out in that direction for an LAC, and very much a “life of mind” place for people who are content being in rural Iowa. Incredibly well-resourced college too, and I think you can tell.

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22

Exactly. If you end up with quite a bit left in a 529 after getting a bachelor’s degree, this can be used to help offset the cost of an MD (we did something very similar, but for a DVM). It can also be used to offset the cost of a sibling’s education if that is relevant.

This is an impressive list of acceptances to very good schools. To me this suggests that your daughter is academically strong enough to get to the MD part. A lot of hard work and determination will be needed. Some students just decide that they want to do something different. However, at this point for budgeting purposes I would assume that the MD part is going to happen, and will be expensive. If a student takes even half of the cost of an MD as debt, this would be a HUGE amount of debt and a big weight on a student’s future. As a parent, plan to be helping a lot with the cost of the MD.

For a premed student, I think that budget is priority #1, and fit is priority #2. Getting well prepared for an MD program is possible at any school on your list.

Budget for a full 8 years, where the last 4 are going to be expensive, and the first four are somewhat easier to save on (particularly given the merit awards).

And a big CONGRATULATIONS is in order on this impressive list of acceptances and merit awards!

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Most schools are regional and many of the top flagships are heavily local. I, myself, like geographic diversity but if you eliminate schools due to a lack of it, you’d eliminate far over half of colleges.

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Thanks, all. I am appreciating all your answers and will share feedback with her. Keep it coming! To answer some questions that have been asked:

Re money for med school, we can foot part of the bill and loan her the rest, and she will have inheritances coming eventually, so we can work it out. I do think the merit aid should be a consideration, but if she winds up feeling strongly that she wants to go to one of the expensive ones, we’re going to support that.

Agree Colby is her favorite of her choices so far, but we still have a lot to see.

Re cost of attendance, Wooster would be in the $14K range in the first year, St. Olaf around $40K, and the rest of the ones where she got merit are generally in the $50K-$55K range. The full-price ones are over $90K, as you all know.

She seems most intrigued by Colgate, so we will try to make a visit, and she has kind of counted out F&M but maybe we should go see it given what some of you have said. We can drive there.

Oxy is probably out just because I don’t think we’re going to visit. If she’d gotten into Pomona, we would have made a CA trek, but I don’t think we’ll do it just for Oxy.

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Just basically repeating myself, but Wooster seems like a great option to strongly consider. Not just because of the cost, it also has an excellent and popular program in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (in fact in their last NCES data cohort, they graduated more seniors with a primary major in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology than general Biology, which is a positive voting-with-their-feet sign), also very good for Sociology, seems to have the right sort of student culture, right sort of setting . . . quite the conjunction of positive factors.

Of course if she can’t see herself really thriving and enjoying it there, then that is a big problem. But hopefully she can.

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26

I appreciate your support of Colby - but $300k plus is a huge amount (assuming you are tuition free all four years).

That’s your right - but you mentioned maybe some loans. Loans have to be paid back.

That seems like a gift from the heavens to me. One can up front like a school but the truth is, no one knows if they’ll actually love it til they are there.

For a student who wants to go to med school, they can go anywhere.

It’s easy to say we’ll have to take out loans - but $300k will cover most of med school. Loans are crippling. There’s likely many schools a student can have a great experience.

They may be thinking - but the rank is much lower. But their accomplishment paid off in having minimal or no loans compared to their fellow medical professionals.

When I think $14k vs $90k plus, and the word loan is mentioned, that sort of solves the situation to me.

That person without loans will have far more flexibility in life to make the choices they want vs being beholden to chasing $$ so they can pay back their loans.

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Yes, but if your views and values do not go with local crowd, it will be a problem.

Simply city NE kid vs rural Ohio in the middle of nowhere already gives me pause. Not everyone can take it.

My DD goes in a small college but her close friends are from Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Memphis, Seattle. Here you can see huge variety and kids from big cities gravitate to each other.

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With respect to your daughter’s post-graduation goal, this site offers normalized data regarding medical school attendance:

As with other sources of information, consider with discretion.

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I certainly agree that prospective students should reflect on their preferred setting. But I did want to note that Wooster, like really all these LACs, is not a local school in any meaningful sense. They report 63% of their students are from outside of Ohio, in fact 12% International, collectively representing 45 states and 75 countries.

And I am pretty confident most of their students from Ohio are from the larger metros in Ohio. Wooster is between Cleveland (around 1:15 by car to downtown Cleveland) and Columbus (about 1:35), the two largest cities/metros in Ohio. In fact, Wooster is part of the Cleveland-Akron-Canton Combined Statistical Area. (ETA: By the way, it is also around 2:30 from Pittsburgh, actually a bit closer than, say, Cincy at over 3 hours. This is actually part of why I am a bit familiar with Wooster: here in Western PA, it is a fairly popular option to consider among kids looking for LACs.)

As it happens, if you add up the populations of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, you are still a bit short of Ohio, and apparently students from those four states make up right around the same percentage of Colby’s student body as Ohio does for Wooster–at least according to the unofficial source I found, I’m not sure how reliable/current that data is. But point is we’re talking a roughly comparable localism effect.

Colby is then 11% International, claims 49 states and over 80 countries . . . again, not hugely different.

