I'm withdrawing (post-acceptance) from Tufts for 3 major reasons:
1) Way too expensive. After 10 years of interest, which I'm told is a reasonable pay-off time, the total cost of attendance jumps from 300k to nearly 500k. They only offer financial aid to the lowest income families, neglecting everyone in the middle class. (stupid parents, why couldn't you make less money so that I might save some!) You aren't going to get a residency interview because of your school name unless its a top 10 or Ivy, so what am I getting for such a luidicris amount of cash?
2) Both my interviewers were clearly obbsessed with GPA and MCAT. Sure they're important factors, but I have friends applying, who were interviewed and defferred, with 10x the experience/passion and way more interesting backgrounds with 1 point less on their MCAT. The school is trying pretty hard to raise their averages, and probably losing out on some amazing kids for that minor increase towards the ivy's stats. They're going to waitlist all but the best stats, and let the rest come in piece-wise. I want to learn alongside people who are unique, not just a bunch of boring statistics. So if you're defferred, don't be suprised to hear back in the summer, when you will have already paid first/last/deposit on a different lease.
3) The wait-list (the website says this directly), and I'm sure the adcom makes its decisions as such, is based on race, economic status, etc. Yes, making a diverse class is a good thing. I would never argue that, it contributes to everyone's benefit, and helps the patients best of all. However, once they have reached their limit of students for Race X, they will not admit any more, for the sake of diversity. So, if you were the 83rd "insert race here" person reviewed....sucks to be you, because we need some more diverse people. Making race a selection factor at ALL is racist. Measure us on merits, skills, intellegence, caring, passion; characteristics inherit in all races. Thus there is no rank in the waitlist, or maybe each race gets its own waitlist? Either way, an extremely distasteful thing to do for choosing kids who has agreed to wait 6+ months under some silly assumption that you might accept them based on their hard-work and dedication to helping others.
Not to bash on anyone who loves the school, as I'm sure it has great selling points, but if you have another options you should very carefully think it through. Do some long term math, and recognize that so much debt makes fields like family medicine and primary care sooooo much less realistic. I also don't believe that any school should charge students different rates just because of their social-economic status. This isn't a damn ski-resort, this is an education, and you have all earned the right to be treated equally!
That's just my two cents, and I really hope in 30 years from now, we can all work together to fix this clearly broken system (without half a million of debt).
