Well this is a setback....I have no in state schools...

[ChrisMack390]

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I was born and raised in New Jersey. In 2008 I moved to Boston for college, which lasted 5 years due to my school's coop program. After graduation in 2013, I started working full time at a job and in 2014 I started graduate school at night, both also in Boston.

The in-state policy for New Jersey is you have to have "been domiciled" in New Jersey for the 12 months preceding enrollment.

The in-state policy for Massachusetts is extremely strict - they do not count my college years at all and only consider people for IS if they can provide 7 years of tax returns.

I am pretty bummed out about this. No good tuition deals coming my way. Does this also decrease my chances of acceptance? Does anyone have experience with the admissions offices of any of the NJ schools or UMass? I emailed the NJ schools and they seem pretty strict on this...

 

[ChrisMack390]

Even if I ultimately cannot get in-state tuition, I am thinking my best bet is still to list the NJ address on my AMCAS and apply to the 3 NJ schools. I can then worry about the tuition later. This should maximize my chances of acceptance, right?

 

[aftomdhopeful]

A lot of states will allow college students to use their parents domicile for residency purposes. Where are your parents currently located? Have you kept your drivers license, tax returns and insurance in NJ? You would not be the first student to move to another state for college, and then get a job for a year. I do not know the specific rules for NJ or MA though. I had a lot of battles with medical school residency in the states I lived in. I lived in one state for four years, including buying a house, working full time, buying a car, having a drivers license, registering to vote and moving all my bank accounts there. Even after petitioning the legislature I was unable to get residency because I could not prove I had ties to the state. The next year I moved to a new state and had residency there in 9 months. Since each state has such different rules, you may be in for a battle.

 

[ChrisMack390]

Unfortunately I changed my license to MA when the NJ one expired (shouldn't have done that). I don't have a car so no insurance or registration there.

Schools do not ask for any tax info or anything until after acceptance, correct? So if I fill out AMCAS with my NJ address I will still be reviewed as an in-state applicant? Even if I end up unable to get the lower tuition, my top interest right now is maximizing my chance of acceptance. I will work out the residence related bureaucracy after.

 

[aftomdhopeful]

That also varies by state. Many of the state schools I applied to, including my own, required you to prove that you were a resident or not when you submitted your secondary. You have to sign an affidavit of non-residency for schools that you are not a resident of, or prove that you are a resident. Off the top of my head:

Required Proof:
Washington
Florida
Wisconsin
Oregon
Alabama
North Dakota

Did Not Require:
California
Colorado
Utah

I did not apply for any NJ or MA schools so I can't comment on that specific instance.

 

[ChrisMack390]

Good info for other readers, but unfortunately I do file my own taxes as an independent.

 

[GrapesofRath]

Depends on your stats. IF your a top applicant all it means is you can't bank on IS tuition but it won't really hold you back much in admission. If you're a more borderline type app yes this sucks and sorry to hear as not having state schools will hurt.

You can apply to the NJ schools but unfortunately Robert Woods and NJMS are >95% IS so its hard to really expect much from them

I would call UMass. I did have a friend a while back who worked in MA 4 years leading up to his app and wasn't a resident officially but the school said they'd treat him as IS. YMMV but it's worth a shot. Tufts does have some level of regional bias as well.

Go on the NJ state school threads specifically to see if you can find info on how you have to go about "proving" NJ resident status on your app if you do have to do this even for non tuition purposes

 

[ChrisMack390]

How do schools establish residency during admissions? If I list my NJ address on AMCAS and provide my passport as my identification, which has the same NJ address on it, won't they review my file as an IS applicant?

 

[aftomdhopeful]

I answered this. It is state dependent, but it is not enough to list the state of residence of AMCAS. You then have to prove it.

That also varies by state. Many of the state schools I applied to, including my own, required you to prove that you were a resident or not when you submitted your secondary. You have to sign an affidavit of non-residency for schools that you are not a resident of, or prove that you are a resident. Off the top of my head:

Required Proof:
Washington
Florida
Wisconsin
Oregon
Alabama
North Dakota

Did Not Require:
California
Colorado
Utah

I did not apply for any NJ or MA schools so I can't comment on that specific instance.

 

[ChrisMack390]

Missed that somehow, thanks!

 

[avgn]

I'm pretty NJ (like NY) does not require proof at time of application. Put your NJ address and cross the tuition bridge when it comes. The NJ IS preference is too much of an admissions premium for you to not try and pray.

 

[ChrisMack390]

Agreed.

I'm going to change my drivers license back to NJ and register to vote in NJ as well. I checked the NJ policies for both of those and I can readily meet them both.

