How Much Is Too Much to Pay?/Please Help Me Choose a School

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I'm not really sure what I want to do after I get my undergraduate degree. I also don't know if I do really want to do engineering because I'm not even sure what engineering is. This makes it hard to make my college choices.</p>

<p>I have been accepted at the following schools. The cost of attendance per year is in the first column, and my family will have to pay the costs in the second column for freshman year. All of these schools are giving me a $3,500 subsidized loan, which I did not include in the second column. I am a National Merit Finalist, and some schools weren't very clear on the award I would receive if I named a school as my top choice. I have called to verify, but I have not heard back yet, so I did not include National Merit in here either. </p>

<p>Georgia Tech $38,000 $38,000
UIUC $45,952 $42,291 plus $3,000 work study
Purdue $40,567 $30,567
Rose-Hulman $51,427* $27,859* plus $1,300 work opportunity
Cal Poly $32,742** $29,242**
Texas A & M $37,306 $14,840***
University of Minnesota $15,466 (tuition) they haven't told me yet
Iowa State University $19,136 $15,996****</p>

<p><em>This includes a $2,200 laptop cost which I might not have to pay.
</em> This is what my financial package said, but I’m not sure if this is the total cost.
** I don't know if I can get both, but if I designate TAMU as my first choice, I might get the NM Recognition Award $6,000 per year and Director’s Excellence Award $2,500 per year.
**** I've heard that my family would not have to pay anything because I'm an in-state NMF. I haven't verified this yet.</p>

<p>I've heard that if you're going to graduate school, you shouldn't pay a lot for undergraduate school. However, I cannot make my decision based on that. I have visited UIUC, Georgia Tech, Purdue, and ISU, and although I didn't particularly like UIUC's campus, I think I'll be fine anywhere. What advice can you give me about choosing a school?</p>

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<p>By “tuition”, you really mean COA.</p>

<p>A&M, Minnesota, and ISU are all fine schools.</p>

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<p>Yes, sorry. I have fixed it now. Well part of the problem is that by going to ISU I would stay within ten minutes of my house. People have suggested that I not go to ISU and “try something new” because I’ve been here for the past ten years, and that I would probably not expand my social horizons because I would stick to the people I knew if I went to ISU.</p>

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<p>ipopova: You need to check your Texas A&M figures. If you have been accepted, all your scholarships will be listed on your Howdy Portal. S. is a NM Scholar and will be attending A&M. If you are a NMF, you will get $ from the Honors College;therefore, you will automatically qualify for in-state tuition. Estimated COA for a Texas resident ia approx. 21,000 per year. This includes tuition, fees, room/board, book/supplies, travel & over 2K in personal expenses. As a NMF, you will get the President’s (12K), the Director’s Excellence (10K), NM Recognition (24K), the TAMU sponsorship if not getting corporate or one from NM (2,600), and the Merit Plus (2k for freshman year). The first four listed above are spread out over 4 years, and the Merit Plus is only for the first year; therefore, you will get at least 14,150 freshman year & 12,150 for the other 3. This is without any departmental scholarships or other TAMU scholarships. Usually, NM will get additional $. So, your COA is far less than you estimated. I would suggest you contact Casey Ricketts at <a href=“mailto:nationalmerit@tamu.edu”>nationalmerit@tamu.edu</a> or at <a href=“mailto:cricketts@tamu.edu”>cricketts@tamu.edu</a> for further assistance. Hope this helps, and if I can answer any other TAMU NM questions feel free to ask. :)</p>

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<p>I would choose between Georgia Tech or UIUC since those two are top ranked in your list and better job prospective than the others. Even if your goal is grad school, those two school will prepare you better. About lowering cost… well you can stay in resident in either Georgia or Illinois for a year working within the state and change your tuition to state tuition but you would waste a year of your life. That is up to you to decide. </p>

<p>Also, you might not wanna go master after you finish your b.s. since you already got a job lined up after you graduate.</p>

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<p>If you decide on engineering…and depending on which engineering major you chose, every school on that list will prepare you for both employment and graduate school (if you earn good grades) in engineering.</p>

