To you, what schools are truly worth 90k/year

[Anonymous]

HYP, Stanford and Duke

[Anonymous]

Hot take: none. Zero.

Go to the best in-state college you can afford.

[Anonymous]

None

[Anonymous]

are any worth it for pre med. or are the top ones only worth it for the pipeline to wall street / finance? son looking for pre-med and just not sure if a top 20 school makes a difference?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:are any worth it for pre med. or are the top ones only worth it for the pipeline to wall street / finance? son looking for pre-med and just not sure if a top 20 school makes a difference?

We chose it, but most don’t due to cost and that’s very fair. No regrets, it’s opened doors to make a really compelling resume for med school. They are so shooting for a top med school also and there is correlation, some I’ll just say it’s that they’d be to students anywhere and have same result though.

[Anonymous]

* some will just say that they’d be top students anywhere and have same result. I can’t type and never catch it. 😊

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:are any worth it for pre med. or are the top ones only worth it for the pipeline to wall street / finance? son looking for pre-med and just not sure if a top 20 school makes a difference?

We chose it, but most don’t due to cost and that’s very fair. No regrets, it’s opened doors to make a really compelling resume for med school. They are so shooting for a top med school also and there is correlation, some I’ll just say it’s that they’d be to students anywhere and have same result though.

MD who has a med admissions consulting firm on the side, and experience in top-5 med admissions committee, as does one of my partners.
The T20ish unis/T5 LACs or so is a significant leg up for top MD programs and MD admissions in general, though whether that is correlation or causation is murky. These schools are far overrepresented among T20 med school students. Consider though these elite undergrad programs are the same ones that historically have the highest SAT ranges (well over half of the student body scoring 98%ile or higher on SAT when tests were required), and consequently list median MCAT scores of 516-518 among medical school applicants in a given year. They have upwards of 90% of applicants accepted to any med school and have "feeder" to Top Med schools reputation, many with over 25% of their admitted applicants landing at top-name research med schools. Med schools do use undergrad school (and program of study) as a factor in admissions, but it is not nearly as large as stem GPA and MCAT. The students at these top programs who use consultants are often below average at their school, 3.4-3.6 when the average undergrad GPA is 3.75-3.85 at elites. They often seek outside help because they do not like the advice of premed advising(do a postbacc or MS and get the stem grades up). Premed advising rarely gatekeeps at top schools anymore, as parents gave extreme pushback in the early 2010s. Parents involved in med apps is relatively new but it has massively affected undergraduate approach compared to pre-2000, when aggressive weeding out was common and expected.
Our advice is often the same as premed advising, but offers more hand-holding on the details of individualized plans. Top20ish students have much more success than 3.4-3.6 students from below T60 or so, but the MCATs are usually 512-514 rather than below 500. We get a lot of UVA students: they hang somewhere in the middle. The below-T60 group does not get into med school anywhere, nor do most of their 3.9 counterparts from the same undergrad, because they usually have 508-510. The age old question is do elite schools help with MCAT? Maybe. The science exams tend to be application of knowledge long-answer problem solving tests rather than almost entirely fill in the blank/multiple choice. I suspect that the more important difference is elite students are more likely to be students who have excellent study habits, are fast learners and excel on std tests.
Just my 2c, from years of application cycles.

[Anonymous]

none and I say this as an ivy league graduate

[Anonymous]

Edit to add, that should say the below T60 group with below 500 MCAT and 3.4-3.6 GPA do not get in anywhere

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:are any worth it for pre med. or are the top ones only worth it for the pipeline to wall street / finance? son looking for pre-med and just not sure if a top 20 school makes a difference?

We chose it, but most don’t due to cost and that’s very fair. No regrets, it’s opened doors to make a really compelling resume for med school. They are so shooting for a top med school also and there is correlation, some I’ll just say it’s that they’d be to students anywhere and have same result though.

