My DD has been accepted to the engineering schools at Clemson and Bama and to the honors college for both. While originally she was gung ho BAMA, she has since decided after multiple campus visits that Clemson is her first choice. Here comes the quandary. Bama is offering a full tuition scholarship but is 10 hours away, while Clemson is only offering 10K, leaving her with 32K per year to pay but is 5 hours away. We can pay the living expenses at Bama or $20K toward the $32. She has had so many people tell her not to worry about the student loans because if she graduates from Clemson she can make them up easily but we are worried about her graduating with $48K in undergrad debt versus maybe none. Is Clemson that better an option. She constantly talks about their networking, internships, and other possibilities. Also she is vacillating between engineering and applied math.
I’d go to Bama. She will be happy to have no debt when she graduates.
We were very impressed with Alabama, and the difference in engineering rankings (#105- Alabama vs #65 Clemson) is not appreciable enough to turn down a full tuition scholarship. That is $120K cheaper than Clemson! In addition the Alabama facilities are world class. An 18 yr old does not understand how crippling starting your first job with debt exceeding your annual take home pay can be. Alabama dorms are nicer too.
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She's had so many people tell her not to worry about student loans because if she graduates from Clemson she can make them up easily.
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Why is she talking to “so many people” who don’t know what they’re talking about? A company isn’t going to pay her more for having a Clemson degree. She will not get paid a dime more. Who are these people?
How is she going to feel being burdened with $50k of debt when she realizes that her fellow new-hires are being paid the same as she, but they went to schools like Bama or maybe Georgia State or maybe UAH or someplace else…and they have NO debt?
I’ll weigh in on the Clemson side. From a purely financial aspect, of course Bama is the logical choice . What strikes me most is you’re statement that " after multiple campus visits, she has decided that Clemson is her first choice" Have you discussed with her why it is her first choice? Is it the distance? Does she not feel comfortable at Bama? I don’t know because I’ve never visited Bama, so I make it a practice not to comment on a school that I haven’t visited, but it sounds like there is something that is giving her hesitation to commit to Bama and that should be discussed. That being said, in my college search( which included Clemson) I don’t believe that Clemson’s opportunities for internships, co ops , networking are any more valuable. They are rated #1 in career placement services. And @TooOld4School your statement regarding the dorms at Bama being nicer may no longer be accurate. Clemson is building a brand new Honors dorm and complex that overlooks Death Valley to be open this summer, so it’s hard to compare something when it’s not completed yet . I’m not saying that she should pick Clemson over Bama. I’m just saying the reasons she prefers Clemson over Bama should be closely looked at. And just in case someone may believe that I’m biased towards Clemson, my son was also accepted at Clemson and Calhoun Honors for Fall 2016 , and he chose another school once he compared all the internships , travel abroad , placement experiences and determined in his opinion, they were basically the same at all of the schools he applied to. Good luck in your families decision .
OP is your DD’s ACT/SAT high enough (ACT 32 equiv) where she will have the full tuition at UA for any major? This fall is the last time UA eng/CS with OOS students with ACT/SAT of 30 and 31 obtain the extra scholarship to have full tuition. However she will still receive a lot more scholarship at UA than Clemson if she does decide to change majors to Applied Math. My DD has a friend that did change from eng to math, but her ACT was 32; however she did lose the additional $2500/year engineering scholarship.
The distance from home may seem a bit emotionally like a bigger deal (5 hours versus 10 hours), but the money difference is HUGE.
The parents and student together have to decide cost/benefit.
I can tell you as a UA parent of an engineering student, that my DD is getting an excellent education, and has had two summer internships already (one with a top 10 ‘best company’ in her field of engineering, and the other with an international firm in her field).
I can tell you as a parent that not having UG debt for my two kids (and for others, minimizing the school debt) is a very large burden off of us, and the kids also appreciate they do not have that hanging over them. Why introduce a financial burden?
If your student wants to take full advantage of the University’s opportunities, take advantage of opportunities at UA Honors Programs - mine is in the STEM MBA program (which following the program, will have her MBA exactly one calendar year after finishing her UG degree). Another sizable program is Emerging Scholars where UG students can get involved in research in their field as a freshman. I cannot imagine Clemson networking, internships, etc being any different than what is done via UA. In fact, DD’s current internship (which begins in May) - the office local to where we live had historically a number of interning students from another school, but that didn’t stop them from interviewing and hiring DD.
My DD had to decide between the same two schools. She really preferred Clemson in a lot of ways and was happy to get into their honors program. Clemson is two hours away and Alabama is about 6 hours away, so it would have been nice to have her a little closer to home. But when we weighed all the pros and cons, we just couldn’t justify the debt we would have to take on for her to go to Clemson.
She is committed to Alabama now and she’s all in. She also is really excited about the Stem to MBA program.
And there is no denying how impressive the engineering facilities at Alabama are.
One more thing. The full tuition scholarship is going to cover tuition for 8 semesters no matter how much the price of tuition goes up over the next 4 years. The Clemson scholarship could very well put her in more than 48k of debt as the price of tuition goes up. 48 assumes there is no increase and that’s unlikely.