 

[TravelingPanda]

Just wanted to say that I'm sorry and I feel you! I have lived in MA since 2006 but do not qualify for in-state and thus did not apply to UMass (which would have been amazing). I had four years in college and then six years after, working all 10 years and paying taxes of course... The funny thing is that last cycle (2014-2015) the rules for MA was five years, not seven. They apparently discovered last year that they were interpreting the state laws wrong for a super long time and changed the rules from five to seven. That put me in the awkward point of being in-state if I had applied 2014-2015, but out of state for 2015-2016, event though I had lived in MA longer for the second cycle. I emailed back and forth with the Dean of Admissions and there was no way out of it.

It worked out, though! I'm moving to a city I think is more exciting that Worcester for medical school (if a bit more expensive...). Best of luck!

 

[enchantediris]

If it makes you feel better, UMass in-state tuition is not much cheaper than the other Boston schools like BU (total COA is still $60,000/year). The very high in state preference and lower average matriculant stats are beneficial, though.

 

[CowboyNiceguy]

Unfortunately I changed my license to MA when the NJ one expired (shouldn't have done that). I don't have a car so no insurance or registration there.

Schools do not ask for any tax info or anything until after acceptance, correct? So if I fill out AMCAS with my NJ address I will still be reviewed as an in-state applicant? Even if I end up unable to get the lower tuition, my top interest right now is maximizing my chance of acceptance. I will work out the residence related bureaucracy after.

Not sure about your NJ schools, but I know that some schools consider IS and OOS applicants completely separately and meet strict quotas. At Iowa for example, they have something like 100 spots for IS students and 40 for OOS. If you were to apply there claiming to be IS and get accepted, it would probably be rescinded.

 

[ChrisMack390]

Update for any future applicants in my position:

I spoke to the 3 admissions offices and actually ended up getting 3 different answers. Cooper is very strict on this, requiring tax returns and other documents to prove state residency. NJMS is actually pretty lax and said they would just go by whatever address is listed on AMCAS. RWJ was somewhere in between, at first repeating what Cooper said but then saying if I'm in another state for educational purposes I will qualify as IS.

Still going to change my license, voter registration, and bank account back to NJ to be safe since I am well over a year before enrollment, but this is looking brighter than I initially thought!

 

[GrapesofRath]

If there's one that you would have "hoped" would be strict if you had to pick one it's Cooper. Really small class and they take 1/4 OOS

NJMS and RW are big schools. If you can be IS for them you wont even notice not being IS for Cooper

 

[ChrisMack390]

NJMS is my top choice of the 3, so I'm definitely happy!

 

[ridethecliche]

Just wanted to say that I'm sorry and I feel you! I have lived in MA since 2006 but do not qualify for in-state and thus did not apply to UMass (which would have been amazing). I had four years in college and then six years after, working all 10 years and paying taxes of course... The funny thing is that last cycle (2014-2015) the rules for MA was five years, not seven. They apparently discovered last year that they were interpreting the state laws wrong for a super long time and changed the rules from five to seven. That put me in the awkward point of being in-state if I had applied 2014-2015, but out of state for 2015-2016, event though I had lived in MA longer for the second cycle. I emailed back and forth with the Dean of Admissions and there was no way out of it.

It worked out, though! I'm moving to a city I think is more exciting that Worcester for medical school (if a bit more expensive...). Best of luck!

Depends on how you define exciting.

Hilarious on the 5 vs 7 year bit. That's one of the reasons I ended up in the woo.

 

[TravelingPanda]

Depends on how you define exciting.

Hilarious on the 5 vs 7 year bit. That's one of the reasons I ended up in the woo.

I don't know, I'd say by most definitions my new home will be more exciting. 🙂

Yeah the 5 v 7 year threw me on quite a loop. The amount of time is determined by state law. I actually ended up digging into the history books of Massachusetts General Law to try to find out who changed it, if it was part of some other structural changes, etc... I thought it was something they passed in 2014 or 2015, but when I looked at it, it turned out the law saying seven years went into effect in 2004. Apparently no one at the medical school noticed until 2015...

 

[ChrisMack390]

They also jacked the tuition WAY up. It used to be a completely absurd deal and now its just a run of the mill state school.

I wonder if that will impact their student body. I used to hear anecdotes of people choosing UMass over Harvard because the tuition was basically negligible.

 

[enchantediris]

They also jacked the tuition WAY up. It used to be a completely absurd deal and now its just a run of the mill state school.

I wonder if that will impact their student body. I used to hear anecdotes of people choosing UMass over Harvard because the tuition was basically negligible.

UMass tuition has always been nominally low – for undergrad, I remember that tuition was advertised as ~$2,000, but then fees and room and board were over $10,000. A great help the full tuition scholarships from scoring above a certain percentile of the MCAS was... Personally I would love to stay in MA and I think I have a better chance at UMass than Harvard. 😛