<p>I do not agree with the notion that one school out of that list would prepare you “better” for graduate school than the other.</p>

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<p>

Is this a serious suggestion…?</p>

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<p>bringbackpluto, the $14,840 I would have to pay is the total out-of-state cost of attendance minus the $15,300 out-of-state waiver and all of the other scholarships I have already been offered. I did seem to have miscalculated, and it should be $13,006 instead. I did not include the NM Recognition Award, the Director’s Excellence Award, or the NM Sponsorship because I haven’t designated a school yet, so I have not been offered those. I’m unclear whether I can get both the Recognition and the Director’s, or rather, why they didn’t just make that one scholarship. I called someone at the Honors office last Friday and left a message, so I’ll probably hear back this week. The NM Sponsorship requires you to be “eligible for sponsorship”. I don’t know what that means, so I can’t assume I’m going to get it yet. But if I do get all of those, the scholarships would exceed the cost of attendance. I had not realized that before. Thank you.</p>

<p>CSmajor5, is it ok to take out loans for $28,660 (GT) or $32,951 (UIUC) per year? Our efc is $9,340, so I think that would be an immense burden. Does that much debt make up for a higher level in education? I don’t think I would spend a year trying to get in-state tuition, but thanks for that suggestion.</p>

<p>GLOBALTRAVELER, would some schools probably make it easier to get better employment?</p>

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<p>I would NOT recommend taking out $30k per year in loans. That’s $120k by the time you graduate. No undergraduate degree is worth that many loans.</p>

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<p>“GLOBALTRAVELER, would some schools probably make it easier to get better employment?”</p>

<p>On this board we have quite a few threads that take on this issue and the many posters (like myself) believe that some schools will make it easier to get that INITIAL job. Many of us also agree that the more experience you have…the less that the school rep matters.</p>

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<p>UIUC is a win win situation and the tuition is locked for four years.</p>

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<p>I don’t know why everyone is saying to take out $30k in loans to go to GT/UIUC/whatever. In my opinion this is a ridiculous amount. Go somewhere where you can graduate with few loans, like maybe Texas A&M. Don’t mess up your financial future for a school name on a transcript.</p>

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<p>I wonder if others will say the samething like “not worth being in debt and pay another mortgage payment throughout your life” when there are MIT, Stanford, and Cal tech on the list. If I was in a situation where my parents didn’t have money to send me but got into those school, I will take out loan to go there.</p>

<p>Whether you like it or not, most of the principal engineer holds degree from top engineer school. You live life once. Why don’t you give yourself a chance to shine instead of remaining mediocre. </p>

<p>The question is money vs outcome of career. No one can’t guarantee you that you will have better career and life by going to georgia tech or UIUC. Its your willingness and hardwork in college that will land you better career but Gatech and UIUC will give you better chance to shine than rest of the school you listed. Good luck on your decision</p>

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<p>“Whether you like it or not, most of the principal engineer holds degree from top engineer school. You live life once. Why don’t you give yourself a chance to shine instead of remaining mediocre.”</p>

<p>Ummm…see, this is where not working in the industry for some years does not allow folks to see what REALLY goes on in companies. A “principal engineer” is just a title and the level of that title varies from company to company. In some companies, a “principal” engineer is 2 or 3 levels below lead engineers and at some companies they are at the level below “chief” engineer.</p>

<p>Either way, that level of engineer is achieved at least after 10 years of experience which is past when the name of your B.S.-granting school matters.</p>

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<p>I must have read wrong, I thought OP was stating that they will only need a total of 3500 loans to attened UIUC.
Resources from this thread:
COA:UIUC $45,952
Need met:$42,291 plus $3,000 work study</p>

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<p>I’ll go ahead and say it. If you’ve gotta take out 120k in loans it isn’t worth going to MIT for undergrad. The jobs you’re going to want if you’re an MIT type require a graduate degree, so now you’ve got a bunch of loans accruing interest (you can only get so much in gov. sub. loans) while you’re, best case scenario, making enough to survive and not have to take out more loans for 2-5 years. </p>

