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So this is sort of a tactical question about when to drop the GI bill and when to take loans: I'm on the tail end of a 6 year enlistment as a HM in the Navy, and I have a double-bachelor's degree from a Brick and Mortar in political science and sociology with a GPA of 3.7 and a GRE of 1450 (in other words, I'm pretty academically competitive). I get out next year and am looking to do a 12-month post-bac pre-med program and then go to med school. The post-bac I'm looking at is pretty expensive, as is medical school (obviously), and I'm wondering whether people think it would be a good idea to fire up the GI Bill and double-dip GIB/Unemployment off the get go and take the debt at the end, or just take unemployment plus some loans during the Post-Bac year and then fire up the GI Bill once I get to medical school. The post-bac program is on the list for the yellow ribbon program, as are most of the medical schools I'm looking at, and assuming all goes according to plan it will all mostly be in the Philadelphia area, and I checked zip codes and there isn't much difference between the BAH rates. Obviously, poo poo could go south (I could get bad grades, bomb the MCAT, not get in places I'm hoping to get in to) and there's so many variables that are unknowable in advance. I'm just looking for any advice that seems relevant. The total time in school is going to be around 5 years, so I can't see any way to get all of it covered and I'm wondering about the interest from taking loans early vs having a long period of time at the end where I have no income because I didn't stretch out all my benefits as long as I could. EDIT: For reference my top choices for Post-Bac are Temple and Bryn Mawr, if I go to Temple I'd probably end up going to Temple Med. If Bryn Mawr I'd probably end up looking at Pittsburgh (UPenn would be my reach school if I did amazingly well). EDIT 2: If any of it makes any difference, I'm 28 years old, single and have about $10,000 in savings at the moment. I imagine I could save up about $5k more before EAOS. TheQuietWilds fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Jan 17, 2013 |
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Jan 17, 2013 08:58
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GAS CURES KIKES posted:Almost all of the classes needed for medical school (Calc I, II, Chem I, II, Org Chem I, II, Physics I, II) are also available at community colleges.. and honestly a 4.0 GPA in your post bac med classes is a 4.0 whether you're getting it at County Community or State U. Your GPA+MCAT is the single largest determining factor.. so if you're wanting to save money to be able to use your GIbill on medical school that's one option to look at. Being an ER Corpsman, I have great recommendations from the ER physicians I've worked with over the years. I have 4-5 doctors who have offered to write me letters of recommendation and my work performance and professional relationships with them make me very confident that they will write a strong vote of confidence. My main reason for looking at the Temple/Bryn Mawr programs are MCAT prep and linkages. If you get a 3.5 GPA and a MCAT of 30 they let you straight into Temple sans gap year. Bryn Mawr has linkage agreements like that with a dozen schools. Also without a summer session Chem I+II, it makes getting all 8 classes you need for every school (BIO I+II, CHEM I+II, O.CHEM I+II, PHY I+II) take more than 12 months. Without the linkages I start having to worry about additional classes that many schools need (BioChem, Undergrad A+P, Calc, etc). Maybe my figuring is way wrong, but it seems to me that the farther removed I am from my active duty time working shift in the ER, the worse off I am financially and the worse off I am in terms of fading clinical skills and medical knowledge. Post-Bac programs seem like they'd save me a pile of time, which is important to me.
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Jan 17, 2013 13:39
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GAS CURES KIKES posted:Anecdotal info here: The docs here know I'm going to med school and have been teaching/drilling/pimping me on stuff like origin and function of cranial nerves, brachial plexus anatomy, enzymes involved in glycolosis/citric acid cycle, etc. Most general corpsman stuff will probably be useless, true, but a few doctors taking a vested interest in my success over the course of the last two years is a huge advantage that I am forever indebted for and don't want to waste. For my premed stuff I creeped around Temple's science dept page, bought all the text books they use for their science courses and have started studying them. I read the entire bio book into my computer and leave an MP3 of myself reading the textbook running all the time. I'm about 1/2 way through the gen chem and physics textbooks doing all the questions. So, I should be able to ace my courses when I actually take them. I'm the worlds biggest gunner about this poo poo, and I don't even get out for another 16 months. I have a pretty decent path planned out after EAOS, my only question is: is it a better financial use of my GI Bill to drop it early, while I'm already getting unemployment money and then do the last two years high on the hog, or is it better to take the debt early on, use my GI Bill all through med school, even though interest will be racking up on the debt incurred during the first of 5 years of school. EDIT: My LPO told me I'm a lazy dirtbag because I'm not studying for advancement or trying to make rank.
