Yes it’s guaranteed. Congrats!!
https://admission.gatech.edu/transfer/first-generation-pathway
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Just seeing this today as the website was not working last night but yes, DS had been deferred from EA2 and then he did get accepted last night and is overjoyed! Best wishes to all these students. I really believe they all end up where they were went to be but the process getting there can be really tough.
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Congrats to all who heard great news yesterday!! 
The calendar for admitted students tours has plenty of availability in April.
https://application.gatech.edu/portal/freshman_sessions
The Gold Carpet Day event is also open on Saturday April 9. This one will fill up fast.
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Hello everyone
For all those waitlisted, I’ve created a new thread to share information and support each other. Please participate.
Others with knowledge and experience with the process are also encouraged to join and help. Thank you in advance!
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Yes……
Those are my daughter’s top 3 as well. What are you leaning towards?
Wow really! That’s cool. Our daughters should get in touch.
Georgia Tech was the plan but Rice was totally unexpected. And on top of that it’s affordable. We are planning a trip soon.
Interested to see if she gets any financial aid from Georgia Tech and/or USC. That will certainly be a consideration. She’s planning grad school afterwards.
What is your daughter thinking?
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Anyone is joining for Economics in Georgia Tech?
Haha. Kind of similar. She got the Provost OOS scholarship for GT so it was an early favorite. Just found out she got a half scholarship to USC and nice package from Rice as well. Rice is slowly becoming a favorite. We are headed to GT for spring break and are now thinking we may need to arrange a trip to Houston.
USC is familiar to her and she has an attachment there as we have a lot of family nearby.
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Congratulations on Rice! It’s a cool little school. Very different from Georgia Tech in feel and culture so your daughter will probably have a strong opinion one way or another. It was too small for my oldest who is now at Georgia Tech, but my high school kid is open to smaller schools and is considering it.
If they offer you the opportunity to add onto your tour with lunch in the dining hall, take it 
food was really good and that was a selling point since food at GT is not 
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Attended the Gold Carpet day this Monday. Some thoughts:
- Numerous breakout sessions covering most aspects of college admissions/life/questions one may have.
- We liked the student interactions in the breakout sessions.
- Most admin folks were available to answer questions, including on a one-on-one basis.
- Tour timings could have been better aligned with breakout session timings - we had situations we had to leave mid-way of a breakout session to attend a scheduled tour.
- Campus tour - even though it was 1.5 hours - felt short. Covered mostly the central part of the campus. Could not see dorms or inside of many buildings/hubs. The campus felt good and inviting. The campus feels large and is hilly. Having a bike may help but the kiddo will get good exercise walking.
- It is not mandatory to stay on campus even for first-year students though as per GT, 96% of them do.
- Students were just returning back from spring break.
- Area around campus - one part felt posh and another part had graffiti. GT has a police staff of about 160 (including admin folks). Sensible situational awareness will be needed. The campus felt safe.
- Kiddo is nearly set on GT even bought a Tech hoodie.
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Nice summary. Even pre-Covid, there was only a small walk through a dorm and a peek into a room. There are plenty of dorm tours for Georgia Tech on YouTube, as well as pictures on the website. Generally speaking, they are not much to write home about. You definitely don’t choose Georgia Tech for the dorms or the food
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Thanks for the info. We are attending Gold Carpet Day on 4/9. Did you have to set up your tour separately? Would rather do the tour than the breakout sessions.
My DS is a freshman at GT, majoring in EE, minoring in CS, living on West Campus, in the Honors LLC, participates in Robojackets and Hytech racing, and makes extensive use of the makerspaces, and student competition center. We’re from NJ, and he transferred in many AP and DE credits. He also has a car on campus. A year ago, at this time, we were weighing GT with Cornell, Northeastern, U Michigan, and NJ public colleges. Please let me know if there are any questions I can answer for you as you make your decisions!
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What made use choose Georgia Tech over Cornell? Thanks.
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+1 for this question depending on how tomorrow goes
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Here are the points we considered before he decided:
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Overall ‘vibe’ of the school. GT is full-on ‘techie’. EVERYONE is an engineer or CS major(with a few exceptions thrown in for variety). The whole school celebrates and embraces its ‘techie-ness’. My DS is whole-heartedly a ‘techie’. LOVES any and all aspects of engineering, technology, space exploration, cars, engines, cellphones, computers, etc etc… He loved the vibe at GT. At Cornell, engineers are made fun of(in a loving way) for their heavy workload, lack of social skills & personal hygiene, etc. (I know bc I am a Cornell engineering alum). It’s not a reason not to go there, but is something to consider, when an alternative option is available. If there was any doubt in his mind that he might not want to be an engineer, Cornell would have been the way to go.
