My DS18 chose Louisville over Kentucky, Alabama and Centre. He plans to major in biology and will be pre-med.
He wanted to stay close to home. He also wanted to conserve funds for med school. Even beyond the NMF award, Louisville offered him so many perks he couldn’t say no. He received a competitive scholarship (Brown Fellows) that stacks on top of the automatic NMF award to fund study abroad all three summers. He also was chosen for their Guaranteed Entrance to Med School (GEMS) program. As long as he keeps a 3.4 GPA and scores at or above national mean on the MCAT he is automatically admitted to U of L’s School of Medicine. There is also the potential for a half tuition scholarship to med school through their GEMS program.
NMF was huge for us. DS decided he wanted attend a large research U that was close to home, and we are fortunate to be in a state where both of our in-state options have generous automatic awards for NMFs. Being an NMF allowed him to go through the process knowing there would be a safe and guaranteed outcome as he reached for these additional programs U of L. He was guaranteed to have good choices, and that made the process a lot less stressful. And in the end, technically he is still on U of L’s NMF scholarship, the competitive award (Brown Fellows) augmenting and filling in what the NMF doesn’t cover (primarily study abroad). He just accepted the U of L college sponsored NMF award through NMSC this week.
If he hadn’t have won Brown Fellows and GEMS, I am pretty sure he would have attended UK. He was admitted to honors at UK and had the Patterson scholarship for NMF. UK was a slight favorite over U of L throughout the process but again these additional programs changed the outcome.