Scholarship offer for deferred admission. Thoughts?

[Rainbow Zebra]

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Hi everyone, I've been having a hard time coming to a decision on a situation offered to me, and would appreciate to hear thoughts on the situation from others.

I applied and was accepted to a top-10 school in this past admissions cycle, and as my school year will begin in August, I received an offer from the admissions committee. Due to over-enrollment of students, I was offered a large scholarship (~$100k) to defer my admission to next year (guaranteed seat).

Here is my pro-con list from mulling it over for a little while:

Pros:

I am relatively young (traditional applicant) and I don't have any impending circumstances that makes one year of my time out of medical school a large sacrifice/loss.
Additionally, I received very little financial aid from my school, so ~100k would significantly relieve my debt stress (I would be looking to loan ~$170k for my education for 4 years, so this scholarship would reduce it to ~$60-70k in loans).

Cons:

I understand the opportunity cost of taking a year off medical school would also be a year I do not make a physician's salary (100k now vs. one year physician salary later).
My decision on this offer must be immediate, and as a result, I do not have any concrete plans for what I would do with this year if I took a gap year. I am very interested in pursuing a career in surgery so my first idea is to look for research opportunities to gain some basic research experience (all my prior research experience is translational). However, I don't know if this is worth a year of my time, as I am interested in doing research in medical school anyways. If I were to take a year off, I would this time to be formative in my experiences, but I do not have any concrete plans and will not have any definite plan by the time I have to submit my decision on this offer.

I would love to hear some insights from you guys, especially since I am sure I have not thought about all of the benefits or consequences of this situation. Thanks guys.

Inquiring minds want to know, what did you decide?? If you offered, did you put the offer in early enough to get the scholarship??

 

[tskbdmnd]

Thas so much money bro. Take the money.

 

[akwho]

I'm a get it done type of person, I probably wouldn't take the money. Several things make this less amazing than you think

1) Med school tuitions are rising 7% a year right now. Delaying a year = 7% on 7% on 7% on 7% for four years of increased tuition.
2) Depends what you are going into salary wise. A year off in plastics = 300k post tax income lost. Dunno if I would pay 200k to have a year off when you are young and driven, also the compound interest effect of having that money while you are younger adds up. Sure a year off in peds = 100k so it's a wash.
3) Only so many years you can work, might not want to waste one on the front end.

I would try to negotiate taking a year off after my MS2 or MS3 for research (if you want a competitive speciality you might have to do that anyways), and it would be a nice time to take a break from med school anyways. Getting paid 100k to take a research year isn't bad, also they have research fellowships that pay 50k so you could potentially be making 150k from doing a research year and buff your residency app at the same time.

 

[bc65]

Usually in cases like this, the school offers a year of free tuition, so around 40k. That definitely wouldn't be worth it. However, this offer is more generous. OP, I think that financially it's close enough so that you can do whatever you prefer. Certainly if you were going to do research anyway, and you can get a good position on campus, as LizzyM so wisely suggest, this would be ideal.

Financially, that 100k will grow to 200k by the time you pay it back, and after taxes, that could theoretically would be equal to about a 300k income, which would be close to an average attending salary ( more than most primary care, less than many specialists ). So, you could argue for either choice.

Of course, there's the relatively small chance that you could get the loans forgiven via PSLF, or mitigated by PAYE, etc, although most people end up just paying off the loans.

Having an extra year off in your 20's could be nice, if you have the money to travel and plans to enjoy yourself. But, when you're 50 or 60, you'll probably appreciate retiring a year earlier a lot more than you enjoyed the year off in your 20's.

 

[MrLogan13]

Take the money!!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[Penn-mdphd]

a top-10 school in this past admissions cycle

My bet is UMich. It's not top-10 anymore, but was last cycle. Don't think it's Penn. If anything, we may be under enrolled. I'm missing like 25 people after counting.

 

[JessebenBenjamin]

I have followed the fate of admissions deans after such a gaffe. The "transition" is usually done quietly in a year or so (public executions are so medieval! See: Stanford). Overbooking to the degree that cash awards are necessary is a serious miscalculation.

Story time?
What happened at Stanford?

 

[gyngyn]

Story time?
What happened at Stanford?

I'll just say that CA turned over two admissions deans last year and one of them was here.