Is full tuition the actual $25,000? My daughter has a scholarship for “tuition” at UMASS for receiving advanced on her MCAS testing. It only amounts to a $1,700 value. That was very misleading. We visited UAlabama on Tuesday. She LOVED it. What has your research concluded about the quality of the engineering program? What genre engineering is your daughter interested in? This is so stressful. I have one more year. My DD is a junior. We met a girl that was in the STEM to MBA program too. My daughter seemed to like that too. Did you have to apply for that initially? Also, we have friends that sent their son to Ohio State. They didn’t realize acceptance to OHIO did not include acceptance into the Aerospace Engineering Program. He didn’t get accepted into the program the first time. Now he has to go another year and the scholarship does not include the 5th year. That would have been nice to know up front. He could have went to RPI for comparable tuition and finished in 4 years. 
In Alabama are you in the program right away? Thank you for any insight you can provide.
DS had the same scholarship $$ from Clemson and we walked away, even though I love where Clemson is located and a couple programs they have.
OOS tuition is just too high, even with that award. We didn’t think there was enough difference between the two schools to justify the price difference.
That’s a good point above that the tuition could even go up, which obviously would diminish the value of that award.
Are you prepared to co-sign loans with her if she decides on Clemson? She will need you to do so as she can’t borrow $12,000 a year on her own.
From a purely financial standpoint, I don’t think it makes sense to go $48,000 in debt for Clemson. I don’t think her job prospects will be that much greater, and I think she can get a great education at either school. Of course I can see other reasons that your daughter might want to choose Clemson. Clemson is smaller than Alabama, which might appeal to some students. Obviously she’s visited both and preferred Clemson, so there must be something (tangible or not) that she really likes, and there’s something to be said for that. If she had visited Alabama and hated it, I could maybe see going into debt for Clemson. There’s no point in being miserable for 4 years. But you said she was gung ho Alabama at one point, so it must be a school she could see herself attending. That being the case, I would strongly discourage my child from going into debt unless I heard a very compelling reason to go to Clemson. I think there are networking and internship opportunities at both schools, so that doesn’t sound compelling to me. I have heard that Alabama is more focused on co-ops than internships, but I am not familiar enough with the engineering program to say that it’s definitely the case, but it may be something to investigate further.
My daughter had to decide between a full tuition scholarship at Alabama and full pay at another state flagship closer to our home and with a higher ranking overall and in her major. We were willing to pay for the other school if she really wanted to go there, but neither we nor she would have had to go into debt to do so. If we could not have paid for it out of pocket, I doubt we would have co-signed loans and enabled her to go into debt when there was a perfectly acceptable option on the table that wouldn’t require it. I just didn’t see enough difference between one state flagship and another to warrant it.
Yes, at Bama the Presidential scholarship is really for full tuition…about $26k per year for an OOS…and the award does increase with each tuition increase…which is a huge plus over other schools that just give a set amount, which effectively diminishes the strength of the award as the schools increase tuition each year.
A $10k award from Clemson, which currently has OOS tuition at $32k, will likely rise each year, making the net-tuition-cost $25k-30k per year by senior year (plus room, board, books, fees, etc)
We visited Clemson first, and my son loved it. Even being a NMF, the merit wasn’t that great. We later visited Bama and it had a similar “feel” and MUCH better merit. Because of my son’s experience, when other high stats students have visited Clemson first, but didn’t like the likely net-price, I’ve steered them to Bama and they’ve happily enrolled with better merit.
One aspect that I think makes Bama a better choice is the “less rural” aspect. Clemson has that little area of off-campus hang-outs that we enjoyed visiting, but it is a very small area, and since the area is so rural, not a whole lot more is around. Downtown is small.
Alabama is not like UMASS, where the bulk of the cost is in the fees, not the tuition. Alabama does have some course fees which are not covered by the scholarship, but they’re not huge. Also, full tuition means full tuition, meaning that if tuition increases over the four years, the scholarship does as well.
If a student has the GPA and ACT/SAT to qualify for the UA Presidential Scholarship, most will have a very good student aptitude for academic success - so adjusting to a ‘large’ school would be part of the transition from HS to college. However one does need to find a ‘tribe’ - so many students take advantage of some opportunities at UA to get on campus early (honors or non-honors type of opportunities) and get familiar with students that have similar interests, etc. Some kids match up well with room-mates and other kids in their dorm situation. Honors College is a smaller grouping of students at UA.
True, at UA (like many/most schools) there are varying course fees - looking at DD’s breakdown, $40 chemistry, physics course fee $80, eng facil/tech coll fee $275, engineering college fee $220. The engineering scholarship ($1250/semester) goes a long way paying these fees plus some other costs.
DD went to a fairly large public MS (7-8-9), 350 - 400 in her grade level; 10-11-12 went to a private college prep HS (she was in the smallest class, graduating class of 85). No problem adjusting to UA, but was use to putting in the study time and has the aptitude for science/math/engineering.
I would definitely not borrow to go to Clemson over Bama. They have so much in common in terms of campus life. If money’s no object, sure, go with the kid’s first choice, but don’t borrow to get a similar experience and education.