<p>^Way out of my league on that one. But there are some amazing fin aid experts on this board. There is also a separate section just on financial aid so I would post a new question about it.</p>
<p>Qwerty,
If you go to Pitt your tuition is free, since your parent is a faculty there. If you go to a private school (like the ivies or Carnegie Mellon), FAFSA is just the beginning. They have their own ways to determine need, and no matter how they calculate it, it will be much more then Pitt.
Most top universities will not give you any credit for classes taken elsewhere during HS. They might let you place into higher level courses, but it will still probably take you 4 years to graduate.</p>
<p>There are advantages in attending top schools - your peer group is stronger (and a lot of learning goes on outside of class), etc. In your specific case, however, I am not sure it’s worth the money (and it will be a lot of money…)</p>
<p>If you already took 13 courses at Pitt, and you have some connections to research opportunities, you can get much more done there. You can still stay in college for 4 years (for free), take advanced courses, do some serious research, and your road to the top grad program will be paved. I am pretty sure that Pitt also has cross-registration with Carnegie Mellon, so you can take classes and get to know professors there as well. The CS program at CM is probably on par with that at MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>Have you looked into Olin?</p>
<p>It is no longer tuition-free, but it is still very inexpensive compared to other schools, and may give you the hands-on experience you want in college.</p>
<p>Also, since it provides a different approach to learning, it might be a refreshing change for you, given that you have already taken so many college courses.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>At the colleges you mention (CMU, MIT) and every college like them, your parents’ savings will be taken into account in determining need-based financial aid. If the savings are in a qualified retirement account (like an IRA or a 401(k)), they may or may not be considered completely available to fund your college education, depending on the institution. This is not through FAFSA, but through the “Profile” that most elite universities use to determine financial need.</p></li>
<li><p>It sounds like you are not aware just how high Pitt’s standing is in the bio-med research world. Not that it is “better” than, say, MIT, but it is far above the level of generic non-flagship state university. (In Pennsylvania, for life-sciences research, it really IS the flagship.) What starbright said is true – lots of top researchers are at “places like Pitt” – but over and above that Pitt is special in this regard. If you have to be “stuck” at a state university, you would have a hard time finding one that offers you more opportunity, and you are in a great position to take advantage of it. I know Pitt seems “same old same old” to you, but you ought to take a step back and evaluate it objectively in determining your overall strategy.</p></li>
<li><p>The question of where you live, and how your living arrangements contribute to your overall education, is somewhat separate from the question of where you go to college. Going to Pitt does make it possible for you to live at home, but doesn’t make it necessary. You may have better luck negotiating with your parents about this (and I think it matters a lot to you) than about whether they should pay an extra $200,000 or so for your college degree.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I agree with JHS. Pitt has some areas of excellence. I don’t think it’s worth paying $200k to have somewhat more research opportunities (they are available at Pitt!).
Regarding peers, if you take more advanced courses, you naturally gain a group of peers. My S also took a lot of college classes as a high schooler. But these were introductory courses, and they had a very different feel from the more advanced classes he took. As well, as a college student, he was treated differently from what he had been as a high schooler who was there only during class time.
On JHS’ #3, I can add: my S lived in a dorm all four years despite the fact that our house is only 15 minutes walk from campus. In fact, it is closer to some buildings where he had classes than his House. But there were lots of activities going on on campus that he would have missed had he lived at home, including but not limited to his own extra-curricular activities; and he made life-long friends with his roommates of four years. This is an argument that you can make with your parents.</p>
<p>I think you will do well on the ACT. (Just schedule both an ACT and an SAT.)</p>
<p>Pitt is a great school and is well-respected outside of Pittsburgh. You can get free tuition somewhere else but it is unlikely that you can get free tuition somewhere as good or better than Pitt. It is rare to get free tution at a great school. You are lucky! (You could apply for the Robertson Scholars program at Duke/UNC.)</p>
<p>I really would wish you could live in the dorm your first year there. That’s a great place for you to meet the other 17-18-year-olds who are open to making friends. The kids in your upper division classes will already have friends. It’s not that they won’t be friendly, but they won’t be open and excited to making a new group of friends the way incoming freshmen are. If you go to Pitt, please try to work it out so you can live in the dorm. This gives it a fair try. I feel really strongly about this. </p>
<p>I hope you will join an extra-curricular activity at Pitt, something that you love. Band, newspaper, ballroom dance? (I always suggest APO service fraternity as a possibility; at schools with APO, the “brothers” of APO are very welcoming to new members who share their interest in community service.
[Alpha</a> Phi Omega - Beta Chapter](<a href=“http://www.pitt.edu/~sorc/apo/]Alpha”>http://www.pitt.edu/~sorc/apo/)<br>
Scroll to the bottom to see the Fall 09 new members; it is a co-ed group.)</p>
<p>If Pitt is sounding mundane, look at all of the awesome Study Abroad opportunities you will have at Pitt (both the school-sponsored programs and the other programs.) That should spark some excitement. 
