Before I am crucified for even weighing these options, hear me out. I need 2nd opinions.
I’m a senior in SC and I’ve been accepted to both Mines and a tech college. My first 2 years in the Comm. College will be completely paid for by a state scholarship, then I’d transfer to a 4 year, wrap it up with my dad’s GI bill for 18 months, then pay the rest, so if I take that route I would be in theoretically much less debt than average. (The average 20 yr ROI according to PayScale is ~237k, not bad for little debt)
If I were to go to Mines on a 9k merit scholarship and 9k parental contribution (COA is ~50k/yr) and the rest in loans, I would be looking at about 32k in loans (this is if i get 0 scholarships too, worst case scenario) a year, * 4 is 128k in loans without factoring interest. (The 20 yr ROI for Mines is 840k on PayScale)
I need different opinions and perspectives because i am torn and don’t want to make a drastic decision I’ll regret later. Thank you for reading, double thanks for replying if you do.
You cannot take that much in loans without a cosigner.
Also, the Payscale differences by school are heavily affected by the mix of majors. CO Mines is mostly engineering majors, which is the reason it does well in that survey. But graduates of the same major at CO Mines and another school will show much more similar results.
Surely there are low cost schools that you can attend for engineering majors in SC, right?
Does you SC CC have any articulation agreements with any universities?
If so where?
Looks like in South Carolina, Clemson and USC are the in-state public universities with wide ranges of engineering majors. Does your community college have a well documented transfer pathway and articulation agreement to the engineering majors at those universities?
@ucbalumnus @retiredfarmer Yes, the CC offers a transfer to USC, which is where I would go to complete my major. My main concern is which option would be more worth it long in the long run. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Mines, the job offers, etc. If I were to accrue that much debt, would the outcome be worth it in terms of financial stability/overall accumulation of income compared to if I went without debt, but potentially lower pay overall?
For the same major, the pay levels for graduates of different schools will be much closer to each other than comparing Payscale whole-school results between an engineering-heavy school and a general school with lots of biology and other majors with lower paid major-related jobs.
The huge debt you are looking at for CO Mines is likely to be a heavy burden on both you and your parents, and is unlikely to get you a post-graduation outcome that will compensate for that.
With the quality of the USC programs, there should be no difference in the same majors. You should be able to look up real numbers for both institutions in the same majors for 2017, but I have not tried. Call Mines and ask them to prove their point. Let us know what happens.
You can only borrow the standard federal loans without a co-signer. Are your parents ready, willing, and able to co-sign with yu? Has their bank or credit union given them a pre-read about their finances and confirmed that they cn expect to qualify for the extra loans you would need at Mines every year for all four years?
You could do two years of pre-engineering at the community college, and then apply for transfer to Mines if you are still interested in studying there. But frankly, if you transfer into one of your own home-state public U engineering prigrams that is accerdited by ABET, when you graduate your starting salary will probably be exactly he same as it would be graduating from Mines.
If you have 18 months of GI Bill money, that’s quite a bit. You could also see if there are yellow ribbon schools where they’d make up the difference.
Mines is a great school for engineers, but not worth that much debt.