<p>Our son was accepted at both Georgia Tech and the University of Texas at Austin, to start in Fall 2011. We are trying to decide where he should go.</p>
<p>Pros and Cons:
- We are Texas residents, so we would save about $20K a year going to UT Austin
- Georgia Tech is ranked #2 in Biomed Engineering, UT is #10 or so
- Many or his friends are going to UT
- The Biomed Labs and the whole program at Georgia Tech are awesome. We visited both schools and were very impressed with Biomed at GA Tech
- He plans to go to Grad school at a top university (Caltech, MIT, etc.)... so maybe graduating from GA Tech will improve his changes of getting an assistanship at that time
- He is diabetic and would be closer to home if he stays in TX... you never know!</p>
<p>Any help you can give us to make this difficult decision will be appreciated</p>
<p>I meant to say Fall 2012 :)</p>
<p>I love Tech, and it’s likely where I’ll be going (just got accepted yesterday), but I think he would be better off at UT Austin. You would save a ton of money, and UT Austin is a phenomenal school.</p>
<p>The difference in rank will never make up for the difference in tuition. Engineering school rank is really not as big of a factor as it is for other fields (like law). The prestige will not make a difference on his grad school applications, especially because UT Austin is a very highly regarded school as well. I think it would be crazy to send him to the other side of the country for 8 positions on a ranking website that is really not reflective of a school’s influence in the engineering community or the academic community. GA Tech is definitely a great school, don’t get me wrong, but UT Austin is too.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s a little too broad of a brush to paint because people value money differently. Someone with $10 million in savings will value the $80,000 over 4 years differently than someone living paycheck to paycheck. For that reason, questions involving “… is it worth it…” are idiosyncratic. </p>
<p>That said, if your son is in UT-Austin’s BME program (unfortunately I’ve known far too many people who get into UT, attend, then can’t get into the engineering school), then I wouldn’t spend the extra for GT. The prestige difference is really hard to justify for that cost unless you have the money burning a hole in your pocket.</p>
<p>As an aside, I would be really careful with a teenager who has already set his mind on graduate school. People who plan graduate school before even really know what it is or why he should go there (I’m assuming he hasn’t been working as a lab assistant at a research university yet) tend to be focused on the degree and not the education. That’s a bad recipe for disappointment when someone pushes through a field for the letters at the end of their name and not for the genuine love of the research.</p>
<p>I’m also from Texas and was accepted into UT and Georgia Tech. I’m waiting to find out about the president’s scholarship tomorrow to see if Georgia Tech will still be a possibility for me. I prefer Georgia Tech, but it will come down to the scholarships for me!</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your answers. Our son made it through the first round of the President’s scholarship, so Georgia Tech is still number 1 in his list ! We will have to wait until Feb or so to make a final decision.</p>