The AVG starting salaries really mean nothing. An engineer gets the same no matter where they went to college.
The main factor in the AVG salaries is the location of the job. Most kids get jobs in locales close to their university. So the cost of living at the location of the university is a factor in these averages.
The reason Stanford and Berkeley engineering students have higher average salaries is because the Bay Area is expensive. MIT gets east coast salaries. Stevens will get NY rates. Texas gets Texas salaries. GT grads get south east salaries.
A Stanford or Iowa grad taking a job in Florida will get Florida rates.
It’s not really fair to use gross salaries for comparison without correcting for regional cost of living. We’ve all read about SV engineers making 6 figures and living 4 to an apartment to make ends meet. In Texas, 80k a year and you can buy a house… and a boat.
@Greymeer hit the nail on the head. My earlier comment must have not been approved, but I was essentially saying the same thing. After NYC additional taxes and cost of living in the North East, Stevens ends up not being the best ROI. Whereas it is a lot cheaper to live in GA and even though it may appear that Stevens grads are making more, the amount of money they actually see is less than that of a Tech grad.
Tech is the better school. However, Stevens is a great institution as well, with many opportunities. Personally I dislike it and could not recommend it to anyone especially over Tech. One thing is for sure, you will be making a lot with either school, and it isn’t a super big deal anyways.
Thankyou everyone for the advice. Even after hearing everything, my heart is still set on Tech. I know Stevens is an amazing school, but I don’t feel that it is the right fit for me. However, my decision isn’t made yet and I will probably be up very late on Friday deciding where to go. I still have to research more and see what will be the best in the long run. I will reply with my final decision in case anyone was wondering! Once again thankyou everyone!
Wait, you applied to Stevens ED2, got full scholarship and you try to back out? So the ED agreement you and your parents and your guidance counselor signed mean nothing? You should have withdrawn all your other pending applications once the Stevens ED2 acceptance came out.
As a parent of a D going to Tech, paying OOS and in the end would have forked out close to 200k (tuition+housing+food+transportation+all other expenses) it is not worth this kind of money. Don’t get me wrong, Tech is a great school, but I don’t believe the opportunities are any more or less at a number of other schools except for the really elite schools. We are blessed to not take any loans but on a hindsight I don’t believe for a second that my D would have done any better or worse at any other schools that she got accepted to. The only reason she went there is she didn’t get her major in our in state school. She could have still gone to other cheaper OOS schools that provided scholarships but she got so stuck on rankings/prestige/perception etc.
Back then it was our first college experience - knowing what I know now, unless 200K is not a significant money for someone I would not send my kid there. If 200K is not a big deal for someone, by far Tech is one of the best out there especially for engineering and CS.
There are more than 3,000 students at Stevens. You’re willing to borrow $160,000 + interest (~$200,00 total) just to avoid seeing your sister on campus? That’s ridiculous. Your parents will have to pay back those loans if anything happens to you. Can they afford an additional ~$1800/month expenditure? If they could, they wouldn’t have to borrow it in the first place. Why would you want to start your life with an $1800/month bill for a college loan?
@Greymeer - I once was offered a job in Florida at 15% more than what I was making in NJ at the time despite the lower cost of living there as compared to the NY metro area. Yes, a Stevens degree commands a premium because as I said before industry knows that the graduates are more capable than those of the majority of other schools.
@qow - The ROI calculation in Payscale’s survey uses the starting and midcareer salaries of graduates and the cost of their tuitions and loans. While it does not consider the cost of living in a given area, it does provide a consistent basis of comparison by determining what the graduate makes as compared to what he/she would have made by investing the tuition and loan interest at the prevailing interest rates instead of attending the school. So, ROI is not inflated or deflated by the cost of living in a given area (had Payscale taken into account cost of living, the ROIs for major metropolitan area schools in high cost of living states (NY metro, California, etc) would have been underestimated and those in low cost areas (Florida, southeast, midwest, etc) would have been overestimated. Thus, the Payscale ROI survey is an accurate measure of the value that the marketplace puts on the graduates. The survey takes input from students in all parts of the US wherever they live, not just the region immediate to the school so there is a statistically valid distribution of samples.
@chrissie1199 Being from NJ, I feel your pain. But, go to Stevens and see if you like it,
the classes will transfer to GaTech, or another larger school, if you really hate it there, transfer after a year, it will
save you $$ and your loan will be smaller. Stevens has a very good curriculum and reputation.
Get your freshman classes out of the way, and try to visit Manhattan a lot for a break, the location in Hoboken
offers one big advantage, a PATH train to
Manhattan in 15 minutes. You can get lost over there and forget about your older sister.
GaTech would be a breadth of fresh air if you are from New Jersey. I see why you want to go, but it makes
financial sense to at least try Stevens for a year, then think about Rutgers , U of Maryland, Purdue as well as GaTech,
on a co op plan where you work at least three semesters, is possible at many colleges,
so it takes longer but you may avoid loans that way. U of Maryland and Purdue both
offer merit and financial aid that may be better than the price you got at GaTech, but could end up being about the
same as the price you quote for GaTech with your financial aid.
If you are from NJ, look very carefully at Rutgers. Its still got the train to NYC, and it would get you
away from the small ultra urban Hoboken campus and your sister. New Brunswick/Piscataway are more suburban
and even pretty in some ways. Rutgers offers outstanding engineering, math, and CS.
GaTech is quite urban by the way, but I agree with you, Atlanta is a world away from Hoboken.
