I was accepted into GW Elliott and WLP and it was my #1 choice for a while. I’m very interested in security/intelligence. I I plan on attending law school and I don’t know if it’s worth it to go into a bit of debt for UG. I got a half scholarship here and am predicted to accumulate approx 24,000 in debt overall at GW.
Meanwhile, I have a full ride at the University of Florida honors college (ranked 10 spots higher than GW nationally).
TL;DR Are the internships/general opportunities at GW worth the money, and does it even really matter if I just plan on going to law school anyway.
If you’re only going into debt $24K, my recommendation would be to go to GW. I paid approximately $30K for my GW degree and found that amount totally manageable. Especially if you’re interested in security studies, as the classes and professors available at GW (not to mention the incredibly internship opportunities) are excellent in that regard.
24k is perfectly manageable, and it’s going to be a RELATIVE drop in the bucket compared to what you’re gonna shell out for law school. i would definitely say GW would be worth the extra academic, professional, networking, and experiential opportunities you would receive for a fairly manageable amount of debt.
also, while there might be a slight variation in the universities’ OVERALL rankings, the Elliott school is ranked top 10 for international studies, ahead of most of the Ivies. U of F isn’t ranked, like at all. For your discipline, GW is unambiguously superior academically. Quite frankly, UF isn’t on a lot of peoples’ radars when it comes to politics. So do factor in the individual rankings for your particular area of study in addition to overall rankings, as overall rankings don’t tell the whole story. harvard, for example, is ranked number 1 nationally overall, but has a relatively weak engineering department and outranked in engineering by lower ranked schools like purdue.