Of my college acceptances, I have pretty much narrowed my options down to Berkeley (in which I got into the M.E.T. program for MechE + Business) and Georgia Tech.
On one hand as I am in-state for GT, I would pay very little compared to Berkeley (in which I would be graduating with over $200k in debt). On the other hand, I am really interested in combining engineering and business and hope to take an entrepreneurial route sometime after college, so the Berkeley M.E.T. program and Berkeley’s proximity to Silicon Valley are very appealing to me.
I’m having a very hard time deciding so any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Dude. $200K in debt when you graduate? And you’d be turning down Georgia Tech…one of the top 5 schools in the entire world for mechanical engineering? Bonus: Start your first business with the $200,000 that you saved.
Yeah, even as cool as Cal and the MET program are, that cannot compare with a top-notch school that won’t have you in debt when you are just starting out in your professional life. Choosing Georgia is a gift you will thank yourself for over and over again post graduation.
You cannot take anywhere near that much in debt without a cosigner, and that much debt for undergraduate is a bad idea anyway, even if someone cosigns. (Even highly paid physicians can struggle under the burden of that much debt, which is unfortunately common for medical school.)
Though Berkeley MET is very selective it is also very new. It doesn’t have a track record yet. If the rest of Berkeley programs are any indication MET will be just like one of those cutthroat and impersonal programs at Berkeley. I would say GaTech is a better option in this case.
@treebound8 MET is neither of those things mentioned above. As you already know MET is a stand alone program with its own staff and funded by external sources. Their raison d’etre is getting you into classes that are full, finding housing and securing internships. MET is more collaborative than cut throat. One second was offered a paid internship that he decided to decline, he gave the recruiter the MET office information and the company ended up hiring another MET student.
All that said, is it worth $200K of debt? Absolutely not. There are ways to bring the costs down slightly but no where near in state GT. Go to GT and save the money.