<p>It doesn’t really surprise me how many people don’t have a real concept of debt though. Here’s something that might make it a little more clear.</p>

<p>120k in debt, under the completely unrealistically generous assumption that all debt is subsidized and the weighted average interest (remember there will be plenty of private loans in here) is 6.8%. To pay this off over 10 years you will have to pay over $1380 per month and will end up paying a total of 165k. Want to stretch that out to 20 years and make it a very real possibility that you’re paying off this debt when YOUR kids go to college? You’re still paying over 900 per month and the total paid is now over 219k. </p>

<p>If you can get good scholarships or have wealthy parents expensive schools like MIT and the like make a lot of sense. If you can’t and don’t then they don’t.</p>

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<p>I’ll add more…</p>

<p>There are people I know today that are doing independent I.T. consulting charging NSA $100-$115/hour and they are graduates from such engineering “juggernauts” (sarcasm) as North Carolina A&T, Loyola College of Maryland, West Virginia University and University of Delaware.</p>

<p>The average number of work hours in a year is 2,080.</p>

<p>Do the math.</p>

<p>P.S.: I am too much of a wimp to do independent consulting with these economic times so I went back and “hid” under working for a big defense firm. When I feel the economy is back where it was…I am back to “indy” consulting too.</p>

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<p>Well, to be fair, if you’re doing independent contracting are you actually spending 2080 hours on the clock a year? How much time has to be spent between gigs or looking for the next gig? If that 2080 is actually the average amount of time they spend on the clock then wow.</p>

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<p>“How much time has to be spent between gigs or looking for the next gig?”</p>

<p>Well, that is the part that I don’t like…the instability. Now if you can latch on to a brand new contract, well that is 2 to 4 years straight before having to look again.</p>

<p>I really made that post to show where the graduates come from.</p>

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<p>I don’t know what your vantage point is on this issue, but I can speak from both my experience as well as family experience. </p>

<p>Firstly, your preconceived notions about Purdue will preclude you from listening to any of this but I will say it for the benefit of others. Once upon a time I was of the same thick-headed mindset as Csmajor, I bought everything society told me to about rankings, prestige, and their worth. Unlike most college students, every penny of debt has my name attached to it. I waved an opportunity for a free ride at UF in order to one day look at my shiny resume filled with name brand schools. I’d go over different variations of degrees to add to it from different schools, and thought things like “BS eng Purdue, MBA Sloan… or maybe BS Purdue, Berkeley MS?..” Daydreamed about being some two-bit jack off, so on and so forth. </p>

<p>60K later, I sit here getting ready to graduate. At the expense of sounding conceded I’ll tell you that I didn’t sit around on my ass here, I worked hard, networked a lot, and made the most of it. I’ve had numerous internship offers every summer, and bad economy or not, will not have the least bit of a problem finding a good job. </p>

<p>However, as I sit accumulating debt – my brother, a recent UF graduate, sits making over 70K in California. Not only this, but just over one year since he started he’s managed to become – get this, the boss of Stanford grads who hold not just more prestigious degrees, but also graduate level degrees?? A multi-billion dollar company, every single executive knows him by first name and together have laid out plans for him to run entire regions of the company within 5 years. All this while Stanford alums, literally, thought it a good idea to go above his head and remind management that they are…. “Stanford graduates! And therefore, should not be listening to a younger, more inexperienced, UF graduate” And yes, they’re up to their eyes in debt. </p>

<p>So, while this is a limited scope it offers a pretty good insight I think. I can tell you without a doubt in my mind that, if doing all this over again, I would’ve chosen UF. I’ve also changed my mind about rankings, prestige, and so-called “elite” jobs. Whether by design or otherwise, the system we run on will burn you. Don’t buy into what people tell you, nearly every major corporation was started by people without a degree in anything, from anywhere. Industry cares about your performance, and even moreso your capability to interact with others, not your degree – school, only serves the purpose of opening a few extra doors initially.</p>

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<p>You have bought it hook line and sinker, you’re degree will never make you become something more than mediocre.</p>