<p>I recently was admitted to all of these schools and am having trouble choosing. My intended major is International Relations.I was wondering about the strength of the program at each school. When it comes to my financial situation UT and Smith gave me no financial aid, MHC awarded me a 15k leadership scholarship, and I've yet to see my package from GWU. My parents are currently willing to contribute 30k to my college studies, my EFC is a little over 57k, and I do not mind taking out loans.The cold weather slightly deters me from going to an east coast school, but the small class sizes, awesome alumni network, and amazing opportunities are a plus. UT is close to home, has an amazing alumni network, a lot of school spirit, and is an awesome city, but the classes are huge. What's your take on this?Can anyone expanded on the pros and cons of each school and their program?</p>
<p>I would go to Texas. Great school, affordable, close to home. </p>
<p>It sounds like your parents are willing to pay for the state school. I would let them and make full advantage of that. As an IR major, you’ll want to study abroad. Save your money to do that. </p>
<p>I think you need to provide a post-FA COA for each of them. All have their virtues, but according to what I’ve heard from many you are unlikely to get sufficient FA from GWU if your parents won’t meet the EFC. </p>
<p>That effectively leaves you with MHC and TX at instate rates. I assume–perhaps incorrectly–that $30K would cover instate costs at TX. I don’t know the precise COA at MHC, but assuming that it is $60K-$15K=$45K for you, that leaves you with $15K to find every year. It probably means you would end up borrowing at least $12K per year. I think that is too much debt for a student to shoulder for undergrad.</p>
<p>You may have some large lower-level classes that are large, but your upper-level ones won’t be that big.</p>
<p>When I was at UT, my very favorite class was American History with George Forgie. There were over 300 students in that class! But Fogie was such a gifted story-teller that I couldn’t wait to hear his next lecture. He assigned a lot of excellent books, too. He was always available to talk during office hours - he tried to convince me to switch majors from engineering to history, but I declined.</p>
<p>UT is like a big city with lots of small neighborhoods. I usually hung out at the engineering building, and got to know the professors and other civil engineering students really well. There are lots of opportunities, also - my son got to do research in the biomedical engineering lab as a freshman! </p>
<p>And as you know, UT football games are beyond awesome. :)</p>
<p>I think for IR, GW is your best choice, but you shouldn’t attend if the package makes it untenable. IR is not exactly a wellspring of well paid jobs. In addition, I don’t know how you feel about it’s lack of campus. I can’t speak for the others really, but Mt Holyhoke has the advantage of the 5 college consortium and those who know it always seem to love it.</p>
<p>I agree with Consolation, can you spell out the financials for each?</p>
<p>Mount Holyoke’s COA is ~$57,500 - 15,000 scholarship = 42,500 . Are your parents contributing 30,000 total or per year? If per year, that leaves 12,500. You can probably cover 2,000 with a part time job during school, plus 2,500+ for summer job savings. That leaves 8,000 for loans. I think your maximum federal loan for student is 5,500 this year (it will increase each year) so you’d need to either have your parents co-sign a Plus loan for the rest or make extra money during the summer or something.</p>
<p>You should run similar scenarios for all the schools.</p>
<p>A great place to really see what your potential loans would look like, and what repayment costs are, is here: <a href=“Calculate Your Cost – BigFuture | College Board”>https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/loans/student-loan-calculator</a>
You can put in the average first-year salary for your anticipated career and see if it falls within reasonable range.</p>
<p>Also consider that if you go to MHC and need to make money over the summer, that may preclude taking the internships that are so crucial these days. State Dept internships are almost always unpaid.</p>
<p>Bump</p>
<p>Looks like you have one affordable choice, UT Austin, one financial-super-stretch choice, Mount Holyoke, and other clearly unaffordable choices.</p>
<p>For reasons given by posters above, Mount Holyoke is a very risky choice financially, which means that the sensible choice is UT Austin.</p>
<p>UPDATE: \m/ hook em’ class of 2018.
For those of you who don’t know I’m going to UT Austin</p>