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Jan 17, 2013 15:13
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Omegafrog posted:Kinda off-topic here, but are there any vets here going for Nursing or have gone through a Nursing program? Just would like to talk to someone about my career progression. Currently finishing a couple gen-ed classes to apply for my 2-year ASN in Fall. Want to then do a bridge RN-BSN, and from there, ultimately, become a DNP with a focus on psychology/psychiatry. The whole bridge thing is because by the time my current college finishes merging with another local college, we will be a state college offering both ASN/BSN and bridge programs, however I will likely be done with my ASN by then and am focused on starting work soon. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but if you want to be a DNP in Psych nursing I would immediately start applying for psych nursing jobs the minute you pass the NCLEX. NP programs aren't really intended for people to slam right through from Gen Eds through DNP, they're designed to take experienced nurses and give them provider status in the healthcare system. Spend some time in both inpatient ward and outpatient clinic work, work on your ASN to BSN bridge, then eventually get accepted into a relevant DNP program. You're right that the first step is finishing your ASN though. Once you have a license apply for work at that VA hospital near you, do your time on Med/Surg if they require it (many places won't hire an inexperienced nurse for anything but med/surg) and look for an opportunity to transfer to inpatient mental health.
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Jan 17, 2013 18:23
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Beria posted:Does the Navy still do early outs if you want to go to school? I had heard they don't. Yes, but your command has to approve a gapped billet for the time between when you actually get out and when you normally would have, so you better start sucking now.
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Jan 26, 2013 18:38
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Has anybody here used the GI bill to go to medical school? I'm getting out in 9 months and I have two semesters of pre-reqs left and then I'm planning on medical school. Public/state medical schools are far more expensive than regular undergrad, will that make any difference? Also, med school is more or less year around, so I'm guessing I'll need to use 12 months per year of benefits. I haven't really looked into this in any detail, I'm just sort of probing around since I don't even know what schools I'll be competitive for until I take the MCAT. EDIT: I guess I'm just asking if anybody knows if there's special rules or stipulations or whatever about the GI bill w/r/t medical schools, since they're so much more expensive, there's all kinds of rotating out at hospitals that aren't necessarily part of the school.
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Jul 2, 2013 20:09
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Has anybody here gone to medical school on the gi bill? I'd be interested in a trip report. I'll have 24 months of benefits when I get there (I will be doing a post bac pre med this year for 12 months). In some ways it seems like that would last 3 years and in some ways it seems like that would only last two. I'm not sure exactly how it works.
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Jan 12, 2014 21:22
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gleep gloop posted:The bill is pro-rated so you only burn benefits for however long you're enrolled. If your classes are from 1 January to 14 January that's two weeks used, for example. If this twelve month enrollment is actually twelve with no breaks in the enrollment period you will burn 12 months of benefits. The issue is exactly what counts as the semester still rolling. At multiple points, you stop going to class and do rotations at hospitals in different areas of care. The schools I've looked at just have their costs listed as per-term, and I'm not sure of whether I will still need to use benefit months to cover the times I'm out of classes holding back fat flaps for a surgeon. I imagine I'll need to ask the schools directly, if there's nobody here who has actually gone to medical school.
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Jan 24, 2014 22:13
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So due to the advice of this thread, I'm going to go to my financial aid office and ask for a professional judgement since I didn't get a Pell Grant this year. So I know in advance, what will they need from me to make the judgement? Do the GI Bill housing allowances count as income for the purposes of determining Pell Grant eligibility? I haven't started pulling unemployment yet, but was planning to start in August since I didn't get a Pell. I like money.
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Jul 31, 2014 14:37
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Godholio posted:Isn't UMUC a legit school with a fake-sounding name? It's like semi-legit. Probably slightly more legit than Phoenix, but less legit than UofM. Strangely enough UPenn can't tell the difference and literally every registration session tells me I can't register for classes because they just realized I never turned in a transcript from UM-College Park, and I have to send them an e-mail explaining that I never went there. I took one math class because my chief wanted me to take classes. Never should have done it, I mean, they accepted the classes, but at this point it would have been easier to take the class again than all the loving around that one class has cost me.
