<p>@ucbalumnus thanks, I had no clue what the standard load was, just that the coa page said ‘7 or more units’ for the cost. However, that number still includes room and board, so it might be comparable to his home UNT, which does NOT have the major he wants. </p>
<p>I wonder if he can take some classes concurrently at a CC and have the credits transfer to a CSUN degree… If the OP is interested he could call and ask.</p>
<p>I live in Texas too, I understand your pain. The Texas schools I’m applying to are UT and A&M (only bc my dad is making me). Otherwise, all my other schools will OOS and an LAC.</p>
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<p>UNT does have a linguistics major, although the course offerings appear to be English-oriented: <a href=“Program: Linguistics, BA - University of North Texas - Acalog ACMS™”>Program: Linguistics, BA - University of North Texas - Acalog ACMS™;
<p>It also has American Sign Language courses:
<a href=“Course descriptions - University of North Texas - Acalog ACMS™”>Course descriptions - University of North Texas - Acalog ACMS™;
<p>I put a lot of effort into trying to prove that the commuter life can be amazing. But my situation is going quite fine, academically, socially, etc… The only bug is overcaring parents that get worried if I’m out too late at night (in which they wouldn’t have control if I was away). I stay out a lot, but then an urge to return home always kicks in or I get texts about when I’m coming back…
They’re especially worried when the road conditions aren’t nice, etc (maybe they don’t know my driving capabilities as of now?). It just annoys me.
But I’m doing a good thing by saving my parents money, in which soon I’ll be much more in control of my own money / I feel it will take some of the worries out of them.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I stand corrected. I thought I read in this thread that it didn’t have that, which is part of why he’d prefer not to go there. </p>
<p>@tangentline Parents will always be worried about you, regardless of if you live at home or not. Have you tried working out a system with them, where you let them know if you’re going to be out late beyond when you would normally come home? I know it seems annoying, but they just want to know that you’re okay. I’ve had that system with some of my roommates if we’re going to be out all night or something, just so the other one doesn’t worry. Also, I don’t think them worrying about you when the road conditions aren’t good is necessarily a comment on they’re judgement of your driving abilities. It’s always dangerous to drive during bad weather conditions, and I worry about people when the roads aren’t good or when they’re driving a long distance. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how good you’re driving skills are. Even the best driver can hit a patch of ice or get hit by someone else who isn’t good at driving during bad weather conditions. Parents always worry, and it’s annoying. But sending a quick text letting them know that you got somewhere safe or that you’re going to stay out late might be worth alleviating their worry and avoiding the texts asking where you are.</p>
<p>I don’t understand majoring in Linguistics to become an elementary school teacher. I thought teachers majored in…Elementary Education. The ASL sounds like a useful skill, however. </p>
<p>But to answer your question–the point of going to college used to be to get an education so you could get a JOB. “College experience” seems to be something every darling is entitled to now as well. I don’t mean to be snarky, but think about what your goal is and how to achieve it at a cost you can afford.</p>
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<p>It may not be completely clear, but it appears the UNT is not the local school.</p>
<p>I have always thought of college campuses as halfway houses for young adults. Living on campus allows students to learn how to be on their own but with the guarantee of housing and food. lol. That experience, however, can be attained at much less than $46k/year. Many students with huge amounts of debt end up right back with mom and dad, which then defeats the whole purpose of the “college experience.”</p>
<p>First of all, @ainnat, Momannoyed is right. If you want to be a teacher, don’t major in linguistics (at least not alone). If you want to teach elementary school, you need to major in elementary education and become licensed in elementary education. If you want to teach middle or high school, you need to major in a field that is taught in schools (English, math, history, etc.) and get licensed for secondary school teaching. You won’t be able to teach in public schools with a degree in linguistics, and most private schools don’t offer linguistics courses either and will still want someone with a major in traditional fields.</p>
<p>Second of all…there are many “college experiences.” In reality, most students attend a college within 50 miles of their home and commute; living in the residence halls is something that’s mostly done by the wealthy and upper-middle-class (or middle-class students who get substantial aid and/or whose parents have saved up a ton for college). My younger sister was a commuter student during her bachelor’s degree and she met lots of new people, participated in a few orgs on campus, hung out a LOT (including late at night) and was able to find a major she really loved. She attended two different local/regional colleges where (almost) everyone was a commuter student (both are currently building residential halls and trying to transition to residential campuses, but haven’t made it yet).</p>
<p>In short, NO it is not a good idea to rack up untenable debt for some mythical “college experience.” At its core, the college experience is simply about growing up, meeting lots of people your age and learning a lot about your new chosen field - all of which you can do while living at home or with relatives. And even if you wanted to have the experience of living in the res halls, that can be done far more cheaply at home in TX, which has plenty of great public universities (to which you should’ve applied this year!)</p>
<p>I would advise attending a CC for a year or two and trying to transfer into a TX public university. If you live at home and commute for a year or two, you might be able to afford to live in the res halls your last two years at a flagship TX college.</p>
<p>Where did you get $20,984 for tuition at UNT? It is more like $9700ish with tuition and fees. Also, I have been to UNT many times to visit friends. I am pretty confident that you can have a great “college experience” at UNT. I would live in the dorms, join a sorority, get involved. Truthfully if you want to be a teacher I would avoid crushing debt as you will never recover. </p>
<p>I guess I also have to ask why you would want to go out of state when the #1 education program in the country is at the University of Texas Austin and has a very reasonable tuition rate of $9680 for the education program.</p>
<p>The college experience is worth it. My story is different than most. I joined the Army right after graduating and was deployed very soon after and had to delay school for 2 years. After I finally started school I enjoyed everything about it and experienced more than I knew possible. Now that I’m about to graduate I just can’t wait because I finally want to start my life and it feels like it just drags on and on. It feels different but I definitely would not trade my experience for the world. </p>
<p>It is worth the money. I’m in 40K debt right now but I have a full time job lined up and will be able to pay it back in a couple years. </p>
<p>In my opinion everyone has to go to school now because its a different economy than back in the 50s where it was all factory and manual labor type jobs. Now its service type jobs that requires more intellectual abilities and new ideas to improve process. You need an education to move up from bottom level work to management anyways. Why not get it out of the way while you’re young because believe me I’m in my mid-twenties and it’s starting to get hard for me to concentrate on school. </p>
<p>From a future elementary teacher (about to enter college as well), I would say the “college experience” is a load of fish guts. 
