@Sportsman88 thanks for your reply! Did you pursue grad school afterward? I’m planning to major in business, so grad school isn’t a necessity but it could give me a leg up.
@Zinhead I’m planning to major in business. It isn’t an ivy level school, but it’s located in silicon valley so it’d be very advantageous for internships and even future employment. The state school actually has a respectable business program, but I wouldn’t have the same opportunities.
@uskoolfish Grad school is a concern of mine. If I go to the private university though, my parents wouldn’t be able to help much with grad school. If I go to the state school, they’d definitely be able to help out with grad school. Of course, the trade off is the quality of education and the student debt.
@homerdog thank you for sharing your experience! I’m slightly disheartened by the fact that the more expensive and prestigious school hasn’t helped you much career wise. All of the other things you mentioned are reasons that I want to go away though. Over half the kids at my state school are from in-state. My parents would handle a good part of the $50k, but I think I’d have to take on about 5k-6k of that in loans each year. Did you end up going to grad school? Also, was the “college experience” worth the extra money and loans?
@jym626 I’d be required to live on campus my first year as part of the terms of the scholarship. Whether I stay at home or go away, my parents want me to dorm. I’ve read that dorming is a big part of the college experience, especially during freshman year. Do you have experience dorming?
@preamble1776 this is true, and it’s one of my concerns. I’d like to be above average, but at the same time I want to be challenged. There are about 20k+ students at the state school, so it’s not exactly a small pond. If I stayed at the state school, I’d definitely join the honors program.
Yes living on campus is a fun experience. But at many schools upperclassmen choose to live off campus. Not all students spend all 4 years on campus.
@greeneggsandsam9 Hi again. I didn’t mean that it didn’t help me any less to go to the school I chose. I just believe that I would have had the career I had with or without that particular school on my resume. Yes, the school helped me find my first job. I was employed right out of school.
I know many people who have used our college connections to help their careers but I did not need to go that route. I did not go to grad school. I worked in marketing for companies like Nike and Levi’s until we decided I would stay home with our kids. I imagine these companies liked that I had a prestigious school on my resume, and perhaps it helped me get an interview, but it was up to me to drive my career aspirations.
I think, for me, it was worth the loans (whatever that means). I loved my classes and the environment of my school and for me it was the right choice. It’s not all about how much money you make after school.
If it is Stanford, just go there and don’t think about the state school.
Can you list the schools already?
It makes a difference whether you mean USD or Santa Clara, or Stanford; and UCLA or CSN…
Couldn’t you (in theory) list peer schools as substitutes if you are particularly concerned about privacy?
Am guessing the schools are u of Hawaii and Claremont McKenna
The opportunity to study abroad will help you gain independence and grow as a person.
I would go to the state school. A degree offers no guarantees so I would go invest what I can afford, and work for other opportunities elsewhere.
I am new to these forums, and I understand this issue has been discussed many other times. For us newbies, it IS NEW, so I’m adding my opinion. Maybe it’s been stated previous times, so I apologize if it’s redundant.
If you KNOW FOR A FACT you will be going to grad school, then you need to also consider what field you are entering. If you are looking at Ph.D., many of the research institutions should have funding for grad students, and there is a likelihood you will emerge without any grad school debt.
There are a few exceptions, my field being one of them (clinical psychology - I’m still paying off grad school debt, and I graduated in 1998).
If you are looking at med or law school, then I STRONGLY urge you to go to your state school. If not, you could be facing multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, coming into questionable job markets after graduation (there aren’t tons of jobs for lawyers right now, for instance).
Generally it matters most where you get your terminal degree. Some undergrad business programs are so intense that they claim you don’t need to obtain an MBA (I believe it is at Carnegie Mellon, maybe???). That sort of situation would be an exception.
It’s a tough decision, for sure. You can always consider transferring after the first year, maybe even to another school that is more middle-of-the-road. Good luck!
Welcome to cc.
The tough thing is that it’s not easy to know “for a fact” what one will do postgrad. So many students change their majors or start out premed, being “sure” they wanted to go to med school and either changed their minds or found the prereqs too difficult and redirected.
Most here on cc feel that if a family is lucky enough to be able to afford to be full pay without it dinging their retirement plans, cash flow, lifestyle, etc, then the kiddo is lucky to have the luxury of choosing the absolute first choice/best fit. But if it means taking on large loans (often a rough rule of thumb is not to graduate with more in debt than you can hope to earn your first year out of school) or the parents having to refinance their house or hit their retirement savings to fund undergrad, then it’s probably a very bad idea.
I too had a combo of funding/traineeships in grad school and student loans. took me 10 years to pay off the loans. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard, but nowadays there are students coming out of some clinical programs with undergrad/grad debt that they will have a VERY hard time getting out from under. Bad decision, IMO.
OP has now mentioned on another thread that it’s Santa Clara, not Stanford or Claremont McKenna.