So i’ve been accepted to UGA EA as well as OKState (honors) and I’m hoping for an acceptance from TAMU too… which sets me up for a horrible dilemma. (btw animal science pre vet major)
If i go to UGA, I will be eligible for the Zell Miller scholarship which pays 100% of tuition only but I will be closer to home, and I feel like that holds me back, in a way
If I go to OKState, i have a few friends out there and i have already been offered an OOS tuition waiver but it is a lower ranked school
And if i get accepted into and attend TAMU (crossing my fingers lol), it will be my dream school but I won’t know ANYONE (which allows me to have a fresh start, i guess) and i don’t know the scholarship opportunities yet
This one is a no-brainer. Take the big scholarship. Save the money that your family would otherwise have put toward your undergrad tuition, and use that on Vet School or expenses while you have an unpaid/underpaid summer internship. Just because UGA is in-state doesn’t mean you have to see your family or HS friends any more often than you would have if you had gone out of state.
Think of it this way. Free car, car you pay full price for, or car you can’t afford…decisions decisions! It’s a no-brainer. Take the scholarship at UGA. No, you’re NOT being held back by choosing Georgia, in fact, the opposite is true. You’ll be graduating with much less debt, which puts you at a big financial advantage in the long term.
By the way, don’t rely on rankings. They’re a completely useless method for finding a school.
OP does not know the COA for Texas A&M yet, has a tuition scholarship at UGA & an out-of-state waiver at Oklahoma State. The cost difference may not be very significant among OP’s options.
@aherring3 - When you run the Net Price Calculators and look at the Estimated Costs of Attendance at these places, take a good long look at what is and isn’t included. What is the factor for books and materials? What is the factor for local transportation? Is there a place to factor in your own best estimate for travel to and from campus at least two times each year? If you are at UniversityX, is there good public transportation to get you places you might want or need to go (e.g. your off-campus part-time job or internship), or will you need to have a car? When you do get to the point when you are comparing all of the admissions an aid packages, make sure that you are at least in the apple-to-pear range and not comparing mice to firetrucks.
Wait until you get all the financial details but incurring debt will hold you back way more than going to school close to home.
We visited UGA. Great school with a great campus. College is what you make of it. It doesn’t have to be High School 2.0. Way too many choices for that to happen.
Going to college closer to home doesn’t mean that you’ll be “held back” - not at all. You can grow and flourish just as much 60 miles from home as you can 600 miles from home. That’s mostly dependent on what you choose to do while in school.
While you should still wait until you have all of the offers in hand, I don’t see how the cost difference wouldn’t be significant.
I’m assuming that the nonresident tuition waiver at Oklahoma State means that she’d pay resident tuition. The total cost of attendance for tuition + fees + room + board + books = ~$23,000 a year at OK State.
UGA’s costs for room + board + books is ~$11,000 a year. That’s a difference of nearly $50K across four years. (If the Zell Miller doesn’t include fees, then it’s $13300 per year - still a difference of around $40K.)
Only if TAMU offers the equivalent of a full tuition scholarship will it be close in price to UGA.
Wait until you have all your options lined up. See where you get in and which schools are affordable given that 4 very expensive years of vet school will hopefully be in your future.
I do agree that being close to home should have no bearing on your overall expereince. After looking at schools up and down the east coast my S ended up at a college that was very close to home. It was a great match for him and he got the highest merit award of all the schools he applied to. We all agreed that he would live on campus. The proximity to home was a concern so we actually sat down and talked about it. We (parents) agreed that we would never “pop by” and would never expect him home other than school breaks. In return he promised to not use home as a crutch (no coming home to do laundry, when he wanted a home cooked meal etc.). We all kept to our word and and it worked out just great – he had a full and wonderful 4 year college expereince. So IMO if you go to UGA and immerse yourself in college life you should be able to have a great expereince regardless of being close to home. And you could always take a semester abroad or at another college if you want to live elsewhere for a while. (And FWIW my S went to grad school halfway across the country.)
In addition to study abroad opportunities, UGA also participates in the domestic National Student Exchange program, which includes a number of possible destination schools that are noted for their pre-vet programs, including UMass Amherst, Washington State, Iowa State and others https://www.nse.org/exchange/colleges-universities/alpha-location/?z=1#homeinfo
As a rule, I think students who attend colleges that they fear are “too close to home” end up being surprised at the extent to which they feel a world away from their old life. As long as you have good boundaries with your family (i.e. they’re not popping in unannounced or pressuring you to come home too frequently), I really wouldn’t weight that factor too heavily.
It’s a well-known issue that vets graduate with debt that rivals MD’s, but have a harder time paying it back because their jobs often aren’t as lucrative. Definitely don’t take on debt for undergrad as a pre-vet student; and if you can save money you might have spent on undergrad to cover vet school, all the better - it could make a big difference to your future quality of life. Tuition-free at UGA is an amazing deal for an amazing school - don’t fall into the “familiarity breeds contempt” trap.
And cross country travel requires either a car or some other pretty fair costs. As much as you may think you can avoid coming home more than once a year, it’s far easier to just live within the bubble at UGA and in the end you’ll be many thousands of dollars ahead. Vet school is pricey, so every dollar you don’t spend now is another you don’t borrow later.