Is Georgia Tech worth out of state tuition? Need advice

Hi, there is a discussion from 2015, which perfectly answers my questions but I wanted to hear ‘fresh’ opinions.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/georgia-institute-technology/1759717-is-georgia-tech-worth-out-of-state-tuition-need-advice-p1.html
GT OOS CS major - worth it over other choices?
My son is accepted into UT Austin (honors dual CS and business, no grants), UMD (honors, in-state, grants) and GT (no grants). Also, Northeastern (grants) and few others, which he is not considering. CS major. He did not get any of his top choices so decision is super-hard as paying OOS for GT will not mean paying for a dream school.
The group from 2015 was comparing almost identical choices - anybody current in the same situation? I know that it all depends on an individual and preferences but find it useful to read other views. Distance is important but from MD it feels the same to fly to GA or TX. My son would value employability and campus experience (including social life) as his top criteria. thx

My son is also GT OOS CS Major.

My case is easier than you. So far we got UMass Honor (in state), Northeastern Honor($30k/yr off), RPI and most probably can get BU and BC.

But those schools are far off from GT is CS. So we will let him go GT if he can’t get better later on…

However you are UMD which also has a excellent CS program. It’s trickier… But OOS tuition for GT is not high compared to other schools like UMich or UC systems.

Good luck

@wb176220, I was one of the original posters on that thread you reference. My DD graduated in Dec with an ME degree and we are OOS. Since that post was in 2015, I will update my DD’s experience. However, before I do, I want to state that I hate loans or a lot of debt to attend college so if money is no object, or you can stretch to pay OOS tuition, then definitely consider GT. I know it is tough for OOS students who want to attend GT where OOS financial aid is not good while in-state get the great Hope Scholarship. However, decisions on where to attend college should always consider financial feasibility. Just as a brief aside, like the other poster mentioned, OOS tuition for GTis not high compared to other schools. When my DD started at GT, it wasn’t much more than the UC’s (our home colleges) so the cost difference wasn’t as great. We made GT affordable for our family with three things, my DD made a very good income in her internships and contributed 70% of her earnings toward her tuition (btw $7k to $12K), she did study abroad which was instate tuition and saved us $15K and every year she applied for private scholarships and got at least $10K a year.

With respect to employability, GT is excellent. From my DD’s 2nd year, she routinely received at least six internship/co-op offers for each summer. She interned all over the country for top companies in her field. She will be working at her dream job for a major company with a salary and benefits that is making her older brother very jealous. (she took advantage of 401K and matching funds and already has $7k in a 401k from two summer internships. GT has multiple career fairs, company nights etc. Plus in my DD’s experience at conferences like ASME or SWE, she found her GT education opened doors for her because companies expressed that GT students are very well prepared. When I attended her graduation, I was impressed with all the jobs all her friends had upon graduation in a variety of fields. Another thing that impressed her about GT was how membership in clubs lead to additional jobs because employers would come to her off-road club meetings looking for students. For a time my DD had a CS minor and CS companies paid for her to attend conferences in that field and Microsoft heavily recruited her. As long as the student has decent grades (like 3.0 or higher), employment shouldn’t be a problem. DD’s professors also would tell my DD about jobs and she was offered two jobs at companies that the professors had on the side. One thing I think helped my DD job-wise is that she got a 4.0 her first semester at GT so it set her up nicely the rest of college for having a good gpa when job hunting.

My DD wanted the complete college experience (similar to her brother at Ohio State) and she definitely got it. (By the way I asked everyone of her friends if they would attend GT if given the choice and they all said yes). DD played on multiple intramural teams (won a couple of championships), was in a sorority, did research with a great professor, completed on GT Off-road, was in Grand Challenges, attended football games,dated and other campus events. Her last year, she and her friends were regulars at Trivia Night at nearby bars and won a few times. She did community outreach through WIE and SWE. GT is a school with a lot of fun traditions and my DD tried to participate in as many as possible (Freshmen Cake Race, Pi Race, Midnight Bud, Spring Greek Week etc.

One thing my DD complained about was that GT offered a ton of opportunities and you wanted to do them all, so you have to be disciplined and selected those most important to you. GT is a difficult school academically so in order to be able to have a good social life, my DD said she had to have good time management skills. She did her homework early and regularly, never missed a class, did office hours and attend extra tutoring sessions. By having good time management, it allowed her to be active at GT and have a good social life. School did not come easy to her so she had to put in the extra time to keep up her GPA.

I think your other choices are great too. I recommend you visit GT before you make a decision. Students get a vibe when they visit a college and this will help your son make his decision. I know in the past there were some complaints about the CS dept., but I believe they have done some restructuring of the CS dept. If you do visit GT, be sure to make an appointment withe CS dept person in charge of recruiting or the CS advisers. My DD learned a lot about the ME dept doing that and it helped her in making her decision.

