Cheaper is absolutely the way to go. Rankings are an interesting beast. The only function of medical school rankings is that it might help in residency and fellowship selectivity, however in PT, the debt to income ratio is a significant factor. More debt takes away from your earnings when you get out. If I were you I'd contact the USC students directly to find out if they receive scholarships after they matriculated. Schools I matriculated used that system. For those on the east coast, it's equivalent to selecting CUNY Hunter over NYU or Columbia. Cheaper school, similar quality, same degree, same practice privileges, same job availability when you graduate, MUCH different debt.
I'm going to have to respectullfy agree to disagree. I don't think all schools have the same quality of education and that cheaper is not necessarily the way to go (although all educate its students well enough to pass the boards and have to be accredited by CAPTE).
As I've stated in other posts in this forum, there is more to choosing a school than cost of tuition and rankings. Many schools are unique in what they offer and that's what I think should be the selling point. So my advice to anyone who is in this dilemma is to look at the similarities and the differences of each school. If they are similar, then sure, go for the cheaper school. However, if you see there is a blaring difference (outstanding published and well respected clinicians in your specific area of interest, more quality clinical sites throughout the country, access to unique labs such as cadaver, physiology, or biomech labs, access to excellent hospitals and surgeons, general reputation of past students, etc) then I would seriously consider paying the extra cost for those exact things. Education is priceless, and those intangibles can make your investment worthwhile.
I was once deciding between CUNY Hunter (unranked, public, cheap) and those other "more expensive" private, ranked schools a couple years ago. I know that all three are good schools as I chose to go to one of the latter schools and have many friends in the other schools. From my experience, the shear fact of the name of my school had a lot of pull in getting awesome clinical affiliations, getting immediate respect from my patients (which can sometimes be tough as a student), and with getting the perfect job. I've even had potential employers flat out tell me that it makes a difference as to what school you go to....Now if you are a great student and clinician, it may not exactly matter where you go to school as you will excel anywhere and potential employers will see that.
So pay for what you think your PT education is worth to you and in turn what it will give back to you.
Oh, and Fred, sounds like you are liking your experience in med school so far. What area of medicine are you aiming for? I was thinking of following my dad's footsteps and apply in the past, but PT was more for me. Also, if you had chosen to go to CUNY Hunter vs. BU for PT school, do you think med schools would have looked at you differently?