MD who has a med admissions consulting firm on the side, and experience in top-5 med admissions committee, as does one of my partners.
The T20ish unis/T5 LACs or so is a significant leg up for top MD programs and MD admissions in general, though whether that is correlation or causation is murky. These schools are far overrepresented among T20 med school students. Consider though these elite undergrad programs are the same ones that historically have the highest SAT ranges (well over half of the student body scoring 98%ile or higher on SAT when tests were required), and consequently list median MCAT scores of 516-518 among medical school applicants in a given year. They have upwards of 90% of applicants accepted to any med school and have "feeder" to Top Med schools reputation, many with over 25% of their admitted applicants landing at top-name research med schools. Med schools do use undergrad school (and program of study) as a factor in admissions, but it is not nearly as large as stem GPA and MCAT. The students at these top programs who use consultants are often below average at their school, 3.4-3.6 when the average undergrad GPA is 3.75-3.85 at elites. They often seek outside help because they do not like the advice of premed advising(do a postbacc or MS and get the stem grades up). Premed advising rarely gatekeeps at top schools anymore, as parents gave extreme pushback in the early 2010s. Parents involved in med apps is relatively new but it has massively affected undergraduate approach compared to pre-2000, when aggressive weeding out was common and expected.
Our advice is often the same as premed advising, but offers more hand-holding on the details of individualized plans. Top20ish students have much more success than 3.4-3.6 students from below T60 or so, but the MCATs are usually 512-514 rather than below 500. We get a lot of UVA students: they hang somewhere in the middle. The below-T60 group does not get into med school anywhere, nor do most of their 3.9 counterparts from the same undergrad, because they usually have 508-510. The age old question is do elite schools help with MCAT? Maybe. The science exams tend to be application of knowledge long-answer problem solving tests rather than almost entirely fill in the blank/multiple choice. I suspect that the more important difference is elite students are more likely to be students who have excellent study habits, are fast learners and excel on std tests.
Just my 2c, from years of application cycles.

Thank you for this, very interesting read. May I please ask a question on coursework. I read in a premed group where the med school advising and consensus is to not take AP credits and take intro bio and chem in college for pre-req for strong sGPA. At my child’s school this is really rare, and they place out of into and take upper level bio classes to satisfy and start in orgo 1 spring of freshman year. I know the prestige is one issue, but is rigor factor in at all when comparing sGPA’s? As that is also going to be a difference among schools I’d think as to what courses are norms. Really appreciate if you have time to answer, I couldn’t ask in group or I’d get annihilated as all say to take the intro classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, Cornell, Umich, NYU, Emory, Northwestern, UVa, Duke, Notre Dame, Georgetown, are worth it because finance heavyweights.

Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt, JHU, Caltech, and the other top schools I missed are not

lol...CalTech on that list. Those who don't know, really don't know.

Do you want to work for NASA? JPL? Los Alamos? SpaceX? Blue Origin? Google? Citadel? Susquehana? Bridgewater?

Never mind graduate school access to any top tier STEM department at any Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, MIT or Stanford.

You do realize that your ticket is punched when you are a beaver, more than any other college in America.

No because working at most of those places sucks. Citadel isn’t peak career, just depression and maybe coke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any school that costs that much that one of my kids wants to attend. I get that money is an issue for most, but not for our family

+1 Same. For us, it's not an issue. Money is saved in 529, there is plenty more for graduate school/professional school if desired. But I get that for most people it's cost prohibitive. And I'd argues if you cannot easily pay it (ie your retirement and general savings are NOT impacted and you can also help with graduate school), then the money is better spent at the best State U or private school a tier or two lower that gives good merit. I have no sympathy for people who take on ridiculous loans to attend a 90K+ school. It's simply not worth it. Because No school is worth that extra costs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is the problem...

if you go in state it's about $30K/year so the real question isn't who will pay $90K/year... the question who will pay $60K more than they are already going to pay... but in reality most people are going out of state anyway, so the math becomes OOS UVA/UMD is $60K... so who is willing to pay $30K more or $2K/mth...

the answer is people who are too snobby to go in state and think $2K/mth isn't that much money, they are already going to pay $60K no matter what.

In reality, no "most people" are not going OOS. Majority of kids attending college attend CC or in-state schools or private schools with great merit where cost aligns with in-state. Because most can barely afford that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is a Louis Vuitton "worth" it?
Is paying for every streaming service "worth" it?
Is contributing money to an art museum to help it grow "worth" it?
Is having a pet "worth" it?
Is giving money to your church "worth" it?
Is paying a lot of money for college "worth" it?

Each of these questions can be answered differently depending on your own background. Who am I to say what someone else values? We all need to mind our own business, in my opinion.

Sure, we can all "mind our own business" as long as I don't have to help pay to bail out someone who took out $300K+ in loans for an BA in Psychology or Art History. It's hard to have empathy for someone who expects others to help out when they are in massive debt solely because "they value something they actually cannot afford" but chose to purchase it anyhow. Especially when it can be done much more affordably at a State U or private with good merit.
So you pay for your own choices, and dont' expect others to bail you out for your lack of fiscal astuteness

[Anonymous]

We paid 300K+ for my DS to graduate from Princeton in May 2024, and he is still looking for a job. YMMV.