Good luck!

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One thing I forgot to mention is that my DD and her friends always felt that GT wanted their students to succeed. She got to know her professors personally and they were always available to answer her questions. They never hesitated to write great recommendations for her scholarships. There was one year when she was having a lot of trouble in a really tough class and I called OMED for help. OMED staff called me while they were on vacation and on their own dime hired a tutor for my DD which helped her a ton with the class. Also many industries pay for tutoring sessions for students.

There is a poster here who says that it is tough to do study abroad while a CS major, but my DD says her friends and college boyfriend who were CS had not problem doing study abroad. Finally, GT must have been great for my DD- a week after graduating, she and her four roommates biked and backpacked through South America for a month. Right now she is traveling all around the country visiting GT friends before she starts her job next month.

UMD honors for CS is hard to beat. He would look at the curriculum carefully, at the opportunities offered by his honors program& cohort, estimate what matters to him based on his personality.
Another question: do you have the money (from income/savings, even if paying in monthly installments) or would you have to take a parent PLUS loan?

I’m currently a GT OOS student from Maryland. The distance isn’t bad, and my family has made day trips to visit, and it’s super easy for me to get home for breaks.
If the main goal is to get internships/co-ops/jobs, GT is absolutely amazing. I’ve heard of so many people who even as freshman have been offered amazing internships with top companies, and the Georgia Tech name carries a lot of weight to that. Our co-op program is also the top non-mandatory co-op program in the country, and I have never heard of a single co-op student who has graduated in debt - including the out of state students.
One of the things I was most nervous about when I was making my decision was the campus life because I assumed that such a difficult school would require its students to be studying all the time. This has been far from the case, and whatever social atmosphere you are looking for, you can find here along with a group of friends who will support you both in and out of the classroom.

The University of Texas in Austin with honors dual CS & business seems like an incredible opportunity for one valuing employability & campus social life experience.

Looks like OOS COA for both Texas & Georgia Tech are the same = $48,000, while in-state at Maryland with a full tuition grant would cost about $12,000 per year.

Three great choices. If you have to borrow significant sums to pay for Georgia Tech or for Texas, then Maryland is the safest choice. But, if you can afford to pay for Texas or Georgia Tech without borrowing, then it is a lifestyle decision as employment prospects for CS majors are great from any of the three universities.

thank you, that’s what makes the choice difficult, UMD is a really good CS school but I will let my son decide, at the end it will be his experience … and still waiting for few more RDs, just like you

also, greatly appreciate current/former GT parents/students sharing their experiences. it is a journey for my family to start liking our choices so it really helps. I spent last two years trying to convince my son that he had only two options: MIT/Stanford/etc or UMD and anything in between was not worth it. Little did i know how the whole process would change this perception. We are planning to attend UT Austin event on March 30 and will get down to GT the weekend before or after. Do your parents drive to GT for a day? isn’t it like a 10-hour drive?
once again, thank you!

@wb176220 Look over this: https://www.ivyachievement.com/computer-science-rankings/

The Georgia Tech CS program is top-ranked.

Now add UCLA to the mix, not top CS but good school overall. One more week to wait …

For Colorado residents, GaTech is worth it, as it costs only $10K more per year than a much lower ranked program U of Colorado Boulder, or Colorado School of Mines. GaTech is a comparable out of state price compared to most other top programs like UIUC, Wisconsin, Purdue, and Case Western with the top merit, or RPI with merit actually costs more than GaTech full price for us, so it was easy to pick GaTech from Colorado. Its a very easy flight, very good student spirit, excellent math department, wonderful recreation options nearby. Look at mountain biking, rock climbing and kayaking classes and trips with Outdoor Rec.

However OP has other options that are strong.
UCLA offers almost the same CS program as GaTech. U of Maryland is also very similar to GaTech.
I have a son in CS, a junior, who has had a good experience, although CS is very crowded at GaTech,more than 2000 undergrads. UCLA only serves about 400 undergrads in computer science, thats something to think about.
GaTech is just one of the largest programs in CS in the country, although it is well organized, for the most part,
and class size is kept small by using the thread specializations. Each student picks two specializations.

The poster who says her daughter got six summer job offers , her daughter signed on for the five year co op degree, got into a masters program and studies industrial engineering, as I remember. I guess it might be good to list the exact companies, but I would say thats very unusual for a GaTech CS student , to get six job offers for summer jobs.

The students in industrial engineering and in a five year co op degree plan, so three semesters away from campus working full time, may get a lot more offers than CS students who do not want to co op though.