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Facilities. This was HARD to figure out, since bc of Covid, it was tough to get into any buildings on either campus. At Cornell, we were unable to see inside of a single building. We watched every video we could find to get a sense of the labs, maker-spaces, and project team facilities. At GT, we were able to get into a few, and watched videos on the rest. From what we could see, DS preferred GT’s facilities - basically there was more cool, exciting, fun stuff for him to look forward to using. This was a big deal for him - he’s very hands-on and loves projects. There are amazing makerspaces galore, and an incredible Student Competition Center for the project teams.
3)Project Teams. At Cornell, students have to apply for spots on many of the project teams, like solar car, electric F1, cement boat, etc. There is LOTs of rejection, and at best, it takes months for this process before you can join a team. After finishing college applications, another application cycle(including the reuired resumes, cover letters, interviews, etc.) to join a team was the last thing he wanted to do. At GT, you just sign up in September, and start working with the team immediately.
- Curriculum. At Cornell, all students are required to take an ‘Intro to Engineering’ semester class freshman year. There is no guarantee you’ll get into the intro class for the major you’re interested in. You don’t declare a major until sophomore year, and it’s pretty much next-to impossible(at least it would have been for DS) to start taking any major-specific classes until fall of sophomore year, at best. He’s 100% committed to the major he chose, and was ready to dive right in at the beginning of freshman year. At GT, he was able to do this. They declare majors right away, and with his AP/DE credits, was able to take EE-specific classes from the get-go. No ‘intro’ classes required.
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AP/DE credits. Cornell accepts SOME AP credits for engineering students, but non for humanities(like AP Gov or AP History). Beyond that, they take no DE credits at all. GT accepted almost all of his AP and DE credits, and he was even able to submit a request to have a new DE credit accepted that they didn’t have already in their transfer database. He went in with over 50 credits at GT, whereas he would have maybe had 16-20 at Cornell. Huge difference.
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Cost. GT is approx $50k/year vs $80k for Cornell. Even though we did get some financial aid at Cornell for freshman year that made that year similar in price, there was no guarantee that the aid wouldn’t disappear over the following years. Also - Cornell’s financial aid department was incredibly difficult to get ahold of (eg - 3 weeks to return an email, or 4 hours on hold to speak to someone). GT’s fin aid department replied to emails in a few days.
At first, before thinking through all of the above, we were pushing him towards Cornell, but we let him decide, and GT was a clear and easy choice for him. Now, almost at the end of his first year, there’s no doubt it was the right decision.
A few other things have stood out to us now that he’s been there for a year that we didn’t really consider as much as we should
have:
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The way each school has handled Covid. They are almost opposite ends of the spectrum. Cornell continued with strict masking & testing policies for everyone, limiting clubs and activities, and requiring vaccines & boosters. At GT, masking, testing, and vaccines were all completely optional, though highly recommended. Looking at the Covid dashboards, I’d say that they ended up similarly affected by Covid, whilst GT students were much less impacted by the restrictions.
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Traveling to/from. We can pretty easily get $89 round trip airfare on Frontier from Atlanta into Trenton. He can take the Marta for $2.50 from just off campus directly to the airport. It’s about 5 hours door-to-door. So much cheaper and easier than we had expected.
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Weather. Sure it’s hot in the summer, but while they’re in school, Atlanta is pretty darn nice most of the time.
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Going to college in a city. I was pretty intimidated by the thought of a ‘big city’, but he’s had so many cool and new experiences, from theater, museums, sporting events, that he’d never had before. Also, the mountains are just a short drive away, so he can get away if he wants to.
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Study abroad. This wasn’t really something we thought about before, and I don’t know what Cornell’s options are, but GT has an entire campus in France where GT students take GT engineering classes taught by GT professors, for the same price as the Atlanta campus. He’s applying to go next spring, and is SO excited about living in Europe for four months.
I think that’s about it! As you can tell, we couldn’t be happier with the whole experience so far!
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Not sure we’ll have this decision to make but this was incredibly helpful and I really appreciate you taking the time to highlight some of the differences.
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Thanks so much for a very detailed response, pretty compelling reasons on why GT!
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Thank you so much for taking time. Best wishes to your DS.
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