So I’m an out-of-state student from Missouri and I got admitted to UCLA. Before getting all of my responses back from all the schools, I didn’t really research them so that I didn’t get my heart attached to any school only to be rejected. Now that all the school decisions have come out, my family and I narrowed it down to GTech or UCLA, and we both preferred UCLA. Because of that certainty, I poured hours into researching this school and I’ve absolutely fallen in love with it. The school style fits my personality and rigor, and I’ve wanted to go to college in California since the seventh grade when I visited. I was so excited to go to this amazing university until my parents finally started to reveal their feelings about paying for my education. Being Chinese, they have always been willing to pay for my education-- and still are, but they gave me the facts about UCLA’s OOS financial burden. I would have to take out loans and they would have to take out $50,000 from their retirement savings. Now my dad has recommended that I consider the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities, where it would cost $35,000 for me to go there (with scholarship).
Financially, UMN makes sense-- my dad even offered to give me the annual $10,000 saved from the scholarship ($40,000 total) to travel or jumpstart a business. They also have a 4+1 B.S.M.S. program that will help me in the competitive engineering workforce. I’m also in the honors college at UMN. But after falling in love with what UCLA has to offer, everything at UMN looks like a jail cell to me and I feel like if I go there that I’ll just be anything but happy and hate my college experience (plus I absolutely HATE HATE HATE the cold). This will also sound ridiculously pretentious of me, but I worked extremely hard to keep up my 4.0 GPA, taking 12 AP classes (all of which 4s and 5s), being in the top 2% of my class, spent crazy hours maintaining a good background of extracurriculars, and studying hard to get my 34 ACT score, and I feel like all of my effort would’ve gone to waste if I go to my safety school when I have a much more prestigious alternative.
My question is: should I pursue this uber-expensive school ($250,000) that will put me in debt and be a financial burden for a fantastic and happy experience, and making my effort feel like it went into something? Or should I be depressed and all “what-if” and go to UMN, save money, and still be okay for the future?
You are out of state for UCLA. I would expect it to be very expensive. California has very significant financial problems and paying tuition and expenses for out of state students whose parents have never paid California taxes is not high on their currently list of priorities.
I think that you will find once you arrive at a university that what you expected and what attending university is actually like are not very closely related.
I haven’t figured out from the original post what the financial situation is at GT and UMN. Both are however very good schools and I seriously doubt that the extra cost of UCLA would be worth it.
Go to U of Minn. Take a spring break every year in California (or Florida or Mexico).
Everyone works really hard to get into college. All those people in Minn have worked hard. UCLA give no financial aid to OOS students at all. You could have received a merit award, but they are very competitive.
At UCLA, they are all forced triples for dorms (which I would not like), and may classes are impacted.
What kind of costs are you looking at for Georgia Tech?
If you have to take out loans and your parents have to take $ of their retirement and you have a cheaper option …go with the cheaper option. Look for internships in LA and move there after you graduate.
And while, since you are in HS, you may think that there is a huge difference between the two schools, in reality, the difference won’t be that huge. They’re both gigantic publics with big lecture classes and in engineering, you’ll find plenty of smart kids at both schools. OK, the weather in MN isn’t so great but the Twin Cities do have a lot to recommend them. There is a reason why native Minnesotans flock back to MN despite the bitter freezing winters. Also, you don’t live in LA now, but once you do, you may not actually find LA to your liking all that much. It has a certain culture that fits some people and not others.
Also, don’t think of working hard in HS to get in to some college. Think of the hard work as good preparation for you to succeed in college (and also to save money by earning you college credits through AP scores).
Final thing to keep in mind: while it seems far away now, your life won’t end after undergrad. You could land an engineering job with a national company and go work in CA after graduation. And yes, you could use a small portion of the money saved to vacation in CA. On a purely ROI basis, it’s hard to justify UCLA over UMTC.
Beware that if your parents decided to take $50,000 out of their retirement fund they are subject to a penalty of 10% of the withdrawal amount. So they would have to withdraw $55,000 total. As much as you love UCLA it is best to go with the cheaper option, as the financial burden you put upon your parents will be long term.
Keep in mind, just cause you don’t go to college in California, doesn’t mean you can’t use the promised $10k to travel there for vacation stress-free!
Short answer. Are you nuts? Even if you managed to get loans to pay for that school, the debt would squash you like a cockroach shouting racial slurs!
If you hate Minnesota, which is understandable, there are other options, but you’ll probably have to wait for the spring semester. First, prestige is highly overrated, especially when there are scholarships available. If you want to go out of state, you’ll need to find a school that offers a tuition waiver or a scholarship. That takes a lot of research. Check out the big schools in the deep south like LSU and Alabama. The maximum amount of federal loans you can take out for a 4 year degree is $27k, which, if you add your parental contribution, amounts to in-state or its equivalent.
It’s very common for students to find that none of their college offers work for them. That’s what spring semesters are for. Plus you could save up several thousand dollars in that time.
I get it OP. My S18 is making a similar choice (USC versus UMN). Our finances are not quite as bad as yours since he got merit at USC, but MN is certainly a good deal. Good luck deciding!
I am from LA and ended up doing my senior year at USC (after two years at a CC and OOS uni in the Midwest). While at USC, I shared an apartment in Westwood with two high school friends who were attending UCLA. This was in the mid 1980s.
Now, 35 year later, we are all touring colleges with our own kids. We recently reunited and compared notes. Guess what? All of us concluded that it didn’t really matter which college we chose. We basically got the same level of education, went on to decent jobs, lives, etc. Our bottom line: for the majority of students, college is what you make of it. And your 4-5 year experience is hardly the end point. Internships, jobs, relationships, grad school and good ol’ serendipity! All these things may play into the overall outcome of You.
Also, as a middle-class parent who has had to ponder cracking into retirement funds to pay my son’s tuition…yeah, not a pretty picture there. I’m with @Elly710 : LA’s a fine place for a vacation (most of the time).
