ROI is a huge player in how much my parents are willing to spend on my education.
My question is, how’s it calculated? Do they factor it with the average amount paid? Or full pay?
I’m a full pay Texas student.
I don’t know if any university could beat A&M or UT for ROI. I think schools like Rice, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon are so high because they meet a lot of aid bringing the average amount paid drastically down. Is this correct?
Where would my schools rank for computer science ROI at full pay, no scholarships
UT Austin
Rice University
Texas A&M
WashU
GaTech
Cal Poly
Case Western
Alabama
Are you referring to a specific study? I believe people typically compare OOS tuition for public schools, because in-state at a powerhouse university like UT or A&M is almost always going to be the best investment, and not really a fair comparison. As you say, it is going to be tough to beat UT and A&M in-state tuition without some merit or financial aid.
A pay scale "Computer science ROI calc put stanford at #1 with 1570k over 20 years and UT austin at #51 with 861k over 20 years.
How accurate does that sound? Most of the top schools on the list are in Cali. I understand there are higher salaries paid in Cali, but it can’t be to the point where a Stanford grad will make almost twice that of a UT grad.
I’ve never heard much about UT being a stellar CS school. Is it?
ROI can be measured in tons of ways, many not very useful. You would have to look at a case by case basis. I’m sorry that your parents are driven by these numbers - so many factors can skew them.
@Jpgranier
UT Austin has a pretty good CS reputation, actually.
If you compare SF to Austin, both high salary cities in both states, the cost of living in Austin is about a 35% less than SF where I calculated it.
That is to say that $100K in SF is about equal to 65K in Austin. So if both graduates stayed local, that would put Stanford at only 1000K or so to UT’s 860K. In the end, not as huge of a difference as first perceived. Of course, this is not controlled for where the graduates actually live.
Similar numbers apply to salaries, with the average CS salary in Austin being at least 25% less than SF.
There are a lot of complexities here, but point being, UT Austin offers a Top 25 or so CS program if not better, and the numbers back that up when considered properly.
This is pure gut instinct (my son is in CS at UF so we have looked at and thought about this) but I don’t see how you beat UT-Austin or even A&M. The big thing will be to get good grades and do projects/research.
The only schools we would full pay for CS would be Stanford or possibly Georgia Tech and even then it’s a toss-up. We might pay for Carnegie Mellon too. We could afford it (painfully LOL), but we always think in terms of handing our son a check for $120K when he gets his BS from UF (the approximate difference in the privates/GT) versus just a bachelor’s from one of those high-end schools. This is purely hypothetical though. It just helps us to frame the issue.
It really is a lot of $$$ in the big scheme of things. You and your parents are wise to think about it carefully.
ETA: just realized I didn’t really answer your question. For us ROI was calculated (loosely) by the recruiting strength of any particular school. Obviously Stanford will open doors that few other places would. After that it starts to get a little more debate-able when it comes to CS (with a few exceptions of course).
@SouthFloridaMom9 Thanks for the feedback!