<p>Our son got admitted to several colleges but the two options he is actually considering, Georgia Tech and UMD College park. For both, it would be engineering but he is not 100% sure about which specialization, the choices are nuclear, electrical or comupter engineering. He got accepted to GTech to Nuclear engineering with a small scholarship from NRC. In UMD, there is not Nuclear undegrad program so he applied to Computer eng. Got 100% tuition scholarship (but room and board, etc still for us to pay).
Comparing both:
- with GTech, it will be about 100K for 4 years, for all the tuition, room and board, and other expenses - that is already coutning the scholarship and another tuition benefits we (parents) have. Still a lot of money.
- with UMD, it will be 55K total for all expenses. it is in-state tuition but we actually don't need to pay because it is covered by scholarship.</p>
<p>So, there are 2 questions 1) for the school comparison, whether GTech is going to give him such significant benefits to justify extra 50K investment. 2) for the specialization,
is it still worth going to GTech if he decides later that he does not want to do nuclear engineering but something else. In this case, his scholarship will have to be repaid because it is only for nuclear program. </p>
<p>What are your thoughts? Anyone who had to make similar choice and what did you decide?</p>