@chrissie1199 I also agree about breadth of a degree, is very important and Stevens requires that breadth.
You can achieve that breadth anywhere by careful selection of elective subjects. GaTech does build in
some of the breadth with computer science degrees, overlapping electrical engineering in some threads.
There is a modest science requirement at GaTech but not quire as thorough as Steven’s curriculum.
Industrial engineering at GaTech is truly stellar program that incorporates operations research, data science,
manufacturing, rigorous math, and traditional industrial engineering. GaTech has consistently
ranked 1 for industrial engineering, because it is so broad.
You can transfer if Stevens is not a good fit for you. Good luck.
My daughter is OOS at GT. It’s hell (as in crazy difficult to even get a B), but she loves it, and to save us $ she will study at one of their satellite campuses for most of her education. If you study at satellite campus (france for mechical, ireland for chemical, …) you only pay instate tuition. It’s the only way it will make it affordable for us. She was in Atlanta this year, she’s headed to GTL this fall, and after that, Ireland the following year.
Hi, I first want to say thank you to everyone who provided information to me. I am choosing to attend Georgia Tech. After analyzing all the information presented, my heart still yearns for Tech. However, I will not be going $160k into debt. I talked to my family, and after realizing how much I wanted to go there, my grandfather offered to give me the money to cover the difference between Stevens and Tech, so I will be taking out around $20k in loans. I believe this is the right decision for me and I have thoroughly thought over all of my options. It was not an easy choice by any means, but I do think it is the right one. I am very excited to attend Tech, and I want to thank everyone once again. I did not think I would get so many responses, and I am glad that any future students who go through the same dilemma that I just went through will have all the information you all posted.
@PPofEngrDr I’ve pretty much laid out my financial situation on here already, once my financial aid information comes out I will gladly give an oversight on here for any future students who are wondering the same thing!
@PPofEngDr GaTech offers very few in state tuition deals for out of state students, unless parents are part of the US military then there are deals. There are very small alumni scholarships by state but hard to win in states like Colorado where we have ten to twenty students vying for one award. The Stamps scholars are hard to win and come with strings so it may be better to pay cash as an OOS student if you have cash. I believe the Stamps Scholars are under extreme stress, must travel with GaTech and they often double major and seem to be truly at the end of their ropes,
unless they are able to up their game to be that good. Its tough! A few are that good, others suffer silently. Two seemed to die in the last two years both OOS both on the top award. , I truly do not know why they died, as GaTech does not announce suicides. Its really a bad deal if your top scholars kill themselves, so we just pay CASH to lower the stress on our student. He did not win anyway, so no chance to worry about it.
I was just going over our OOS budget
and we can get away with paying them about $43K a year, tuition, fees and room, because my son cooks and got off the meal plan. Freshman year costs a little more with the food costs. My son buys almost no books and I am not counting his airplane tickets.
Only Purdue offers a slightly better price for OOS students, If they win merit, which is much easier to win at Purdue
and many more awards than GaTech offers,
but its bigger and in Indiana, so we decided GaTech was worth the tiny bit extra.
Its much easier to fly to Atlanta than Indianapolis and bus as well.
If your son or daughter is willing to live in freshman dorms, that will make the fees a lot less. Off campus housing will also reduce the housing fee, and there are furniture rental packages for 2nd , 3rd and 4th years that go off campus, in the area.
There is also a $600 fee to hold on campus housing per semester at GaTech above the $43K a year. If he/she is off campus, I don’t know how that works, it may be a 12 month lease and need sublets. On campus is by semester and no charge for the summers.
I woukd definitely look at the satellite campus opportunities, especially if you can study abroad and receive instate tuition. Best of luck at Georgia Tech.
Be careful, as the study abroad programs have very few course options that count towards the majors at GaTech, but they count more towards electives. I see most students at GaTech paying EXTRA to study abroad the summer after freshman year, but some find work at home, instead to save money for tuition, thats more cost effective than study abroad.
. Study abroad does not save money if you cannot graduate in four years. Be very careful to plan your four years at GaTech and the best way to finish in four years is to stay in Atlanta, unless you have a year of AP/IB credits, then you have the flexibility to study abroad. Also, the study abroad programs have limited seats, so you have to apply early to get into them. Its not quite so easy as they want student to believe, and we do not believe it saves any money to study abroad, it typically costs an extra semester, so beware of this false hope, promoted by GaTech. Staying on campus will give you the best research and work options over study abroad, for most majors.
Still about half of GaTech students do study abroad, as they are on Zell Miller Scholarships, which means they pay
absolutely no tuition to study at GaTech, the in state students can go for free to GaTech, if they keep their GPA up.
You are an out of state student, and in a different category from Zell Miller winners. You have to plan your life very carefully to get out of GaTech in four years. Do not take this lightly, or it will cost you even more than you planned.
My son was just accepted to GaTech for Industrial Engineering. The IE school has been rated #1 for over 20 years. We are OOS and are really sweating the OOS costs. He is a NMF and has several full tuition and full-ride opportunities at schools with lower rankings. All offered acceptances to honors colleges and provide study abroad stipends. Our local state school (Purdue) has a tremendous reputation in engineering but they are the only school which awarded no merit aid and denied him to their honors college. Is GaTech OOS costs worth it? Should he take the low to no cost options even though the rankings are much lower?
@GaelRacer: A degree from Georgia Tech – or any school, really – is no guarantee of future employment success. I don’t know exactly what the cost differential is for you, but my recommendation is to avoid going in to significant debt, at Georgia Tech or anywhere.