In the end that is just how this level of “national” LAC tends to work. There is still some localism evident at the scale of a large state or equivalent multi-state region, but they otherwise have a lot of US students from farther away, and a decent percentage of Internationals as well. Bluntly, I think a student from rural Ohio or rural New England respectively is probably going to feel less well-represented at this sort of LAC, although that is typically part of the point of going to such a college (to meet new sorts of people).

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30

I think predicting the psycho-social makeup of a school just based on where a kid grew up is fraught with errors. Kids from small towns make friends with kids from LA. Men from rural Ohio marry women from Palo Alto (or wherever it is that JD Vance’s wife was raised). I had a boss who confessed at an offsite (one of those icebreaker type games) that the first time she’d been in an elevator was when she interviewed at the company we all worked with. She was terrified to have to go up to the 38th floor– but knew she couldn’t handle the walk in high heels. Rural upbringing, small rural college, no need for elevators.

A kid who wants to take advantage of city living and cultural offerings is likely going to be turned off by a rural campus. And a kid whose idea of bliss is an early morning run down a dirt road as the mist is rising and cows are mooing is going to be very unhappy in Kenmore Square or Foggy Bottom or Morningside Heights.

But to claim that the social makeup of the student body is determined by where the kids come from- that’s just not accurate. There are kids who play bridge and kids who play Ultimate and kids who love swing dancing and kids who play chess. There are kids from cities and suburbs who ride horses, and kids from farms who read Kant and Hegel.

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31

You realize you’re addressing the parent, right?

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Hence I said things like this…..yes.

33

I would suggest that the premed part be put on the back burner for now. This student needs to choose an undergrad school…where they will be happy and can see themselves doing well for four years. A plus if there are other major options in case this student decides to do something besides premed (as most entering premed majors DO change their minds).

The student can take the required courses for medical school at any of these…so look for the other characteristics of the colleges to help tease out which might be the best for undergrad.

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34

One factor worth getting clarity on from all accepted schools on your shortlist- how much personal counseling do their pre-med students get? Some scholarships come with dedicated counseling and other extras that can be very valuable in the pre-med (or any career) student journey, others are essentially a tuition discount with no extras. If cost is truly neutral and I trust you know that best, the schools that offer dedicated support to all or even extra support to their scholarship awardees may be worth more than those with a sink or swim attitude to most of their pre-meds.

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Great options, and you cannot ignore the merit aid. That’s an issue with Colgate (no merit aid). I have a daughter there. Sophomore. She’s super happy. Her roommate is pre-med and it’s a rigorous path, but she’s also happy.

Regarding your comment “D26 likes fairly small and not urban. For the first time yesterday she expressed a desire not to go somewhere where everyone is either an athlete or “weird” (I thought she was fine with an alternative vibe, and I probably would have steered her differently on applications if I knew this, but oh well).” That’s one of the things that drove my daughter to Colgate. When we left a tour at one of the schools on your list she loved some of the academic part of the tour, but said, “I didn’t see a single girl on this tour that I could share clothes with.” She’s liberal, but didn’t want to be bombarded with politics and while she loves alternative music, she didn’t want to be the only one that didn’t buy into a full lifestyle.

Happy to answer questions and not suger coat anything.

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36

Thanks, all. We’ve visited the Ohio schools, Colgate, and Colby since I initially wrote, and we’re headed to Iowa and Minnesota this weekend. I’ll report back!

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37

Oh, also, of the Ohio schools, she liked Wooster and Kenyon pretty equally, and Oberlin a little less. She preferred Colby to Colgate and Bates, so I think those two are probably off the table in the “full pay” category.
I think Wooster impressed us all. It has a very nice campus and she really liked the students she met and the classes she attended. She also likes the independent work requirements that it has.
I liked Colgate’s Alumni Memorial Scholars program offerings a lot; I think that would be great for her. I prefer Colgate to Colby, but alas, I am not the one choosing.

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38

I love this - but where does the cost of med school come in and that Colgate’s tuition this year is $73K so likely $75K next year and Wooster is at - well, $0?

Do you have a plan to finance undergrad and med school - because $300K is a huge help in paying for med school or any other grad school - and then sans loans?

You are right - she is attending. But she likes Wooster and unless you have no issue financing all without loans, it might be time for a money lesson about loans and life and when you’re in debt, not being able to choose the things you want to do.

If you have all funding handled, sans loans for med school, it’s different.

Good luck in your travels.

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Between us and other family members, she will have most/all of med school covered. I don’t think it’s a bad idea for her to have some financial skin in the game for med school; I did for law school back in the day. My parents are entirely footing the bill for her undergrad (I know, we’re very fortunate), and they are not pressuring her to choose a lower-cost school, so it’s not my position to do so. We have talked, though, about how even if you have the money to attend any school, you should still consider the opportunity cost. Colby is currently her favorite of the $100K schools (though we haven’t visited Carleton yet). But before all is said and done she will separately rank and consider the schools that are giving her merit aid, and weigh those against the full-pay options.

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40

One can have skin in the game but still pay $300K now.

The family can say - med school is $400K - you need to pay $25K, etc.

Still is….well it’s good she likes Wooster.

To me the only question is - if med school doesn’t happen and statistically that’s likely, will one give a better outcome than Wooster - and if so, is it worth the delta.

Of course, no one knows the answer up front but one can “guess” I suppose.