Everyone, I am really having a hard time choosing between the two university. Your help will be really appreciated. I am an international applicant and got accepted to both universities.
In University of Minnesota I got accepted to College of Engineering and received the Maroon Global Excellence award (about $4000 yearly).
In Northeastern University I got accepted to Electrical Engineering as well as the Honor’s Program. I also received a scholarship of $15,000 yearly. I am planning to do the 4 year 2 co-op program so that tuition of two semesters are saved.
Please let me know which one should be the better choice, with reasons, among the two.
I was also deciding between U of M and Northeastern, and ended up choosing Northeastern. For me, it was a bit more expensive, but they both had very generous scholarship offers that made them affordable for me. One of my reasons was wanting to try somewhere outside of the Midwest (where I’m from), which isn’t really relevant for you! But I also liked the co-op opportunities, since I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and it seemed like there were a lot of opportunities for undergraduate research.
Cost has to be a consideration in your decision. How affordable would both be? For northeastern, you would probably not be taking only 6 semesters of classes. You still need to meet the course requirements for engineering and have 128 credits to graduate. If you had the maximum 32 credits coming in, you could theoretically cut out 2 semesters, but probably not in engineering. The 4 year, 2 co-op program does involve taking summer classes to get all the requirements, to the total would probably be at least 7 semesters.
@nanotechnology Thank you very much for the detailed post. Could you tell me how much can an engineering major earn in their first and second Co-ops? (just estimations) Do you know how much does the summer classes take?
I don’t really know since I’m not an engineering major, but I think it can go anywhere from $15-25 an hour, higher for the top jobs.
Summer classes cost the same as regular classes. Usually you’ll take a half semester in she summer opposite your co-op, so that would be 1/2 of normal semester tuition.
I would caution you from including co-op salary in your total cost of college calculations - the salaries can vary widely and you still need to live during those co-op periods (pay room and board, eat, transportation, etc.) Consider any profit during co-op as a bonus not something you need to pay tuition and housing for college.