General How should I go about choosing undergraduate school?

[lord999]

I'm from a state without good state schools (Our state schools are ranked between 250-350), and I'm a current high school senior. I was wondering how much debt would you recommend taking, and I have some choices among schools which I believe I will end up deciding between.

I have ED2'd NYU, without understanding their financial aid (or lack of thereof), since family situations made my EFC unreliabe. They said I can withdraw the commitment, particularly if the aid isn't enough.

NYU:
- Rankings:
US News: 30 (National)
Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education: 27 (No categories, includes LACs and non research universities)
Average: 29

- Science:
- Bio Department: 62
- Chem Department: 52

- Other factors:
- Great location
- Top Tier Med school
- Grade inflation
- great opportunities

Loans: $22k/yr (88k/4 yrs)


Some options include:

Georgia Institute of Technology: (recently admitted)
- Rankings:
US News: 35 (National)
Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education: 71 (No categories, includes LACs and non research universities)
Average: 53

- Science:
- Bio Department: 54
- Chem Department: 20

- Other factors:
- Not a fan of the location
- Engineering school
- Brutal grade deflation
- less opportunities at the institution than other schools at the campus (since no medical school)
- parents willing to cover the school

University of Washington - Seattle (potential option)

- Rankings:
US News: 58 (National)
Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education: 45 (No categories, includes LACs and non research universities)
Average: 52

- Science:
- Bio Department: 23
- Chem Department: 24

- Other factors:
- Favorite location outside of NYC
- Amazing campus
- closest to home
- Visited, loved the school, and gave off a very welcoming vibe
- great opportunities, great city to be in medical field.
- cousin went here and loved it
- famous undergraduate research symposium
- grade deflation
- parents willing to cover the school

So, my question is, is it worth it to spend the premium for a school like NYU? NYU is more prestigious than Georgia Tech and UW, according to the rankings, but I can't tell if it's worth 90k more. On one hand, I have heard that going to the best school matters the most. But, On average, all of those schools are within 20 places, and are good for science, and well regarded in general. So, is there a serious advantage to picking NYU in this situation? Is it a wise investment, and worth maintaining the ED commitment?

Are you trying to go for professional school? The state would help.

I am assuming you are. Unless it is the Ivy's, which tend to recruit their own, it really does not matter much given the state school choices. If you live in a WICHE state (WY, ID, MT, NV), you ought to investigate that pathway as your choices affect your medical school in-state qualifications. The school ranking is somewhat immaterial due to the network effects.

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[lord999]

I'm hoping to study biology, on the pre med track if that provides any insight. As for the state, I would prefer not to disclose, however, it is one of the states you mentioned. If it has an impact, beyond being one of those states, however, if it is possible to privately message you, I can do that.

Could you elaborate a bit on what WICHE is?

And, I was wondering as to whether the undergrad school would matter for medical schools like WashU/Hopkins etc. And, if those schools consider it, would the debt be worth it for NYU? NYU seems only slightly better ranked on average than the other choices. The reason I ask is, after seeing WashU SOM and JHU's class composition, it seems to be focused on the ivies/top 20's like WashU, and the state schools in this category, such as Michigan, UCLA and Berkeley, all of which are ranked among the top 25 and all are the top state school on some rank or the other. However, I also see a decent number of students from schools like University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, University of Washington, and UC San Diego.

I believe I would maintain residency in my state, at least if I attend UW. My cousin went there for undergrad, and was accepted into our state medical school as an in state resident, despite eventually matriculating at Northwestern.

Outside of my state school, would I be losing anything significant at any medical school by attending, say, the University of Washington or Georgia Tech, as opposed to NYU? And, are you aware of how admissions committees evaluate undergraduate institutions? Most of the universities' undergraduate admissions offices make posts and reports with regards to the US News and Wall Street Journal rankings, but do medical schools care? I'm fairly certain that schools must have developed a track record of sorts at medical schools.

Excuse any stupid questions, as I'm new to understanding what pre med necessitates.

Thank you!

Ok, a WICHE state:

Tuition Savings

WICHE manages the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE), the Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP), and the Western Regional Graduate Program (WRGP).

www.wiche.edu

So, this comes into play for both tuition and admissions. For tuition, you do not pay out-of-state tuition but a special WICHE rate.

Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP)

Eleven Western states help their residents afford out-of-state professional education in up to 10 health fields through PSEP's reduced-tuition program.

www.wiche.edu

For health-professions, this goes into admissions (you are considered an in-state for the purposes of competition) and tuition, though your state may require you to return there for practice after postgraduate training.

I would read the WICHE rules for your state as you are not willing to disclose.