At least, compared to financial stability. I don’t know what your views on debt are, but my views are that debt is completely unacceptable. And elementary teachers don’t make enough to quickly pay off college debt. Best to skimp on your “experience” of living with abandon and opt for a less stressful post-college life. </p>
<p>I am going to the college in my backyard and will be living with my parents.</p>
<p>Side note, your college doesn’t offer el ed? What?</p>
<p>I’m not trying to bump old threads, but as someone who was in a very similar situation to the OP, I wanted to chime in here. </p>
<p>I wanted to go out of state. Despite my high family income, we cannot afford the $40,000 per year having four children in our family all close to college age. Let me say, if you are determined and patient, you can get in state tuition. After my freshman year of college, I moved out of state, lived on my own for an entire year, established myself as an independent for tax purposes, rented my own off-campus apartment (and still met hundreds of college students because it was a college complex), worked full-time to support myself, and changed my drivers licence, vehicle registration, and state registered to vote. </p>
<p>This process took 12-months and at the end I was an in-state student.</p>
<p>Most Universities will have a page that describes ‘how to get residency for tuition purposes’. Some schools will offer you residency based on academic merit, others you’ll need to do what I do (I know some states are only 6 months though). </p>
<p>Good luck…</p>
<p>Personally, I’m about 15K in debt. My parents took out loans for me and are about 30K in debt. So, about the price of a decent car. I got free tuition, but the cost of living was incredibly high, which is where most of those costs come from over the span of two years. My sister is piling on debt like no other since she started at CSUSB from the beginning, but she recently got a part-time job. I figured that my degree would probably be worth it (Applied Mathematics & Statistics). I went to community college for three years and thus, did not have that freshman college experience as I was living at home with my parents. I will make sure my future children have it, but would I say it is worth it? I think it depends on the person. It wasn’t to me and I tried to save as much money as possible. If a college was too out of my price range, then I didn’t even apply even if the education was much higher quality. My parents combined make six figures, but that’s only a recent thing. They still have quite a bit of other things to pay off and so, even an in-state college cost too much for me. I have a programming job lined up for me that will pay off the debt in a timely manner.</p>
<p>People definitely want to see that degree and I’m not really sure how you get around without one these days if you want to make a lot of money. It’s just a hole you have to jump through. I don’t think society is necessarily getting smarter, I think they just expect more out of workers. If I was going to make a low starting salary coming out of college with a limited degree, I probably would’ve just done some type of trade or just sucked it up and did a degree that would pay the bills. I had originally planned on majoring in journalism when I was in high school. I think that would’ve been a huge mistake and a waste of my parents help.</p>
<p>I personally do not think that the college experience is worth taking a mortgage out on your future - people overestimate how long college actually is and underestimate the amount of time they’ll be paying off their student loan debt. Depending on the size of the loans taken out and the employment prospects of one’s major, that repayment period can be crippling (and endless). </p>
<p>Many kids (and their parents/cosigners) get too caught up in the romanticism of college and the end up making very poor financial decisions. For a 17 year old who has never even held a part time job, 80k in debt seems pretty abstract and 4.5 years down the road for repayment seems like quite a ways away and those two misperceptions coupled with one another turn out to be rather volatile. Schools in this country teach teenagers plane geometry and American history but very few offer mandatory financial literacy classes. </p>
<p>With increasing globalization and the constantly changing job market, a simple degree doesn’t always (and won’t always) cut it - there needs to be more to offer at the table, whether that be a graduate degree, internship experience, etc, so less emphasis needs to be placed on the prospects of a degree from institution A versus institution B and what a student as an individual can actually offer employers in terms of their own skills and experience. </p>
<p>There seems to be talk of independence and the significance of living in a dormitory rather than living at home and how the expense of room and board is justified because that period of time is transitionary for independence/adulthood - it seems counter intuitive to take out loans for such an expense, especially when those loans are shouldered by the parents (because 17/18 years old can sign for very few loans on their own) - a big part of being a “grown up” is taking responsibility for yourself and not swamping those around you with debt because you decided that you wanted to do your own laundry for four years. The irony is particularly devastating when those same students find their loans to be overwhelming once repayment kicks in and end up moving back home after graduation. What happened to that so-called independence? </p>
<p>@preamble1776 Great response and good insight. I’d advise though, I think a lot of people tend to automatically summarize out of state schools as unaffordable, without tendering to the option of establishing residency as an independent. Yes, it’s tedious, but it can be done. I did it. </p>
<p>If you genuinely love an out of state school, it’s not that hard to get in-state tuition if you’re willing to wait 12 months and go through the necessary steps. Of course, it’s going to be a whole lot different if you’re trying to do it as a dependent. If you’re parents don’t claim you on their taxes and you follow the procedure, in 6 to 12 months you can be a resident.</p>
<p>Just something to keep in mind. Not everyone is willing to do this, but something to factor in IMO. </p>