<p>it's hard to make dicision. My D is accepted by Berkeley with OOS $50.1K a year, no penney schoolership even we are not that rich almost half of our income. In state university of Minnesota offer her a lot of schoolership, we only need pay 5k. It's 45K difference a year. Thiss 2 school fighting in my mind everytime.</p>
<p>IMO, the only two programs at Cal (perhaps) worth the OOS fees are the Colleges of Engineering & Chem. The UCs do not give great finaid to any students. Be a star at UM and go to Cal for grad school.</p>
<p>Minnesota all the way. Not even open for discussion.</p>
<p>I have a son at Cal, and I say $50K a year is too much. I wouldn’t recommend it. Have him go for grad school.</p>
<p>This decision depends on very many variables that are entirely different from case to case. There is no general solution and very many threads here are devoted to this. In my mind some (not all) variables are: limited/unlimited resources, major, Graduate school or not, minor, opportunites for favorite EC’s (sport, sorority, job, volunteering), Honor college at state school or not, preference for urban/non-urban setting, there are many more individual variables that need to be considered.</p>
<p>Go for the U. You don’t want to end up in heavy debt and the UMN offers a top-notch education.</p>
<p>I know that Berkeley sounds exotic and exciting. But college in general can be exotic and exciting, whether in California or in Minnesota. Going to the in-state U with everyone else she knows may not seem very glamorous right now, but graduating from college with an extra $200,000 can buy a lot of glamour!</p>
<p>Easy decision–save the money, go to MN, and graduate debt free.</p>
<p>If that’s half your income, and assuming you don’t have a stash of millions in the bank, that’s an awful lot of money to spend when she has good alternatives. Don’t forget about the costs of grad school if she ends up going to one upon graduation.</p>
<p>One of my DDs had a choice between a fin safety mid tier UC or one of two more prestigious privates. No way $50k a year was worth it. DD is now in grad school and I am very glad we did not take crazy loans for the dream school!</p>
<p>OoS at the University of California – any campus – is not pretty. You really have to have the money to pay for it because they charge you an out-of-state fee that they do not cover with any aid in any way, shape or form. That’s over $15k out of pocket even if they covered every penny of the CoA, which doesn’t generally happen without the maximum in student loans and some expectation of parental contribution and parent loans.</p>
<p>UMN is a great school itself. If your D is thinking of graduate or professional school at all, there is no reason not to save the money now. Even if your D is not thinking of graduate or professional school, a degree obtained without excessive debt is worth every penny you’ve saved – a penny which is, in this case, extremely pretty. It will give her a great deal of flexibility while she’s at college (especially in choice of major as there won’t be as much pressure on choosing a “marketable” one she may not be interested in) and will allow her to pursue some low-paying but essential jobs right after college.</p>
<p>Absolutely go for UMN.</p>
<p>What is she majoring in? Assume she is in honors program at U of Mn. Football on campus returns next fall. You can all go to Cal for spring break or someplace else and still have over a 100,000 thousand left for Grad School.</p>
<p>Unless you have the money in hand and are willing to spend it on a Berkeley education, this one is pretty easy–U Minn. This is not the time for either a parent or a child to go deeply into debt for an education.</p>
<p>Once they finish the budget cutting at Berkeley this year, the undergrad education will certainly be no better than UMN, and perhaps worse. (It will take several years for that to be reflected in the “rankings”.)</p>
<p>She wants to pursue physics, in general. She was accepted by the College of Letters and Science by Cal, and she definitely wants to go to grad school. She is currently a PSEO student for the UMN full-time for the whole year. </p>
<p>Thanks for all the help!</p>
<p>Oh, so she is in-state at Minnesota. As I regularly post, my bias is to advise students to go out of state if at all possible. And my other bias is to prefer the more “elite” college if a student is admitted to more than one college. But that dollar difference is HUGE, and I think California will have more budget difficulties than Minnesota in the next few years. Furthermore, some of the programs your child is most interested in are almost as strong at Minnesota as at Berkeley, so the quality difference between the colleges is not so clear-cut. So after considering the possibilities, if you decide that Minnesota is the best choice, don’t second-guess yourself. As a PSEO student now, she can make some connections to professors who will help her get off to a good start in her program when she enrolls at Minnesota.</p>
<p>Similar case to me here.
Son wants to be Mech engineeer and got accepted several schools with some merit scholarships. The cheapest one is in-state UT Austin that is 17K/yr. UC Berkeley costs 50K/yr. Is it woth the extra 33K/yr considering money is not a big issue for our incomes? Son has a strong ego against going in-state school. GA Tech looks pretty good now that costs 23K/yr but not prestigious as Berkeley.</p>
<p>I can imagine paying $50,000 a year at Berkeley and feeling like you were getting $6,000 a year’s worth of education.</p>
<p>If you have the money, you can spend it however you like, nojunkviolins. I don’t know the relative strengths of the engineering programs you mentioned, but if you think one is a Mercedes, one a Lexus and one a Toyota Corolla, and you can afford and want to buy the Mercedes, go for it!</p>
<p>While Berkeley has a name associated with it, I personally feel that it is just a large state school in a state with serious budget problems. I went to Berkeley undergraduate many many years ago. It was prestigious then too but it is so large that I believe you can get a better undergraduate education at many other schools. I would never consider paying $50k per year to go there.</p>