Majors don't matter for Medicine, just covering the prerequisites and completing your degree is sufficient. You should major in something that you would have worked in if you did not make it into medicine.

Wherever you are at, your academic counseling is probably not good with these questions. You should contact the state university in your state for the pre-professional office to get a handle on some of this as the advice is state-specific.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

I see. I will look into this, and I was familiar with the WUE, which seems to be part of the same thing, but WICHE is broader. Unfortunately, most of the relatively well known west coast schools, such as UW and UCSD are not a part of the program. I did apply to Arizona State, and the scholarship I received was larger than the WUE offer. Would you recommend considering this option?

My parents and others feel as though schools like UW and Georgia Tech will open more opportunities, and I'm not sure the degree to which that is true. I am also considering majoring in informatics/data science, as I enjoy that, would that harm my med school app?

Seems as though saving the money is most pragmatic, in your view. Would you recommend attending a WUE school with less recognition, such as Arizona State over UW and Georgia Tech? Would the higher US News and WSJ rankings of UW/Georgia Tech matter, compared to a school like ASU? Would medical school admissions look at the rankings for the undergraduate institutions, and if they do, would schools averaging around 40-50, such as UW, Georgia Tech (and UT Austin, another option with extremely similar rankings on average to the former 2)? Would the opportunities present be vastly different, and would the more notable professors at schools like UW and GT help?

Thanks!

Overall, your GPA, MCAT and ECs are what get you into medical school. Whether you go to Harvard or your state school. The major you get doesn’t matter as long as you do well and take the required prereqs. Going through this process already, if I could go back I would have gone to the cheapest school I could find which for me would have been the one that allowed me to live at home.

 

[Goro]

Do yourself a financial favor. Go to Community College do well there, then transfer to a decent undergraduate school. It doesn't have to be Harvard or the UCs. Do well there and then get into medical school

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Do yourself a financial favor. Go to Community College do well there, then transfer to a decent undergraduate school. It doesn't have to be Harvard or the UCs. Do well there and then get into medical school

Completely agree

 

[Goro]

What would you guys say is decent. I have a almost full scholarship to Arizona State (would only really be paying a couple thousand per year, mainly due to misc. expenses). I have a full ride to UT Dallas. Those schools, however, are ranked in the 100-300 range on both US News and WSJ. Would this impact my chances?

Looking at data from medical schools like WashU and JHU, UW seems to do much much better than schools like UTD and ASU. Not sure if this is because med schools are familiar with those undergrad rankings or something else.

As for the UC's, I applied to UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. Berkeley and maybe UCLA, I would attend and take some debt, but I don't think UC San Diego is worth 50k more than UW or GATech over 4 years. (only slightly higher rated on average).

Would ASU/UTD hurt my medical school app?

Go for the full ride all the time.

Pre-meds are obsessed with these rankings. Do stop that.

Do you know we we Adcoms call USNWR? US Snooze and Worst Report.

If you look at what Adcoms want in a pre-med, UG school rank is actually rated at only moderate importance, at best.

A 4.0 at Kutztown State will be a viewed as a better student than someone with a 3.2 from any Big Name school.

In the end run, it doesn't matter, because as an attending, your salary will be the same if you go DO or MD, to ACOM or Yale, John A Burns or Harvard, U WA or U Miami.

 

[lord999]

Okay, thanks!

I assume ad coms use their general knowledge of an undergraduate institution as opposed to any rankings?

If the undergraduate school's reputation is moderate best, then is there a reason that well regraded public schools that are ranked among the top public schools on US News/WSJ like UW, UT Austin, UNC, UCSD etc. have so much more success with matriculating at Hopkins/WUSTL Med than those at an "average" undergrad?

I'm used to reddit/A2C, so whenever the US News or Times/WSJ rankings release, there are massive discussions and people change their school list and ED school, so I guess that's what fuels my constant regard for those rankings. I guess I falsely assumed that AO's look at these lists when they come out as well, LOL. I guess it's more the undergrad admissions administrators obsessing with these numbers and writing articles on their website about the Times and US News rank, and that it doesn't really matter.

I appreciate the insight.

Ranks are highly unlikely to be used in almost all circumstances. Most schools use AMCAS to look at stats first and weed out poor statistics (GPA and MCAT). The only time I am personally aware of situations where the school matters is whether there is an official feeder program, the Ivy's, or some unusually well-connected engineering or liberal arts colleges that have an official feed. Think about it this way, your high school is a no-name to UT Dallas, but you got admitted for a full ride. It is more self-selectivity but also has some function of the Preprofessions Support Office.

