Comparing Tuition Costs of Medical Schools

[Josh7]

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What exactly goes into the cost of tuition? For instance, what makes a certain university more expensive than another one?

One example is comparing Tufts ($54,578) to Boston University($51,581) which are in the same city and are of similar caliber.

Or comparing price by similar ranking. Wash U in St Louis ($50,510) and University of Chicago ($43,191)

With public universities I suppose it just depends on how much the state wants to subsidize the cost but I'm not sure what's going on with the price of private universities 😕

 

[NickNaylor]

You don't care about tuition, you care about the total cost of living (COL). This includes both the cost to attend the school AND your living expenses for the year. The cost of tuition is variable because some schools think they can charge more than others. Maybe tuition is used to fund clinical or research activities so there's an incentive to charge more. Who knows.

 

[silleme]

Then there's the staff salaries, the building costs, the lab costs, etc. A lot is subsidized by grants and by affiliated hospitals, but tuition has to cover some of it....

 

[235009]

You don't care about tuition, you care about the total cost of living (COL). This includes both the cost to attend the school AND your living expenses for the year. The cost of tuition is variable because some schools think they can charge more than others. Maybe tuition is used to fund clinical or research activities so there's an incentive to charge more. Who knows.

I would be very careful with taking the Cost of attendance/living at face value because different schools add random things to their attendance costs. I would recommend looking through The cost of living line by line and deciding whether the differences between school costs are real or because one school budgets $2000 for books and personal expenses and another budgets $4000

 

[dsoz]

+1

One school where I was accepted had $4000 for books in the budget. Then I learned on the interview day that the school GIVES (not sells) each student a CD with all the books in electronic format.

That is one reason the COA of that school is a little higher than the other school that actually has a higher tuition.

dsoz

 

[pre med 2014]

Do schools include health coverage in the tuition or is that usually a separate fee?

 

[NickNaylor]

I would be very careful with taking the Cost of attendance/living at face value because different schools add random things to their attendance costs. I would recommend looking through The cost of living line by line and deciding whether the differences between school costs are real or because one school budgets $2000 for books and personal expenses and another budgets $4000

Of course, but if I'm comparing costs between schools I'm going to look at the total COA rather than tuition. While many schools fluff their COL numbers to give students a little bit of wiggle room, there are also legitimate differences like living in an area that is just more expensive. As an applicant trying to be concerned about costs, I would always assume that you will take the full amount of loans to simulate a "worst case" scenario. If you don't have to do that, great, but I wouldn't try and make a school choice based on "oh, this housing budget isn't tally ridiculous, I can definitely get by on a cheaper budget" no matter how true that might be.

(sent from my phone)

 

[235009]

Do schools include health coverage in the tuition or is that usually a separate fee?

separate fee

 

[235009]

Of course, but if I'm comparing costs between schools I'm going to look at the total COA rather than tuition. While many schools fluff their COL numbers to give students a little bit of wiggle room, there are also legitimate differences like living in an area that is just more expensive. As an applicant trying to be concerned about costs, I would always assume that you will take the full amount of loans to simulate a "worst case" scenario. If you don't have to do that, great, but I wouldn't try and make a school choice based on "oh, this housing budget isn't tally ridiculous, I can definitely get by on a cheaper budget" no matter how true that might be.

(sent from my phone)

what i'm saying is it's important to look at the budget line by line and see where the real differences are and where it's just fluff (or lack of fluff). also there are certain things you simply won't need. if there is a huge difference in health insurance cost between two schools but you're going to stick with your parents' plan then you should subtract that amount from both schools.

also i looked up the numbers in the OP and they are the numbers for tuition only not the total cost of attendance.

 

[NickNaylor]

Do schools include health coverage in the tuition or is that usually a separate fee?

separate fee

Ours is a separate fee but it's included in the total COL. In other words, we don't pay for our health insurance "our of pocket;" we receive loans for it and it's deducted from your reimbursement.

 

[MedPR]

You don't care about tuition, you care about the total cost of living (COL). This includes both the cost to attend the school AND your living expenses for the year. The cost of tuition is variable because some schools think they can charge more than others. Maybe tuition is used to fund clinical or research activities so there's an incentive to charge more. Who knows.

I think OP is curious about what sorts of things different schools pay for with our tuition money, not how he should use tuition to choose a school.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using SDN Mobile

 

[NickNaylor]

I think OP is curious about what sorts of things different schools pay for with our tuition money, not how he should use tuition to choose a school.

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All kinds of unsavory things I'm sure. I highly doubt you would be able to find out as it probably just goes into one big revenue pot that gets spent either at that school or the school's hospital system.

 

[mzarrowsmith]

I think OP is curious about what sorts of things different schools pay for with our tuition money, not how he should use tuition to choose a school.

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AAMC has a great publication called "Academic Medicine Handbook" with lots of data relating to how medical schools operate. It's interesting to me that only 2-7% of the pot comes from tuition, depending on whether the school is community based. As the number of faculty members has increased over the past few decades, so has the percentage of medical school budgets generated by medical services.

Which raises the question of why medical school tuition has continued to rise so fast, to the detriment of the profession, when it makes up such a small part of schools' operating budgets...

 

[Josh7]

You don't care about tuition, you care about the total cost of living (COL). This includes both the cost to attend the school AND your living expenses for the year. The cost of tuition is variable because some schools think they can charge more than others. Maybe tuition is used to fund clinical or research activities so there's an incentive to charge more. Who knows.

Do all schools include the cost of a car in COL now? I could have sworn I saw that on some school's COL awhile ago

 

[Josh7]

AAMC has a great publication called "Academic Medicine Handbook" with lots of data relating to how medical schools operate. It's interesting to me that only 2-7% of the pot comes from tuition, depending on whether the school is community based. As the number of faculty members has increased over the past few decades, so has the percentage of medical school budgets generated by medical services.

Which raises the question of why medical school tuition has continued to rise so fast, to the detriment of the profession, when it makes up such a small part of schools' operating budgets...

That's a good point

 

[Wait For It]

Is there by any chance a spreadsheet that compiles the estimated Cost of Attendance for schools for each of the four years? [While USNWR does report tuition and fees, they usually only report costs for the first year; This is sometimes misleading because some schools have much higher costs in 3rd and 4th year due to "more months in year" and other schools have a relatively flat COA in each year.]

If not, we could probably start one.

 

[MedPR]

Is there by any chance a spreadsheet that compiles the estimated Cost of Attendance for schools for each of the four years? [While USNWR does report tuition and fees, they usually only report costs for the first year; This is sometimes misleading because some schools have much higher costs in 3rd and 4th year due to "more months in year" and other schools have a relatively flat COA in each year.]

If not, we could probably start one.

You can find it on school websites. Seems like too much to compile into one spreadsheet.. Lots of work.

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[Wait For It]

Ah nevermind. I think this resource would be sufficient enough when comparing required cost for medical schools. Things like Food/Transportation/Housing can be highly variable depending on your preferences for lifestyle in each city.

https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/select.cfm?year_of_study=2013