Cornell vs UVA (debt vs no debt)

OP said that his parents would be willing to co-sign for any higher amount.

$10,000 per year is at the outer limit of what a student can reasonably expect to be able to self fund with federal direct loans and work earnings during the school year and summers (i.e. no cosigned loans). If parents plus financial aid grants (not loans or work-study) cover all but $10,000 per year, then the school in question is barely in reach financially. But you do not have a lot of room for error or bad luck (e.g. not finding a job, or school work is heavy enough to prevent working enough during the school year) here.

Parents cosigning your student loan is generally a bad idea for both you and them.

Based on posts of (former) cc poster redbeard, the DC area is a very big market for OR, and the pay is very good. I have to believe UVA is clued into that market. Startups & silicon valley & wall street maybe less so, but you probably won’t starve.

Cornell is obviously a good choice for you, based on your current interests, but results are not guaranteed. Whereas debt repayment is. By you, actually.

So I don’t know, these are difficult decisions. Fifteen years from now, if you wind up in some Bay area startup, having paid off your loans from stock options after your firm goes public, you will be thanking your lucky stars that you trusted your instincts.
On the other hand, if you wind up in some govenment agency doing troop deployment studies, alongside graduates of UVA, you might think about what a big idiot you were.

There are certainly UVa grads working in the tech industry in Silicon Valley as well as New York,DC,etc. My son works in the tech industry right now, with all the stock options that go with it. UVa did not hinder him at all. You seem determined to go to Cornell and that’s okay since you prefer it. As long as you’re willing to take on debt to do so, that’s fine as long as you’re prepared to deal with the years of payments that are involved. Good luck!

There are probably some grads of every sizable school working in just about every area of the country. But it seems reasonable to me that Cornell may be more heavily recruited out of region in these particular areas of endeavor than UVa is. Because it is recognized as being among the top programs nationally in these areas, and UVa isn’t. Also it is a sizable program. I got my first job out of college at a large engineering firm in the midwest. That firm only recruited out-of-region at four schools on the east coast that I remember. They were MIT, Cornell, RPI and Georgia Tech.

That doesn’t mean OP will wind up out of region though. There is likely a regional bias to recruiting at Cornell too. In my day lots of people wound up all over the country, including the “hot” tech firms of the day out west. but others didn’t.

And I have no current connection with recruiting at either school, so take this for what it’s worth.

I am not disagreeing that Cornell has a top program and probably doea place more grads in tech. The question is whether or not it is worth a substantial cost difference and debt. It may or may not be. UVa’ s Commerce School is also a top program. UVa’ s engineering school is not as prominent as Cornell’s but if is still well regarded. Systems and Information Engineering is a very good program there and may have been a decent fit for the OP. But the OP clearly wants to go to Cornell so I hope it will work out with as little debt as possible. The only anecdotal exprience I have with Cornell’s ORIE involves my other son, who was in Industrial and Systems Engineering at VT. He interned on the same project with a Cornell ORIE student. I know it’s a great program .

“The only anecdotal exprience I have with Cornell’s ORIE involves my other son, who was in Industrial and Systems Engineering at VT. He interned on the same project with a Cornell ORIE student.”

An entirely realistic outcome, as my last sentence of #22 was intended to imply.
And quite far from a tragedy either, far from it (save for the unneccessary, in retrospect, debt in one case vs the other).

Except it wasn’t a “government agency” they were interning at. It was a science and technology consulting firm

This is a personal, family decision. I would not have paid extra for either son to attend Cornell but other famikies make those kinds of decisions all the time, especially when the family is wealthy . Merit or need based aid can also bring down the cost to no more than instate costs.That does not seem to be the case in this situaion (since large debt is being considered) which makes the decision difficult because the OP really likes the more expensive option.

Actually at that bay area startup OP will likely also find himself working alongside grads of local in-region (to it) colleges. As I did at my firm. That’s just how it is.