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Oct 18, 2014 02:29
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UMUC is kind of like "yeah we'll take that class as a pre-req, but your BA better not be from there or lol"
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Oct 18, 2014 17:00
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iyaayas01 posted:What's the rules as far as what's considered "in-state tuition" for a public university grad school program that doesn't receive any state funding (i.e., everyone pays the same tuition, regardless of residency status)? What do you mean "the rules?" If the in-state and out-of-state prices are the same and above the state cap, you just pay that price, unless you get Yellow Ribbon. They aren't obligated to make it any cheaper for you if nobody is paying less than sticker. I've come up on that several times looking at medical schools. The thing that sucks is that they only have to consider you in-state for tuition, as opposed to tuition and preferential in-state acceptance, as far as I've seen. I would love to be able to apply in-state for Texas or California state medical schools.  EDIT: It appears I could be wrong: Maximum Reimbursement Public School All Tuition & Fee Payments for an in-State Student Private or Foreign School Up to $19,198.31 per academic year National Maximum (see next table for exceptions) I thought the cap applied to public schools too, but it looks different now than the last time I looked, so I don't really know. TheQuietWilds fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 20:23
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I just checked tonight and realized it, so I haven't really gotten to the bottom of it, but is there any obvious reason why I wouldn't have gotten my GI Bill housing allowance this month? I'm thinking I hosed up something with the new year and didn't re-submit some form I didn't know or remember about, maybe? I knew it should only be a partial payment, since I've only been in school since the middle of the month, but I should have gotten something.
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Feb 5, 2015 04:05
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Does anybody know how to go about getting the GI Bill to pay for MCAT prep courses? I keep seeing this: http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/docs/factsheets/Preparatory_courses.pdf But the link to the VA website doesn't actually help me any. I'll be finishing the bio/chem/orgo/physics portion of my premed program at the end of this summer and am looking to do an intensive MCAT prep program all next fall concurrent with biochemistry, then take the MCAT over the winter break.
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Feb 9, 2015 03:06
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I got into Penn pretty much exclusively on my vet background and letters of recommendation. I'd say there's a 0% chance they would have accepted me based solely on my undergrad performance. AFAIK they don't have a veteran quota, but the program director specifically mentioned that I was accepted on the basis of my experience, which could only really be my time as a Corpsman (since I have no other relevant experience). Programs look for diversity, because a diverse student body is inherently beneficial to education - if you're the only vet applying for a program (as I was, per program director), then your chances of getting accepted as a diversifying element are not bad, and not many vets apply for top programs. For MBA programs it might be different, I'm doing hard sciences. Whatever you're going for, throw some hail mary applications out - they only cost what $50-70 each? You never know what their admissions committee is looking for at any given time.
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Aug 5, 2015 17:06
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To be fair, enlisting actually works out for some people
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Aug 7, 2015 14:09
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Grouchio posted:I have a medical question: If I have high-functioning autism and have previously suffered chronic symptoms of PTSD from three separate occasions (from social turmoil) in the last few years, would it be respectable or dis-respectful to compare my PTSD to that of a shell-shocked war veteran's? Did you go to war, and thus have experienced both, resulting in an intimate knowledge of the relative similarity and dis-similarity of the two experiences? If not, then don't talk about things you only think you know about. You can describe what you feel, but don't assume that you know what other people have experienced. Think about it this way. If you have had cancer, do you know what HIV Positive people experience? You might think that your experience with one gives you insight into the other, but the two carry very different physical and social experiences. It's not that you're necessarily demeaning AIDS patients by comparing it to cancer, it's just that you'd be wrong to say that you've lived the same experience. You don't need the comparison to talk about your experiences, and since it has an extremely non-zero chance of being way off base, I'd err on the side of caution and just not bring up war-related PTSD (unless you've actually been to way and experienced PTSD from that as well, which I gather from your post that you haven't.
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Sep 21, 2015 21:44
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It's an IDR joke
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Sep 23, 2015 03:32
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Kawasaki Nun posted:So I was just informed that as part of my GI Bill funding I'm entitled to 1200 dollars worth of tutoring over the course of my time at college? I'm asking about this because it appears that the only stipulation for who can tutor me is that they cannot be a relative. Is this true? Can I have my friend tutor me in a class I've taken I tutor him in a class I've taken and we both get paid? Yeah how do I go about getting this tutoring money? That sounds amazing.
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Oct 10, 2015 19:43
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