So I am currently stuck between 3 undergrad schools.
1st option- Rutgers Business School Honors College-New Brunswick; Cost of Attendance-$0/yr (Presidential Scholarship)
2nd option- University of Southern California Marshall School of Business; Cost of Attendance-$69k/yr.
3rd option- UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science (Hopefully get into Haas School of Business); Cost of Attendance-$63k/yr.
My parents could probably pay 20k/yr for college. The rest I would have to get loans for. Opinions? Are Cal and USC worth the 200k+ student debt?
go to rutgers. no school is worth 200k in debt. rutgers is still a good school and you can always get your mba at ucla or uc berkeley.
I’m generally a prestige chaser, but I don’t think it would be wise to take on that much debt. Rutgers will be fine if you excel and work hard to differentiate yourself.
Rutgers is a very good university.
The others are also very good universities, but are not worth $100,00 in debt, and are certainly not worth $200,000 in debt. $200,000 is a LOT of debt, which could haunt you for a very long time.
IMHO you only have one choice, and fortunately it is a great one: Rutgers. Being able to go there for free on a presidential scholarship is fabulous.
Rutgers Honors College is amazing and you will have so many amazing opportunities there that you wouldn’t get if you were just one of the other 35,000 students. Honors college is small and selective. Go there and do amazing and then if you want to go to school on the west coast for your MBA you will have no debt going into it.
No, definitely not worth it. Save that 20k a year for grad school!!!
Do you have any intermediate choice that is in the 20-30K bracket? Those would be the true alternatives to Rutgers honors.
you can borrow 5.5K for your freshman year. Since you’d be full pay at USC I assume your parents have a good income yet couldn’t save enough to pay for more than 20K/year (older parent, investment in your secondary education, investments that went down, house under water…), so they’re unlikely to be willing/able to borrow that much on your behalf.
Luckily for you, Rutgers Honors is a very good choice - but hopefully you have something else to compare it to beside the unaffordable full pay universities?
When you are a recipient of a prestigious scholarship, many schools continue to shower you with recognition and opportunities. You’re first in line for registration, high level networking events, off campus events, study abroad, etc. Congrats!
I did Rutgers Honors on a Presidential scholarship back in the 80s. It was a great experience and my Rutgers diploma got me into prestigious graduate schools on full fellowship.
200K of debt is crippling. Not worth it.
Rutgers fo’ sure.
200k could get you a graduate degree in anything from basically any institution you can get into lol.