Financial Aid when Linking from a Postbac

[j_diggity]

Hello,

I've heard that if you are accepted to a medical school via linkage through your postbacc program, you might get a worse financial aid package because you've already signed a binding agreement to attend the school. Therefore, the school has no incentive to offer you a competitive financial aid package. For context, my program links with University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Case Western.

I'm from a very low-SES background, and although my dad has done better for himself in recent years, he can't contribute a dime to my education because he is so behind and approaching retirement age. My mom is in poverty. Thus, it's very important for me to try and attend med school in a way that reduces my debt burden. However, I'm also on the older side and I want to avoid a gap year if I can. So I'm trying to decide whether to apply for linkage.

Has anyone heard that schools offer less financial aid to linkage students? Is it really true, and if it is, how bad is it?

A side question I have is: if the financial aid offer is garbage, is it possible to rescind due to inability to pay and apply regular cycle? Anyone heard of this happening - what was the outcome?

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[Crayola227]

Don't worry too much about it.

One, getting into medical school is so difficult for most people, that you don't really get much of a choice. Definitely aim for in state schools where you have an advantage for admission usually, and may benefit from in state tuition.

There are outliers, but usually it's all a boat ton of loans, and frankly it's all about the same and still loans even when you're as poor as they come and your application is as amazing as they come.

I went to a med school with one of the highest in state tuitions around. Graduated with close to 300K in student loans which I maxed out, only 20k was undergrad.

Also I was very low SES and had some diversity aspects there, but unless you find some special program, special scholarship program (few and far between) or you're just so amazing in some way that they want to recruit you (ditto few and far between) seems like it all ends up being whatever their COL is (and *that* can vary greatly for how much money you'll be able to put hands on) and then your package is loans.

Being low SES meant I got all Federal loans which have decent terms, no private loans, so that's where you get the "break."

Maybe it works differently with these linkages. Usually the "quality" of the aid package being presented to you matters more if you're not so poor that you're not just going to have the option of full federal loans.

In any case, apply broadly. If you only get interviews with linkages, not much you can do. If you get multiple interviews and admission offers, you could then compare financial aid packages.

 

[Crayola227]

Also NEVER give up a med school offer in the hopes of a better offer. Only give up an offer in order to accept another one.

The hard part is getting an acceptance (then finishing, then residency) but seriously, don't worry about how much your loans are besides if they will cover what you need covered.

 

[deleted1102547]

Hello,

I've heard that if you are accepted to a medical school via linkage through your postbacc program, you might get a worse financial aid package because you've already signed a binding agreement to attend the school. Therefore, the school has no incentive to offer you a competitive financial aid package. For context, my program links with University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Case Western.

I'm from a very low-SES background, and although my dad has done better for himself in recent years, he can't contribute a dime to my education because he is so behind and approaching retirement age. My mom is in poverty. Thus, it's very important for me to try and attend med school in a way that reduces my debt burden. However, I'm also on the older side and I want to avoid a gap year if I can. So I'm trying to decide whether to apply for linkage.

Has anyone heard that schools offer less financial aid to linkage students? Is it really true, and if it is, how bad is it?

A side question I have is: if the financial aid offer is garbage, is it possible to rescind due to inability to pay and apply regular cycle? Anyone heard of this happening - what was the outcome?

I completely understand wanting to minimize medical school debt, but I would definitely not delay applying or give up an acceptance just to hope for a better financial aid package. As the earlier commenter said, most people take out student loans to cover the vast majority of their medical school costs. The average debt is around $200,000, which is a huge lump of money. If you delayed applying (or even declined admission), you would likely be making a poor choice.

First, there is no guarantee that you get a better financial aid package the following year, so is it really worth giving up a year of a guaranteed $200,000+ salary just in the hopes of possibly saving $50,000? I think not. Every year that you delay medical school is another year that you don't have an attending salary. Obviously, the decision to attend medical school is a lot more than just the money, but you shouldn't throw away a future dollar trying to save a dime today.

Second, you will likely be blacklisted/burn a lot of bridges at a lot of schools if you decline an acceptance. Some schools care a lot about their acceptance to enrollment ratio, which is part of medical school rankings. Declining an acceptance because the financial aid package wasn't good enough is a very poor reason to decline that acceptance and medical schools may question your commitment to medicine. After all, why would they accept a study who had previously been accepted without matriculating if there are thousands of people who have never been accepted and haven't shown any reason to indicate they aren't committed to medicine? I'm not saying that declining an admission automatically means you aren't committed, but you never know how an admissions committee would view it.

For financial reasons and for the best chance of getting in, I would not apply until you are ready but matriculate if any school accepts you.

If you would not be comfortable taking out loans to cover the full cost of attendance at any school, you should not apply to that school.

 

[deleted367183]

You probably already know this, but grant aid, as opposed to loans, is really sparse in 99.9% of cases. My mid-tier public program (Cincinnati) had a handful of $5,000 scholarships, but that was it. So your "package" is essentially guaranteed to be loans no matter where you get in. The one person I know who got substantial grant aid was, no kidding, a Marshall scholar who went to a very well-endowed private (med) school.

 

[j_diggity]

You probably already know this, but grant aid, as opposed to loans, is really sparse in 99.9% of cases. My mid-tier public program (Cincinnati) had a handful of $5,000 scholarships, but that was it. So your "package" is essentially guaranteed to be loans no matter where you get in. The one person I know who got substantial grant aid was, no kidding, a Marshall scholar who went to a very well-endowed private (med) school.

That’s fine; I know that there is usually a lot less financial aid for medical school. If my school linked to an in-state program with lower tuition, I might not be asking, but the program links to Michigan and Case which both have very high tuition around $65k/year. Total COA for both schools is around $95-105k per year 🙄. Even bringing total COA down to 70k makes a huge difference in the long term finances. Cincinnati’s tuition looks a lot more reasonable by comparison.