Your GPA and your MCAT are the two ranks that matter. You make the numbers, it is almost a certainty that you will be interviewed. And undergraduate rankings to job placements are not useful except in cases where recruiters for specific jobs only look at those schools. For example, for CS, UW has specific recruiters from Big Tech as well as Microsoft that don't recruit elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Georgia Tech likewise for the Southeast. Knowing this about your major should make you ask those sorts of questions beyond the ranking. Some schools punch far above their weight. ASU is an Intel feeder school, so hardware engineering is especially good, but UW has a better software. Utah has an outstanding computer math/topology and security analysis applied program which a certain no such federal agency unusually openly recruits there.

But if your job does not depend on connections recruiting, it does not matter. It is a major specific matter and you should find people that know where the recruiters exclusively go. It is not advertised in US News rankings. In graduate school, this is extremely true for certain science programs, I know the local CS program is not specifically recruited, but the specific ChemE program gets both top recruiting and top dollar for their PhD's and it's connections and not ranking (although ranking begins to reflect connections as those connections progress).

If you want to look at it from a numbers perspective for the Midwest, none of the state schools have a high percentage placement because of the numbers. It's the small liberal arts colleges (one in IA in particular is well-known in the area for placement in medicine and law). That liberal arts school is a known outlier, because many of the clinical and basic faculty at two of the medical schools come from that particular place as their office is extremely proactive in making connections.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Okay, I see. Thanks for the advice. Jeez, I really need to get out of the high school mentality and stop caring about what US News and THE have to say.

Can I ask if the LAC in Iowa is Grinnell? I'm applying there and can't seem to come across a ton of information with regards to the school.

I'm surprised that UIUC doesn't do better, as they have top notch STEM programs and are ranked in the 40s overall on both ranks. I see why connections would matter more.

Thanks for all the help, I guess undergraduate rankings like the ones I'm using really don't matter at all and that undergraduate reputation is a much smaller factor than I thought it was.

Our of curiosity, is the undergraduate school being largely irrelevant the same deal for "top tier" med schools, since I heard that those schools factored in undergrad a lot (I know of ivies inbreeding), but not sure of the accuracy of that info.

You will get into medical school if you do well in your undergrad (regardless of name), do well on your MCAT (which your undergrad has no bearing on), and do your due diligence with ECs. Another thing to think about as well is...UCLA....well known to have a ton of pre-med gunner students. Are your chances better to get a higher GPA at UCLA or ASU? I would wager ASU.

Again, I will throw my personal experience in here. I had the choice to go to just about every UC school. I ended up going to UCLA for undergrad (but I had taken quite a few courses at UCSD before transferring and had a 4.0 at UCSD). I was shell-shocked at UCLA. It was much tougher for me to keep my GPA up at UCLA compared with UCSD. The moral of the story, the "BEST" or higher ranked school is not always the best choice when your goal is trying to get into medical school. If your end goal is to get into the best undergrad, then by all means use the rankings, but there is more to getting into medical school than rankings of the undergrad.

Attend the school where you won't be paying for years on end for tuition. Right now your probably thinking, oh, I don't need to worry about that 10k or 20k per year for tuition. It's so far down the line, etc. I can tell you now that I am so glad I did not have undergrad debt. You are already going to rack up a 250k bill for medical school. Do what you can to keep it close to that.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Okay, this makes sense.

Are GPA's weighted by school? Like, would a 3.8 from UCLA look better than a 3.8 at UW or UCSD, and would that look better than a 3.8 at ASU? Or is this not the case?

I'm surprised that UCLA is that much harder than UCSD, and I'll definitely keep that in mind.

Does undergrad school have any bearing on "top" med school admissions? Or not at all? Thanks!

A 3.8 from UCLA would be looked at the same as from UCSD/UW. ADCOM may know that a 3.8 may be easier to get at ASU compared with UCLA, but if you have a 3.8 from ASU, you aren't going to be barred from medical school. People have different majors as well which lends to a higher/lower GPA. I would really try and stop thinking about the comparisons as they are not the best use of your time and energy.

I have friends who went to our state school which is ranked WAY LOW and I went to UCLA and they got into way better medical schools than I did...why? Higher GPA.

 

[Goro]

Geez, you're not letting go of this are you?
No we don't do such things.
There's some 30,000 colleges and universities the United States, we do not know about all of them.

What is important is feeder schools. These are the schools where we know the graduates, and we know their quality.

All medical schools have known feeder schools. So UTD would be very well known to utsw, for example


Undergraduate school reputation seems to be a thing with the ivies, but it should not influence your decision.