We only know students who have gotten two at a time. ! My son is GaTech class of 2020.
and we know students in class of 2020, and 2019. No one we know has gotten more than two summer job offers.

Lots of boys in Computer science get ZERO job offers after freshman and sophomore year, in fact, unless they spend a lot of time applying for jobs. Students who have good grades will have an easier time, but job fairs are not really fruitful for freshman in CS. One student we know applied to over 100 summer positions during sophomore year and got one offer and took it. The CS job fair at GaTech got him no where.

Job fairs do work better to find jobs after junior year. Thats the year that most students should be able to find a job,
but most freshman, if they live in an area with jobs, like Northern California, or Northern Colorado, did find jobs back home, by networking.

My son took a position back home in Colorado with FIRST robotics mentors who started a robotics company, it payed well and he learned a lot. He got a position at U of Maryland Cryptography Lab in the summer after sophomore year,
and we discovered that U of Maryland is a great school too! He has a position in an algorithms lab this summer at GaTech as part of a mathematics REU, which should position him well for graduate school applications in mathematics and CS. My son is doing the research option computer science degree, instead of the “senior Project” degree. The research degree includes a proposal writing class, three semesters of research and the requirement to write up a bachelors thesis. He meets weekly with his advisor as a junior. The Gatech professors take the undergraduate research option seriously and give students a lot of guidance and time.

Co op will be helpful, to find jobs and GaTech co op students tend to be engineers, but ,a few ECE and CS students sign up for that, and you can do only one semester
of co op, in CS if you want, so it is flexible. But it delays graduation unless the student has a lot of AP and/or IB credits. Many GaTech students do come in with almost a year of credit, as its easy to get credits at GaTech, they will give credit for test scores of 5,6 or 7 on IB exams.

Many CS students do not want co op, they want to finish in four years, because they will get a job without all those semester away from GaTech, working, and lengthening the degree program by one or three semesters.

On the other hand, Georgia students often seem to take co ops, as its so inexpensive for them to stay at GaTech for up to six years with Zell Miller full tuition scholarships. Every Georgia Kid starts out with a full tuition award, the Zell Miller, and then, they may lose that if they get too many low grades, but the still collect the Hope Scholarship.
So those kids can go to GaTech for six years on that, with lots of co op breaks and easy semesters of three classes.

Out of State kids are usually not looking to take six years to get a bachelors degree, they are trying to get out of there in four years! Out of State kids are taking five classes per semester, and want the summer break, as they are working very hard to take more credits and finish on time.

Study abroad works for some CS threads like Media,or students who earn a lot of AP credits.

For the intelligence thread, or theory thread, those classes are NOT offered on the campus in France or the Barcelona program. The one program that works
for CS is a program in Hong Kong, thats more math and CS focused than the Georgia Tech campus in France, which is much more focused on engineering classes rather than computer science classes. Barcelona also works for the summer after freshman year, if the student can afford it, to take two easy classes and get ahead ! But that costs MORE not less, to do that. If a student takes 4 classes in Barcelona, its truly AGONIZING, as everyone else is playing and having fun, and they are nonstop studying, so no fun at all. I don’t recommend the summer program in Barcelona, unless you have extra money to blow, and your kid wants an easy summer, of travel along with two classes. More than two, they will get exhausted and often then be so burned out, for the fall, that its not worth it to waste time in Europe, like that.

It would be better to go home, and get a leisurely summer position than go to Europe and work one’s butt off, studying more.

Study abroad works well for Georgia students in CS who have been in GaTech distance math for three years in high school, and come to GaTech as juniors! There are a lot of Atlanta kids who do that by the way and some kids from other states. Those kids who have a year and a half of credits can go abroad and play! We know one who went to Hong Kong and had fun, still worked hard in Hong Kong, but he was ahead so things worked out well.

I just want to clarify that many instate kids do graduate in four years. While many start out with the zell, many lose it. My instate kid took 15+ credit hours per semester and got out in four years. And it is true a number of students commence GT having at minimum credit for BC calc and take linear and multivariable in GA their senior year. So depending on their major they have completed the majority of math requirements, if not all depending on major. Its pretty common to also have dual enrollment credits and the state of GA has streamlined credits so that if its equivalent the credits transfer to tech. Furthermore the state of GA pays for all dual enrollment course fees at all state universities so it is free and lots of kids take advantage of it. Hence, between ap and de many kids have in excess of 30 credit hours which makes it easier to coop, intern or travel abroad or take 12 credits a semester and graduate in four years. Since co-opping is tuition free it doesn’t add to the cost. So even if it would take an extra three semesters you are not paying for these three semesters. Those who opt to double major or change majors late in the game make for a longer experience at Tech.