<p>It also might help us if you just tell us what schools you’re looking at. Is the OOS school a flagship?</p>
<p>$100K in debt for engineering? Absolutely not. The return won’t be enough to retire that debt in reasonable time. You’ll be a life long renter. Engineering isn’t brain surgery or plastic surgery, it won’t even pay a quarter of what those people make. Better to get a diploma as a Stationary Engineer Fourth Class and then move your way up to First Class. Wish I had done that. You would get paid for your overtime (unlike the usual engineering careers) and would have identifiable and marketable skills, not just a useless degree.</p>
<p>^What is Stationary Engineering and what’s its benefit?</p>
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I graduated in 2008, and started working a couple months after graduation. I resigned my job in 2010 to move to NYC. So I have just about 2 years of experience. I’m currently working a part-time job making $10/hr because I could not find a fulltime job in my field.</p>
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<p>I’m enrolled in NJIT, in Newark, NJ. It’s not the best school, top 100, but I don’t know if it’s worth $85k in debt. I’m looking at transferring to CCNY here in NYC or to Stony Brook out on Long Island. I’d qualify for NY in-state tuition by June of this year. I’d really like to transfer after one semester at NJIT, but the Fall admissions deadline is in February. So, I won’t have any GPA to show admissions other than my horrible GPA from my first BS.</p>
<p>I’m really conflicted, guys. I really want to get my engineering degree. I’ve wanted to be an engineer since high school, but talked myself out of it since I was pretty lazy. I chose Biochem instead, which I thought was interesting but, after a couple years of in industry, wasn’t really excited about any career options available to me. Like I said, I could either be a lab rat making peanuts, work in QA/Reg sitting behind a desk all day, or work in manufacturing, which I did and did not like. At my previous job, I made friends with most of our process engineers and thought the work they were doing was incredibly interesting.I really enjoy more technical and problem solving work and I honestly feel that I was born to be an engineer. </p>
<p>However, I really would rather not bear the burden of 100k in debt, but I really feel like I have no other choice. So, I guess I should just try to transfer after a semester or two.</p>
<p>My advice: </p>
<p>Go to the cheapest community college you can find that offers you new classes (for example, diff eq if you haven’t already taken it). Work as much as you can while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Stay as long as you have to until you can transfer to Rutgers. You should be able to get in state tuition if you transfer after a year. Plus, you’ll be able to get done with all of the general ed classes so you can focus on interesting classes at Rutgers. </p>
<p>I think that you have a good story, so with one year with a 4.0 GPA at a CC, you should have a good shot at Rutgers.</p>
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<p>Why is it not fair? For some of us, including myself, the cost of food and rent is necessary to account for as there is little to no parental support. Unfortunately, a decent amount of my loans can be contributed to food and rent…</p>
<p>Just because your parents are paying for your food doesn’t make it free.</p>
<p>If you are in NYC, I strongly suggest you go to CUNY City College for engineering. They have strong undergrad and graduate engineering programs.</p>
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<p>Fiscally, it does. It’s a cost that you, the student, don’t have to personally account for.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t. There’s no difference in eating $10 of food from your parent’s house and flat-out asking them for $10.</p>
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<p>Is this a joke? Come on. Not only is the comparison to brain surgeons totally irrelevant here but calling an engineering degree worthless is comical. Not sure what you are basing this on but an engineering degree is one of the most marketable. Look at this link.</p>
<p>[Stationary</a> Engineers and Boiler Operators](<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos228.htm#earnings]Stationary”>http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos228.htm#earnings)</p>
<p>Even with overtime, stationary engineers (not even true engineers, they are basically technicians) will not make more than traditional engineers with actual engineering degrees. And in some cases actual engineers can get paid for overtime. Nice try, but your suggestion here doesn’t really pan out.</p>
<p>Back to the main question here, I would not recommend taking on 100k in debt for any undergraduate degree, but if it is absolutely necessary at least an engineering degree will provide higher earning potential than almost all other undergraduate degrees.</p>
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<p>You obviously are not accounting for all scenarios…</p>
<p>A. What if your parents don’t give you that $10 (either they can’t afford to, or simply don’t want to)?
