If US colleges are truely seeking a diverse student body by including a greater percentage students from low income areas of the country, the GRE would be optional for admission to grad school.
It’s the same story with medicine, which has a reputation of being sold to smart kids in low-income homes as the career that can be a golden ticket to money. MCAT is $360 and DAT is $415. $160 to apply to the first med school and $38 to apply to each additional one (it’s standard to apply to about 10) plus a secondary application fee of around $100 for each school, or $245 for to apply to the first dental school and $100 for each additional one, plus a secondary fee of about $100 for each school. Again, it’s typical to apply to about 8-15 schools because they have acceptance rates of around 4% and you really want to only have to go through the application experience once. You’re not going to do well if you don’t shell out some money for a prep course (I used DAT Bootcamp; if you study for longer than 3 months and renew your membership, you can get a 30% discount for a total cost of $419, and in-person prep courses are even pricier). Each interview requires you to buy a plane ticket and find somewhere to stay, plus you need 3 suits. You won’t be taken seriously as an applicant if you wear the same suit everyday of the 3-day interview, so it’s normal to buy suits in multiple colors (black, grey, navy) to clearly show that you’re wearing different outfits. You have very short notice on your interviews, so you’re buying plane tickets only a week or two in advance, which isn’t cheap. If all goes well, you reserve your spot for $1000, unless you get into Harvard, which has no security deposit. None of this factors in opportunity cost; for example, it’s normal to study for the MCAT or DAT full time for a summer (I studied full time for a month), so being able to afford not working for a summer drastically improves your admissions odds.
The total bill is about $10,000 just to get your foot into the door of a med or dental school.
Can I shout this from the rooftops again? Because it’s a big-ass reason why people take several gap years between undergrad and med/dental school even when they don’t want to wait until they’re 30 to be practicing.