[Study</a> Abroad page](<a href=“http://www.abroad.pitt.edu/programs/pantherprograms.html]Study”>http://www.abroad.pitt.edu/programs/pantherprograms.html)</p>
<p>Or there are exchange programs you could attend, using your Pitt tuition!
</p>
<p>This is going to sound harsh, but it is the truth. There is no reason for you to think that you would be admitted to MIT. (Check out the heartbreak of denied students on this site.)Your dream of going there is just that, a dream. Even if you were admitted, you would find MIT decidly undreamlike - challenging, infuriating and humbling. But you are just guessing that your imagined SAT score and ECs would get you in. The reality is that very few get the chance - maybe 1 in 10 applicants.</p>
<p>I don’t blame your parents for not looking beyond the free tuition at Pitt. Do they know you aren’t happy there? Can you negotiate a dorm room or semester overseas in the deal?</p>
<p>You have a great situation at Pitt, and I would encourage you to explore its possibilities. You could do a lot of advanced work in four years with the credits you have already banked. This would make you a strong candidate for grad school at MIT or another top school, which is worth a good deal more than undergrad in terms of a career. I know two young women who have done outstanding grad work in the biomedical field - one at Yale in genetics, the other at Northwestern working on computer-enhanced prostheses. You would never guess their undergrad schools - Kalamazoo College and Syracuse U. Don’t be short sighted when it comes to planning your life.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. I’m going to think upon what I should do more and weigh in all you’ve said. I agree it would be ridiculous to pay 200k a year to go to one of these places. I think I’ll most likely look at a FAFSA estimation of what my family would have to pay. If it is really high, I will stay at Pitt. If my family wouldn’t have to pay that much though, I’ll have to examine my options more closely, especially in regard of credits that would transfer over. If not many do (and in all likelihood most probably won’t) I will probably stay where I am now. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have any regrets later if I stayed at Pitt as opposed to going somewhere else when I posted this.</p>
<p>Go ahead and apply to MIT. Maybe your favorite aunt or uncle will win the lottery the spring of your senior year and give you $200,000, and if you are accepted to MIT, maybe that will be what you choose to spend it on.</p>
<p>@ MidwestMom2Kids_</p>
<p>Haha, I wish. :)</p>
<p>
Qwerty, please realize that any time there is a choice, there may be regrets if you let them in. There will always be “the road not traveled” and you may always wonder what would have happened if you had taken that road instead of the one you took.</p>
<p>Yes, you may regret staying at Pitt. But you may celebrate graduating early with no debt and with money in the bank. Now let’s say you do go to MIT. In four or five years, you may regret that you cannot purchase a home or a car or travel or whatever because you’re paying off loans. You may regret that you must take the highest paying job, even if it’s not the most interesting one, because you have loans to pay off or no savings to fall back on. You may have enjoyed the sense of “college freedom” by going somewhere away from home, but you may regret the loss of “adult independence” due to the costs. Or you may find yourself financially responsible for aging parents, when you wouldn’t have been had they been able to save that college tuition for their retirement, rather than spend it on you.</p>
<p>There are all sorts of possible regrets any time we make a choice. None of us know the future. The best thing to do is make the choice, realize it is the best choice at the time, and move forward making the best of the opportunities then presented. That way, the regrets tend to be small.</p>
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<p>This is also such a very good point! A good piece of advice for everyone in highschool on this board. </p>
<p>I would also add that Qwerty is not alone: for so many young people, they imagine this ‘ideal’ certain path that is perfect, with no downsides, if they go to “dream” school…and a less ideal and less certain path with lots of downsides if they do not. Life is just way more complex than that. Each path chosen leads to a thousand new paths, and very many can end up at the exact same destination if one chooses. At the end of the day it’s impossible to know all the great things (and losses) that come with any choice taken. </p>
<p>It’s like a big forest, and at the outset, students see just two or three big trails where one leads to a pot of gold and the other does not. They can’t see the map of the forest which actually shows hundreds of interconnected trails that lead to that pot of gold and lots of other setbacks and different pots of gold all over the place (from all the trails). When they get to their destination, it’s impossible for them to know which decision along all the trails made a difference to where they ended up, or to know if they’d be standing in a different place if they had taken a different route at the outset.</p>
<p>“It’s like a big forest, and at the outset, students see just two or three big trails where one leads to a pot of gold and the other does not. They can’t see the map of the forest which actually shows hundreds of interconnected trails that lead to that pot of gold and lots of other setbacks and different pots of gold all over the place (from all the trails). When they get to their destination, it’s impossible for them to know which decision along all the trails made a difference to where they ended up, or to know if they’d be standing in a different place if they had taken a different route at the outset.” </p>
<p>Very nice starbright, I really like that.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you Qwerty, you sound like a very bright young person with the world before you. You’re just at the very beginning of a wonderful journey.</p>