Duke Financial Aid... a joke?

<p>If you get into a good grad program, usually tuition and fees are waived and you get a living stipend (~$15-25,000 a year).</p>

<p>Assuming Frisbee actually means graduate school, rather than professional school.</p>

<p>what is the difference?</p>

<p>Wait, how are tuition and fees waived? (btw, is it easy to get into Duke grad school for engineering if you attend Duke undergrad)</p>

<p>Graduate schools, especially PhD programs, tend to waive tuition and fees for their students, with the caveat of said students doing things like being TAs or teaching classes. </p>

<p>Professional schools are what people mean when they are talking about things like law, medicine, and business.</p>

<p>I don't know much about the engineering school so I'll let someone else field that last question. :)</p>

<p>Hi Frisbee,</p>

<p>Engineering careers are reasonably lucrative as well. Salary.com usually has a pretty good mechanism for determining these things - and the advantage to engineering is that you get to start right away, meaning you pay less overall in interest!</p>

<p>With that said, it's often said to me that biomedical engineers have to go to graduate school (for a masters or PhD) before they are seriously employable. Electrical, Computer, Mechanical, or Civil Engineers are all employable straight out of college.</p>

<p>So if I want to go to graduate school at Duke for engineering, they would not have to pay tuition if I agree to be a TA for a semester?</p>

<p>I would not have to pay?...sorry</p>

<p>Ok, before you all rush to judge me as crazy, I should clarify a few things. :P</p>

<p>When I said a 20,000/year EFC was a joke for our family, I should have said parents . . . </p>

<p>While I was in high school my big brother's business exploded . . . he flunked out of college but he's a computer whiz with great business sense and has an equally gifted business partner - he's a lucky guy. Anyway, despite an 8-year age difference, we are really close, and first he offered me a job with him right out of high school. Both my parents and I were strongly against that - I really want to work for him, but I also really wanted to go to college and earn the degrees that would make me worthy of the job because I'm actually qualified and not because we are brothers. Also, I really wanted to study law, both because it's what I've always wanted to do, and because it's just a good investment - what if my brother's business took a down turn, etc. </p>

<p>So then, he insisted on paying our FC. Although I would have been willing to take that money :P, my parents were opposed to the idea - they have always refused financial help from him (part pride, part life philosophy about wealth, hard work, etc.) and they told me that it was my investment and I should not count on him or even on them but on myself - they would cosign so I could get the loans, but it would be my responsibility. They just have this thing about hard work and doing it on your own.</p>

<p>That being said, their reservations about me doing this on my own haven't stopped him from offering me a great job with great pay once I'm done here (or from sneaking me some spending money in the mean time). I have worked summers for him and I plan on working for him this summer and next year while I decide if I want to go to law school after one year or wait a few more and then get an MBA (which would probably help the business more in the long run, but I'm just set on law). As long as things keep going well for his business, I guess I have a safety net that many financial aid kids don't - I am definitely lucky. And if something suddenly happens to his business, I'll have a law degree to fall back on.</p>

<p>Sorry to spill my life story. :P The guaranteed job w/ my bro probably influenced my decision quite a bit . . . but I don't know, I would still like to think that I would have done this anyway - I have loved the past 4 years and wouldn't give them up for anything.</p>

<p>Frisbee - I'm not entirely sure how the engineering school works. It might be like most business schools, in which PhD students have their tuition and fees waived, while MBA (Masters, in your case) students have to pay.</p>

<p>Alex, when you first said "exploded", I thought you meant in a bad way!</p>

<p>lol, sorry! Hmmm . . . howabout blew up? Nope . . Hmm. . . took off? that is probably better. Any way you say it, he started raking it in. :P</p>

<p>wowowowow</p>

<p>Ok so the 3k offer from Duke... just got told it won't change most likely.... they will not even ATTEMPT to match Penn's 27k offer.</p>

<p>Sucks for them.</p>

<p>Guess it's Wharton 100% then.</p>

<p>Dang, that is one huge discrepancy.</p>

<p>Frisbee,
I'd have to say it would depend on the specific engineering program, advisor, degree, etc. My dad got his undergrad degree in mech and mat sci at Duke and continued on there through masters' and Ph.d degrees. The graduate level tuition basically paid for itself and was even supplemented with stipends at times through TAing and grants, I think. If a student is working on research as part of a grant through industry, it can subsidize the grad students working on it and be profitable for the school, professors. everyone. At least this is the way he said it was when he was there.</p>

<p>Heh, MY package is pretty bad and is 1/3 less than the other schools I've gotten into. And considering Duke's engineering isn't that great, I'm pretty sure I won't be going.</p>

<p>My financial aid package is freaking super! I guess something good came out of being relatively poor. I have a scholarship interview on the 10th, so it's good to know that I'll be getting some money either way. There was no way I was going to be able to afford to go to Duke without the financial aid package I received.</p>

<p>hey med1488, duke offered me a gr8 deal $40k in grant, n $ 2.1k loan n 900$ wstudy...they also told me to pay bout 5k$ less than i offered..heh..</p>

<p>how easy is it to get into investment banking out of duke? i know ibanking has a lot to do with where you went -- best jobs go to wharton, princeton, etc grads. i plan on double majoring in economics and public policy, or majoring in public policy with economics minor and management certificate program... something like that</p>

<p>IBanking jobs - or, more generally, finance jobs - are very common around Duke grads.</p>