B. Who said you are only eating on their behalf? </p>
<p>The simple fact is for some of us, including myself, food and rent is a major expense that the student has to finance. Some people don’t have the luxury of having their parents pay for their expenses, and many don’t have the luxury of physically having the availability to work (full-time) while in school, so saying it’s not fair to include it in the cost of a degree is very naive and ignorant. That was the point of my original response to your post, which should have been evident at this point.</p>
<p>Trust me, I know all about paying for college. My education cost $200,000 with $0 family contribution.</p>
<p>My argument is this: you’re going to eat. Whether you eat $10/day of food at school or $10/day of food at home, you’re spending $10/day on food. So it’s not really fair to count that cost at school but not at home.</p>
<p>I understand your point: if you’re at home, your parents will pay for the $10/day that you spend on food. However, that’s no different than asking your mom for $10 then spending it on food while at college.</p>
<p>So what do you guys think is a reasonable amount to borrow for an engineering degree?</p>
<p>Im in a similar situation as the OP, but my mom is willing to pay for half the tuition. I really dont want to take her money though.</p>
<p>In general I agree that doing community college first is probably the way to go. Get the GPA up, transfer to an in-state school.</p>
<p>I think you also need to realize that things may not go smoothly. You really can’t work much, if at all, and get high grades. Frankly, given what your academic record has been, you might find it hard to <em>pass</em> classes. If that turns out to be true, you’re going to probably be spending MORE money (there longer) and getting less out of it (bad grades made jobs much harder to find).</p>
<p>Past that, if you do get a good engineering job (paying say 65K/year), then the debt is almost certainly worth it compared to standing pat. You’re making 20K/year or so. After taxes and stuff your income will go up by a fair bit more than your debt costs. </p>
<p>So <em>if</em> you had only the two options (stay where you are OR get the debt) AND you were certain you’d finish on time and get a good job <em>then</em> taking the debt would be a good idea. But you need to look at other options (C. college to increase GPA and then get into in-state school) and realize you might not be able to as well as you’d like in school.</p>
<p>The last question is about how much you like/hate life right now. If you are enjoying life for the most part, sticking around for the CC bit looks a lot better. If you are hating life, changing your situation could be helpful.</p>
<p>Sorry about the long reply. Good luck!</p>
<p>Like I have always said, employers only care where you graduated from (initially) than where you started. Also, if you happen to end up working for an employer with good tuition reimbursement benefits, you can enroll in a distance graduate engineering program. There are some well-known, highly ranked engineering schools like: Purdue, UCLA, U-Wisconsin, U-Maryland and Stanford (computational engineering only).</p>
<p>Georgia Tech offers several graduate engineering programs online and Stanford now offers more than computational engineering.</p>
<p>^ Thanks for the update on Stanford.</p>
<p>I forgot about Georgia Tech.</p>
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<p>Don’t get into engineering for the money. Get into engineering because you love it. </p>
<p>That said, an “acceptable” amount of debt depends on your options. If you live in Georgia and can attend Georgia Tech for free, you’re very hard pressed to justify going anywhere else. In that case, paying anything is too much. On the other hand, if you live in a state without a good public engineering program then you’re obviously willing to pay considerably more.</p>
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<p>No problem. The schools update their programs every semester, it seems like. 5 years ago you were hard-pressed to find any online engineering degrees from top schools. Now they all seem to offer them (and for good reason - it’s a cash cow).</p>
<p>Stanford offers (all MS degrees):
-Aeronautics and Astronautics
-Biomedical Informatics
-Chemical Engineering
-Civil and Environmental Engineering
-Computational and Mathematical Engineering
-Computer Science
-Electrical Engineering
-Management Science and Engineering
-Materials Science and Engineering
-Mechanical Engineering
-Statistics </p>
<p>Georgia Tech Offers (all MS degrees):
- Aerospace Engineering
- Building Construction and Integrated Facility Management
- Computational Science and Engineering
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Environmental Engineering
- Industrial Engineering
- Information Security
- Mechanical Engineering
- Medical Physics
- Operations Research
- Professional Masters in Applied Systems Engineering</p>