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UCSF need based aid?
- Thread starter drjay16
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My understanding is that need-based aid is very limited across the board, so I would keep expectations low. Most students, regardless of family income, receive no parental contribution, so it plays a much smaller role in medical school financing than it did in undergrad. You'd be best off contacting UCSF directly to learn about their specific policies.
When you say need based aid is limited across the board, what do you really mean? Most of the schools I interviewed at (top private) had significant need based aid with a unit loan. I'm just trying to compare this to a top public school like UCSF.
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Well you probably know more than I do as I'm just starting to seriously research financing, but I believe the top-ranked private schools are the exception to the general rule that need-based aid is limited. I've been trying to figure out how it works at UC schools (I'm a CA resident too) and have found it pretty opaque. All I've really found is that family income does affect the type of aid (loans vs. grants) but not the dollar amount and that the amount of grants available changes year to year. Because UCSF is public, I think its aid availability should be the same as at the other UC schools, irrespective of rank. It might have more scholarships available due to alumni donors and that kind of thing, but I don't think being top-ranked will have the same financial impact as it does in the world of private medical schools. I'm no expert though, so you'd be better off contacting them or a student who's already there!
Probably pretty good. The average debt of graduates is 110k and it's near the other top schools. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...ools/top-medical-schools/debt-rankings/page+4
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Ooh didn't know this list existed. Thanks for sharing! I'm actually very curious to know how that's possible, since it seems odd for a top-ranked public school to have more aid money to distribute than other schools in the same system. I'm pretty sure all UC undergraduate schools have the same tuition, level of state funding, etc. If anyone has any insight, please chime in!
They probably do it to compete against similarly ranked institutions because if they didn't, UCSF would be dominated by upper middle class to upper class families because people who got into UCSF and have lower EFCs probably got into other med schools that offered more aid. Even with need based aid, I don't believe that the total amount of aid is that great. Premeds are usually from well-off families, so they don't qualify for need-based aid anyways. I visited a school that offered a full tuition need-based aid grant (cost of living was covered with subsidized loans) to families that made under the U.S. median household income and they said that only around 10% of matriculating students actually qualified for this amount of aid.
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Well I would be in that under 10 percent group so this is of interest to me.
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From my experience, UCSF gave me the best need-based out of all the public schools, and even had a better package than a few private schools (this is comparing schools I got offers from, all in the top-20, so not sure what aid looks like for other schools with a smaller endowment). If you're in-state, the resident discount + the aid will likely give you a better deal than your best private school offer (barring additional scholarships). My family is middle class and I was surprised by my grant amount.
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