My daughter received a 4-year free tuition at Ohio State University, but she was also accepted at Georgia Tech. She is having a hard time weighing the benefits of a free education at OSU over the potential opportunities from a high ranking out-of-state Engineering school like GA Tech. Tuition at GaTech is estimated at $170,000. Any thoughts?
Go Bucks! (The team, not money leaving your wallet.)
Can’t believe u are even giving this a second thought…
Since both schools are highly favored by job recruiters, go for the one that is 170,000 bucks cheaper (unless 170k is chump change to u).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060
Indeed, it’s hard for me to imagine why this is a tough decision.
GTech is obviously highly-regarded for engineering, but it’s still a relatively big state school with big weed-out classes, the same high student-faculty as OSU and a 6-year graduation rate well short of 90% (4-year graduation rate around 40%).
It also isn’t an Ivy/equivalent that is a target school for investment banks or MBB consulting. And in the tech field where prestige seems to matter most (CS), GTech, while considered a good school, still isn’t considered among the very best or is among the very top schools when it comes to placement in to the top software companies.
You’re not comparing 2 schools in 2 obviously different classes/tiers, then. At most, GTech may be considered a half-tier more prestigious than OSU, but I daresay most people (including employers) would consider them in the same class these days now that OSU has improved its selectivity and isn’t open-admissions like it was decades ago.
So I agree with @GMTplus7: Unless $170K just isn’t a big deal to you, I can’t see why you’d spend way more money for roughly the same education.
Free
This is such a no-brainer. OSU
maybe you’re a multi-millionaire and $170k means nothing to you???
Employers won’t care…and they won’t pay a GT grad more. I can’t imagine how annoyed I’d be if after blowing all that money and then finding out that my child’s fellow new-hires from OSU or Iowa State or CSULB or UArizona were being paid the same as my kid…but that’s what would happen.
Every state has a vested interest in having quality eng’g programs. OSU has a high quality program.
Take the money and run (to Columbus).
You are comparing two very similar schools…both large flagship type research universities. It’s not line you are comparing OSU to MIT. Georgia Tech is very similar to OSU in many ways.
I would need to hear a very compelling reason why GT is the better choice considering the $170,000 price difference.
Even if is was free OSU vs pay MIT, it’s still an easy decision. Speaking as someone who works with folks from both schools (and many others) there is no real significant difference between the two. UG engineering is pretty standardized.
Agree with all, this is not a very difficult decision. Ohio for free would trump out of state tuition for a more similar than not program unless $170,000 doesn’t mean anything to you in which case flip a coin.
@DecideSomeHow, the advantages that MIT would offer would be in the fields outside of engineering. In this case, GTech wouldn’t have them anyway, so it’s an easy decision.
My D2 had exactly the same options (full tuition at OSU and large merit scholarships to a few others) but chose GTech for ChemE last year. She had wittled down her shortlist to GTech, UCB and UMich (she did not get into MIT and Stanford). She is super happy with her choice and doing very well at GTech.
Let me know if you need some more info.
i012575, would you be willing to share why your daughter chose GT?
Yes, would like to hear that too. Please share. Thanks!
In this case, tOSU. Unless you are footing the entire bill at Georgia Tech, and daughter won’t get any flack for it. In that case, Georgia Tech is fine. But even then, she’s not going to get that much more advantage, as opposed to tOSU.
Despite the reigning football culture, tOSU is, hands-down, a more well-rounded research institution. It is possible your daughter may flourish more as a result of the resources available to her in Columbus.
And I’m not usually a tOSU fan. But it pays to be objective here – it is a strong research U. in many respects.
@thumper1, I made out a list of colleges for her to apply. She was fine with my list as long as it did not include Penn State (hates it) and CMU (sister goes to Pitt Med, so too close to… you know !!). We visited a few after she had got her acceptances. I used to live in eastern PA (moved to NYC recently) but work mostly in the Bay area. Her dream school was Stanford but unfortunately she did not make it there. Somehow, she could not be convinced of looking beyond UCB, UMich and GTech. We decided on GTech primarily based on a) city campus b) flexibility to change streams esp. from ChemE to say CS c) choice of internships vs coops but most importantly, d) current experiences of the two children of close friends at GTech.
Though money always plays a role in deciding (for example, there wasn’t a single Ivy in her list … cannot justify at least $20k/yr more for an Engg. degree), D2 I guess knew that it was not going to be a limiting factor for her college selection.
She has great choices. It really rests on what your family can comfortably afford. If paying for GT is not a problem and it is her preferred school that is certainly a great choice. If you’d have to take out debt for GT then I’d head right to OSU.
If, IF money is not an issue, then it should be her choice. Can’t speak to USU, but Tech has great co-op opportunities and a fabulous career placement office with a well attended career fair with many big companies represented.
Now, that said, DS#1 chose a smaller U over GaTech, and GaTech would have been very inexpensive for us. At the time, DS wanted to major in applied physics, and the dept at Tech was going more in the theoretical physics direction. Ironically, DS changed his major to an engineering major, but he loved his college choice and is doing fine in his career.
I agree with Jym. We did not insist or even suggest taking the least expensive choices for our kids As long as the school was within what we had established we could willingly pay, it was fine even if they had a free, full ride choice in the group (which some of them did). It’s really a personal family decision as to whether or not spend the differentials in cost for school choice, and how far to go with it.
The best things in life are free. 
Congrats to OP’s kid!