Not going the Easy route
With acceptance letters from three colleges, a Franklin Community High School student made a big decision: attending medical school.
When Elisabeth Deppe first applied, Purdue University had accepted her into the nursing program, while University of Kentucky did not guarantee a spot in the nursing program, she said. She also applied and was accepted at Indiana University.
After she applied, Deppe decided she wanted to tackle medical school instead.
“I walked into my mom’s room one day and told her, ‘Mom, I’m going to UK, and I’m going to med school,’” Deppe said.
Since her mother is a nurse practitioner, going to medical school wasn’t a decision her family took lightly, Deppe said.
Her parents were concerned about the toll medical school could take on her, even with experience she has from volunteering at local doctor’s offices and hospitals, Deppe said.
“I think (my parents) were kind of shocked,” Deppe said. “My dad first said, ‘No you’re not.’ I think because it was just kind of out of the blue, but there was definitely a conversation about realizing what I was getting myself into with med school just because of the rigor of it. But they’re 100 percent supportive of it.”
Now that she’s going to college outside of Indiana, Deppe will be further away from her parents, but closer to other relatives who live in Kentucky, she said. Her mother’s side of the family is from the Bluegrass State, but Deppe hadn’t spent much time in Lexington until her college visit, she said.
“Obviously you go on your tour, but then my mom and I hung out in Lexington for a while to really experience the town. I think it’s definitely more than just a college campus because you’re going to spend the next four years of your life there,” Deppe said.
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Name: Elisabeth Deppe
Age: 17
High school: Franklin Community High School
Parents: Alma and Dwayne Deppe
Future college: University of Kentucky
Major: Pre-med, either specializing in emergency medicine or gynecology
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