<p>First off, I'll readily admit that I kind of asked this question here on this forum a few weeks ago, but my situation has changed somewhat, so I'm wondering what people's thoughts are.</p>
<p>Basically, I'm thinking about going into either law or business (and if business, probably finance). A few weeks ago I was trying to decide between UNC or SUNY Binghamton, given that after my what my parents would contribute, I'd be taking out a loan for either $22,000/year for UNC or $7,000/year for Bing. Recently, I found out that I couldn't actually get a loan for UNC because I have no credit history, and my parents wouldn't co-sign a loan that big -- my dad's going to be retiring soon, so he wants as little potential responsibility for paying back debt as possible, so he'd only be willing to co-sign one big enough for Binghamton. I didn't really want to go to Binghamton, so I applied to the Lerner business school at the University of Delaware, which based on other people's accounts, will be likely to give me a decent scholarship, lowering the cost to something near Binghamton's. (For the sake of argument, let's assume they will, since otherwise I would just forget about it and go to Binghamton.)</p>
<p>Now if I go into law, my college choice won't really matter, since law schools are only really concerned with GPA and LSAT scores. However, if I wanted to go into finance, I'm concerned that I would need to transfer after a year or two to somewhere like UNC (once I can get the loan), where there might be better opportunities for recruitment. Obviously after a year or two, the additional debt I'd have by transferring would be a lot less compared to if I had spent all four years there. But it also just bothers me that I'd be going to my first college knowing that I wouldn't be there for all four years. </p>
<p>In terms of business schools, Kenan-Flagler at UNC is only a two-year program, and if I transferred I might also look into Berkeley and UMich, which also have two-year undergrad business programs. Now, the business schools at Binghamton and Delaware are ranked 74 and 61 respectively by BusinessWeek, whereas Kenan-Flagler is 15 and Berkeley (if I could get in, which I think I'd have a chance for since I got into UNC out of state) is put at #3. That is definitely a big difference, assuming BusinessWeek's rankings are meaningful enough to be worth considering. Obviously recruitment, and the benefit of having one name on my resume versus another, may not perfectly correlate with BW rankings, but there is still a pretty large gap here.</p>
<p>So I'd end up with about $30k-56k additional debt if I transferred after two years, depending on the school, or $50-75k extra if I transferred after one year. But I also don't like the idea very much of knowing going in that I'll likely be trasferring after a year or two. However, I still do feel like I may have more opportunity for recruitment at UNC or UMich or Berkeley than at Delaware or Binghamton. </p>
<p>In terms of what I want to do, I don't think I'd be interested in IB, but pretty much anything else that gives me at least some semblance of a life while still paying well. Would a tranfer make sense?</p>