Thanks everyone for the advice so far! I have a lot of research yet to do, and I'm hoping to be able to travel to some of these places before I decide.
Luckily my undergrad education is completely paid for by scholarships and whatnot, so I won't have to worry about that. I am gearing towards possibly doing podiatry school, which greatly limits where I can actually go. I believe there are only eight podiatry schools in all of the US.
Ultimately I would love to go to a school in a state I will end up living for some years. I really don't want to stay in NJ. I did briefly look into our one NJ med school, and it is in Newark of all places (Terrible city, ugly area, VERY expensive school, even for in state residents). If I decided to stay around here, I would probably look into John's Hopkins, which is in Maryland. Beautiful school and a nice area, but I don't really want to stay on the east coast. I'm not ruling that out as an option though. It's only about three or four hours from home.
I never really thought about schools out of the country, but its always another possibility! This early in the game, I'm not going to rule anything out.
As far as paying loans and what not, I will have to consider all of that too. I'm hoping to get some scholarships, but I know I won't be able to get a 100% one like I did for my undergrad. My friend who is going for podiatry told me I have an excellent chance of getting a 50% scholarship, but that still leaves me with thousands of dollars in loans. Hopefully I will be able to pay some of that off with the money I make doing internships and then the rest will get payed off when I get a more steady job. Of course, moving out on my own also means I'm going to have to consider health insurance, and where I will get money to pay for everything else...which probably means working a job while going to school.
So much to consider, but I figure other people have done it successfully!
