Or are willing to be full pay. There is a certain cost differential above which GT is not worth it over Rutgers honors particularly for CS which is crazy employable.
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@VirginiaBelle @momprof9904 - Thanks a lot! How much does the college brand help in the future…Is being an alum of NYU or Georgia Tech better than being a Rutgers alum in the long run?
Offcourse, Rutgers is a no-brainer due to its lower cost. However, not sure if that compromises anything else though.
IMO, brand doesn’t matter so much in CS and the biggest thing you’ll be giving up is potentially meeting other high-achieving kids and launching a startup. More likely that happens at GaTech than at Rutgers (or NYU).
But life doesn’t end after undergrad. He will meet those types of people at a Big N company. Also, with the money saved, you can also afford a masters program that has students with that type of entrepreneurial spirit. The money saved could also afford him an early retirement with compounding, which would allow him the freedom to do whatever.
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College brand is pretty irrelevant in computer science from what I understand. There is such an incredibly high demand that these kids can basically write their own ticket if they have done well. In this day and age many many jobs for internships are gotten not through in person college visits but through the Internet.
College brand doesn’t really matter after your first job. Employers don’t read US news rankings. In our mind, paying a premium was worth it for MIT but after that probably not. We are in state Georgia Tech so that was the choice.
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Rutgers SOE + Honors > NYU Tandon as of now. Rutgers SOE Honors >>NYU Tandon Spring, especially wrt value.
(I understand that among NJ HS students, NYU has more “cachet” than Rutgers. However, employers aren’t HS students. 
In addition, Honors is a big deal.)
Georgia Tech will offer more opportunities than Rutgers or NYU but if admitted from the WL, may not be among the top or median students, so may not get to enjoy these opportunities as might be in the bottom quarter of the class. It’d be a wager on student’s work ethics and academic preparation at full pay, so only your family would know whether it’s worth it.
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Not so sure about that categorization of the Georgia Tech waitlist. My son is waitlisted in state with a 35 ACT superscore (34 one sitting), only one B in high school (88 in 9th grade), and 6 APs, which is a lot for his competitive private school. Top of his class. Two other boys that are his friends from the same school are also waitlisted with slightly higher grades (didn’t have the B). All three fall well within Naviance range for entry during prior years. I am sure they are not alone in waitlisted kids.
I would presume an out of state kid who got into Rutgers honors and NYU, albeit for the spring, is similarly high stats.
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I see Stony Brook in my son’s future …
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Among the very top talent (the kids who will go on to get PhD’s and/or make major groundbreaking discoveries in CS), the school could make a difference because some schools simply possess much deeper expertise (on the bleeding edge) in certain subfields than others.
But unless your kid already knows what subfield of CS he wants to concentrate in and is decently far down that route, it doesn’t make sense to pay a ton more.
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My kid actually already knows that he wants to work on Artificial Intelligence and has done projects during his internship the summer of junior year at very competitive NJ Governor school at Rutgers along with publishing an IEEE paper for MIT conference. So, I would say that he is down the road, maybe not too far just yet.
Waiting for the waitlist decisions is painful, to say the least, and so much work and research as we get these. Thanks all for your insights and help. I will keep you posted.
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Let’s be honest. A WL is a rejection but a hedge for the school of it falls short. Yes you may get off but you need to move where you deposited and not think of the WL. Otherwise you will likely go into your program disappointed. And that’s unfair (to the student) after working so hard and having solid options. Don’t even think about the WL. If it comes then but assume it’s not happening.
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Good Point. 
Georgia Tech is definitely a better CS and engineering school than NYU and most other schools, but definitely take the free ride at NYU. NYU is a solid school.