This might be a dumb question and I feel like alot of people will obviously say Notre Dame but I’d like to explain.
Notre Dame will be around $29,000 because of the tuition increase, and I have the option to take out $7500 in loans per year.
Mizzou will be around $6000 a year, and my parents could cover all of that. I am in the Honors College, but I stupidly decided not to apply for the Scholars Programs because I really didn’t think I would be going to Mizzou.
Some important things:
- I didn’t get to visit either campus, we were planning to after spring break but that obviously never happened… I visited both Marquette and Wisconsin-Madison this summer and I liked both, I liked Wisconsin’s feel more and believe that might be similar to the feel at Mizzou.
- I am nervous about overemphasis on greek life at Mizzou, and was enticed by the fact that there is no greek life at Notre Dame. I know the housing at Notre Dame is kinda greek-like which I don't really mind.
- I am just worried that at Mizzou I won't really be able to get internships or jobs outside of Missouri. But my understanding is that most engineering degrees, unless you go to a school like Cal Tech, MIT, Michigan, you'll most likely get similar jobs. The "prestige" of a school for engineering jobs is less of a factor than, say, a finance job.
Anyone have any insight?
Exactly true.
It sounds like money is an issue. If it wasn’t, I’d choose ND. But since it is important here I’d choose Mizzou to avoid $120K in expense.
One thing you can do to greatly increase your marketability in general and ability to find jobs anywhere in the country is to do a coop. See https://engineering.olemiss.edu/current-co-ops/ I don’t know how much help the school gives in finding them, but generally they aren’t too difficult to land since student prefer doing summer internships instead of taking a semester off school. But a coop gives 3 advantages. First, they tend to pay well; you could earn $20K or more for a semester of work. Second, it’s a chance to really get experience in engineering compared to what you can do in a 8-10 week internship. Third, once you have a coop on your resume you are an attractive candidate to top employers for summer internships the following summer.
@mikemac Do those that participate in Co-ops typically graduate late?
I know at Marquette they integrate it so that you still graduate in 4, but I assume that Mizzou probably wouldn’t accomodate as well and I’d have to either graduate late or take extra classes.
I’m not mikemac but my D is doing a co-op at a different school. The short answer to if co-oping adds time for graduation is “it depends.” For my daughter’s major, chem e, she can’t graduate in less than 8 semesters because of course sequencing requirements so she’ll take 5 years to graduate because she’ll be at her co-op for an entire year, on and off. She was hoping that wasn’t the case because she came in with so many AP credits but it just doesn’t work out to shave time off. What it doesn’t add is any cost because we’re still only paying for 8 semesters of school.
At many schools you do, but as you noted there can be exceptions. I’m not affiliated with Mizzou so I’d suggest contacting them directly to ask.
Even if it takes an extra year, that’s not always such a bad thing. Back in the day when the UC cost out here was dirt cheap many students were on the “5-year plan” and in no hurry to graduate and enter the real world. You get to work the rest of your life, college is fun (even at times for engineers) and you’re with your friends along with little responsibility (kids, mortgage, etc). UC fought back with minimum progress requirements to get most kids out in 4.