Thoughts?
Both great schools. Very different. Very different costs too.
Are they both affordable? What’s your intended major?
Do you have a preference for a huge big 10 school in a decent sized city, or a small research university in a small town?
If your academic interests are in engineering or computer science, then Rensselaer obviously offers a concentrated set of high quality programs in these areas.
@momofsenior1 My intended major is biomedical engineering and yes both are affordable. I’m still not sure if I want to attend a huge school in a decent sized city or a small school in a small town.
Have you had the chance to visit? If not then you might want to try a virtual visit or watch youtube videos of the 2 campuses, because it is ill-advised to travel at the moment.
RPI
@MattIsHere I have watched videos of both campuses and I like both. When I make my decision I feel like I’m gonna regret not choosing the other school.
Look into organizations on campus you may want to join? Are there any “must-haves” that one school doesn’t offer? One thing for me was a nice gym or recreation center. There were some colleges I looked at and they didn’t have them. Stuff like that may be helpful for your decision.
Not telling you anything you don’t know, but making a decision about college is stressful. None of us does our best decision making under stress.
My advice is to stay focused on the goal. College is a means to an end, which is a good life. It is not the end to be achieved in itself. Just as 4 years of high school is ending, college will also be over in 4 years. And then the rest of your life is still in front of you.
RPI is superb for biomedical engineering. It’s also tiny by comparison with OSU, and as a result you’ll have more instruction by professors rather than grad assistants, more contact with professors, hopefully more mentoring from professors, and hopefully more research opportunities. To me, it’s the better opportunity.
Having said all that, OSU is a very good state university. I assume you’re from Ohio and that OSU is therefore closer to home. Given the coronavirus pandemic, I would either stay closer to home at OSU or defer admission and take a gap year. One way or another, next year is going to be disrupted again.
This is exactly what hamstrings so many people when making important or tough decisions with imperfect information-, and you will have to do it over and over again throughout life. One of my favorite lines from a book is ‘What is life but foolish and imperfect choices?’.
So you gather as much data as you reasonably can. You rule out obviously bad choices. You think hard about what you know about yourself- in this case, environments in which you have been more or less happy, your ability to handle challenges, what you know about the life you want to build.
And then you take a deep breath and you choose. And once you have chosen, you commit to that choice, no ‘what ifs’, no looking back. You get the tshirt, join the online group. When you show up in Sept you show up wholeheartedly, willing it to be the right choice.
The great thing is that nine times out ten, it IS the right thing. Not because the other was the wrong thing- it isn’t, it’s just a different one. What makes the choice the right one is you choosing to make it the right one.
True story: my then-new husband was asked by his best friend how he “knew” that I was the right one, because the friend thought his GF might be the ‘one’, but wasn’t sure. The answer was ‘it’s not the right one until you make it. It’s the choosing that makes it the right one’. That was a lifetime ago, and it has been true over and over. (and he is still the right one…).
You have two legitimately great choices. From your other post I am guessing that you had some disappointments in the application round, and see these both as 2nd best- but irl they are great programs and can get you where you want to go!