<p>At this point I'm down to two choices.</p>
<p>My major is Industrial Engineering.</p>
<p>Lehigh: Full pay, 57k/year.
Rutgers: Full pay, 25k/year.</p>
<p>I love Lehigh. I do have the savings to pay for it, but is it worth it?</p>
<p>As for Rutgers, I hate New Jersey. But it's dirt cheap. And the school's pretty good too.</p>
<p>Rutgers! Look at the cost difference(128k). Doesn’t matter if you have savings or not. Who pays 228k for undergrad at a top BUT not elite private college.</p>
<p>A relative of mine had similar choice with his son, different engineering major. Son found engineering hard and could not get sufficient help at Rutgers. Too many people chasing the same resources. He regrets not paying for private - I can’t remember if it was Lehigh or Bucknell. </p>
<p>His cost after finally graduating after 6 years. More than $150K tuition and fees because he did a lot of summer courses plus about $100K in lost after-tax wages. Now he’s starting with no experience. </p>
<p>Had he gone to Lehigh or Bucknell (again I can’t remember), he believes that he would have been able to find help, would have graduated in 4 years at a cost of $220K and have been working for two years and would now have about 2 years of experience and have made about $100K after taxes. </p>
<p>Basically, he thinks he’d be 30K plus 2 years experience ahead had he gone to the more supportive private. </p>
<p>Is it worth it? It depends if you’ll need access to support resources.</p>
<p>I’d pay if I could.</p>
<p>Lehigh is a good school but anyone who pays $228,000 to go there for 4 years is absolutely insane. Especially when you can go to an equally good school for your major for less than half of the cost.</p>
<p>I do agree with classicrockerdad that smaller private schools can usually provide better resources for helping students who need it, but if you think that a big school would be a problem for you then you should have applied to smaller privates that were less selective and would give you merit aid.</p>
<p>I just gave an example where it would have been worth it. </p>
<p>Nobody thinks they will need help in college going in. After all, you were really smart in high school, probably scored over 700 on the math SAT, how hard can learning really difficult subject matter be when you’re taught in extremely large classes by inexperienced TAs who struggle with English and have more important things to worry about then your understanding of the material. </p>
<p>Maybe you’re right. I’d have to be insane.</p>
<p>I don’t really know anything about Rutgers, but at the bigger state schools that I visited, they all had specific resources for kids who needed help. And with the large lectures, they all said that you would meet 3 times a week in a class that was about the same as a high school class with a graduate student to go over the material. And they all said that classes were strictly taught by professors and not TAs, those were for the smaller sessions. Maybe Rutgers just has more problems with this, because I’ve never seen a situation where it was that bad.</p>
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<p>That obviously doesn’t stop you from having a strong opinion. </p>
<p>But it could be that maybe my relative is a slacker. I didn’t think so, but his parents don’t babysit him and I don’t know. </p>
<p>Maybe you’d get the equivalent access to professors, research and resources at Rutgers for half the price. After all, the New Jersey state budget is flush with money right now isn’t it, and research dollars are flowing in from everywhere to fund Rutgers. </p>
<p>To the OP, investigate yourself and determine if it’s worth the money. Talk to students. Talk to professors. Try to get access to a Rutgers professor.</p>
<p>Rutgers professors are somewhat accessible (avg class size is like 35 ish, drops lower once you get past those huge intro classes). They have free tutoring available though. Graduation rate is pretty high too.</p>
<p>Although I am one myself, my main concern is the overabundance of Asians in the program, meaning insane competition for grades. From my high school experience, going to school in such an environment proved to be daunting, as no matter how hard I tried they always outscored me almost everytime. I don’t want study machines to drag the curve down if you know what I mean.</p>
<p>Lehigh’s known for grade deflation too though, but there’s definately less study-robots there. Plus it has absolutely no budget issues.</p>
<p>Don’t let something as silly as a large number of Asians scare you.</p>
<p>At the same time, it’s better to go somewhere that you feel comfortable at.</p>
<p>What I meant was that you should visit both schools before deciding and try to talk to a professor at each school about your decision. I suspect you’ll have a lot more luck arranging that at Lehigh, but I’m open to the possibility that I could be wrong.</p>
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<p>But that is speculation, perhaps based on “grass is greener elsewhere” reasoning. How does he know that he would have been able to graduate in four years in the same major at some other school?</p>
<p>He doesn’t, but the regret is genuine. He has friends who went to Lehigh and didn’t have the problems that he faced.</p>
<p>I’m still very stuck right now.</p>
<p>Supposedly the business side of Industrial Engr. is SCM (Supply Chain Management).</p>
<p>For Industrial I’m definitely leaning towards Lehigh (better program). For SCM, Rutgers. </p>
<p>Do you think Industrial Engineering is worth that extra effort (tons of science prereqs which I’m not so hot at)?</p>
<p>btw Lehigh has the better IE program (great engineering rep), Rutgers has a good SCM program from what I heard.</p>