Anonymous wrote:Are you kidding ? BU! Have you looked at now expensive med school is ?

+1 four years of undergrad four years of med school three to four years of residency maybe one year of fellowship you seriously don't want to start off 250k in debt. As for those people saying he may change his mind about med school we don't know. OP knows her son, but starting off in debt after undergraduate is a recipe for disaster and BU is not a bad school no matter how magical Yale may be, and I say this as an Ivy League graduate.

All I know is the Harvard doctor got into the same competitive residency as the doctor from state school, a brand name undergrad gives you only a very slight edge up for med school.

If he wasn't pre-med I'd say Yale. But he is, so BU.

Yale spends nearly 200K on each of its students each year! Their endowment is massive. It can't be looked simply as a full ride at BU vs. full pay at Yale; Yale comes with so much opportunity and prestige.

According to the Chronicle for Higher Education, Yale spent $556,675 on just educational spending alone for each degree completed- the second highest in the country after Caltech. BU only spent $127,018. No one at Yale pays anywhere near the full price thanks to their hefty financial resources.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a tough one because the gap between an elite school and a not so good one is huge.

What? Boston U is a top 40 university. If this was Yale vs some no-name school, it'd be different, but BU is relatively prestigious.

BU is not the BU of our childhood.

Are you kidding ? BU! Have you looked at now expensive med school is ?

OP, this really depends on how much money you have and what this tuition bill will mean for your life and your child's experience.

* Does full fees mean starting med school already $100k in debt?

* Does full fees mean your kid has to work part-time in a crappy job because the lab tech one only pays minimum wage and that won't cut it?

* Does full fees mean turning down opportunities or worrying all the time?

* Does this choice have implications for any other children?

I have an ivy degree, and I'm happy to have it and appreciate what it means. I also know that my friends who were struggling financially in college had some serious stress and might have been better-off elsewhere.

Congrats to your child.

What's your HHI? Yale, because of its huge endowment, will only expect a certain amount as a contribution and then will pick up the rest.

And many premeds wind up dong something else. I'd pick Yale.

If med school is the goal, whichever school that does not practice grade deflation. You need a great GPA and test scores for med school admission.

He got the Trustee Scholarship at BU, right? That puts him at the top 20 students in his class. He's going to have every door at BU open to him. He can send an email to any faculty member letting them know of his status, and he'll be offered research positions on the spot. He'll be showered with personal attention and recognition. He'll definitely be the biggest fish there, whereas he may be average/slightly above it at Yale.

There's a lot of sense in picking BU, but the residential and magical undergrad of Yale is one of a kind. To me, Yale is probably the best undergraduate education one could find in the world. They really are blessed with a lot, and the students there are so talented and incredible. If costs aren't a matter, despite all that BU will come with, I would choose Yale myself. If going to Yale meant talking out substantial loans, I'd probably try to find a way to finance it. Yale is one of those schools that pays lifelong dividends. There are only maybe 7 or so schools like that- Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge. If this were between BU and Northwestern, or BU and Williams, it'd be different. But Yale is at a whole another level.

Anonymous wrote:The question is, is money no oject or not? If yes, yale. If no, b.u.
If you don't know, then find out the answer to "is money no object?" first.

Yes, start with this question.

Anonymous wrote:This is a tough one because the gap between an elite school and a not so good one is huge.

What? Boston U is a top 40 university. If this was Yale vs some no-name school, it'd be different, but BU is relatively prestigious.

Yale

This is a tough one because the gap between an elite school and a not so good one is huge.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact your kid wants to be a doctor changes the equation. Yale is helpful to get into professions such as i banking or start ups. Med school don't care whether it's Yale or BU, they care about the MCATS and gpa. I would take the full scholarship, your kid is going to want to keep loans down if he or she is going to med school and avoid being half a million in debt by the time they are done.

I know tons of people in a competitive medicine field and most of them did not go to ivy leagues. Now if your kid wanted to do a start up or banking or another field then the equation changes again, but as a wannabe doctor whatever school works as long as grades are good and super important to keep student loans down since you'll be studying for a long long time not earning any money. I know doctors with a ton of student loans that can't even hug houses in their mid thirties.

But what if he changes his mind like so many college kids do? I too was premed until I bombed organic chemistry, as were most of my friends.

OP, your child should do whatever gives him the most options long term. I think that's Yale.

Yes but were you also a top high school student offered a full scholarship to a great school and also sdmission to an Ivy before you failed organic chem?

Take the money unless he hates BU.

Congrats!