<p>Hi guys! I'm an international student going to a boarding school in the U.S. and now that I have received some sort of a reply from (almost) all of the colleges that I've applied to, it's time for me to make a decision. I was accepted to my top choice school which is the most known/prestigious one among the other schools I was accepted to. The only downside is that I didn't get any financial aid and it's ~60,000$/ year. On the other hand, most of the lesser known schools gave me a significant amount of financial aid. Considering that I might:</p>
<ul>
<li>want to go back to my country one day or </li>
<li>want to go to law school in the U.S.</li>
</ul>
<p>what should I? Should I pick the lesser known one since I might have to pay for school tuition for another 7+ years? Or should I pick the prestigious one since it can be useful while applying to law school and/or while looking for a job in my native country?</p>
<p>Would you mind sharing the names of those colleges? </p>
<p>I think (and my graduate student friends at Stanford agree) that a tippy top university degree might be a worthwhile investment. I would, for example, consider going into considerable debt for a degree from Harvard or MIT, but not for a degree from Tufts. The reason being that Harvard or MIT degrees open doors, while a degree from Tufts would not (even though Tufts is a very good university too). </p>
<p>That being said, you can attend a good law school without a prestigious college degree, so the prestige factor might not be worth the investment if your resources are limited.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the situation in your home country either. For example, in my home country, American undergraduate degrees are usually not recognized as university degrees by industry and academia because undergraduate programs in my home country are very focused while American programs tend to be geared towards general education. However, a prestigious university degree (such as from Harvard) brands a job applicant as “brilliant” and overshadows the typical anti-American stereotypes. An undergraduate degree from Harvard would be worth A LOT, while an undergraduate degree from Tufts (just for example) would be essentially useless. </p>
<p>That all being said, you are the only one walking in your shoes. You’ll have to decide for yourself what the best trade-off is for prestige/selectivity vs cost because none of us know (or could appreciate) all facets of your situation.</p>
<p>Wow, b@r!um. Tufts degrees don’t open doors? Are “useless”? Would you make such a bald statement about any school among the top fifty? Taking on debt is a matter of chosen major, program strengths/ weaknesses, personal drive, a number of factors beyond school “prestige”.</p>
<p>My friends with Tufts degrees or with children who got Tufts degrees–as well as degrees from Colgate, Haverford, W&M, U Mich, UNC, and others–who certainly had plenty of “doors open” for them in graduate admissions and the workplace would take issue with your statement.</p>
<p>As for the OPs question, I would seriously consider the undergrad school offering you financial aid. And trust that your individual efforts at that school–along with summer opportunities and internships taken advantage of, test scores, recommendations, etc.–will ensure you success. Getting a virtual head start free of debt is not to be taken lightly. And I don’t believe you’d be passing yourself off as not “brilliant” by doing so.</p>
<p>I didn’t say that a Tufts degree was useless. I said that undergraduate degrees from most American universities are essentially useless in my home country. I used Tufts as an example of an American university that is very selective and could very well be someone’s top choice, but whose degrees would not have much value in my home country. (I’ll say it again: American Bachelor’s degrees are not considered university degrees in my home country due to the lack of focus/depth of an American undergraduate education. However, a small number of American universities - I took Harvard as an example - have so much “wow” factor that affiliation with those universities is enough to get a good job anyway. If a university does not have that “wow” factor - and people in my home country really don’t know very much about American universities and wouldn’t know the difference between Tufts and the local community college - then the degree is essentially useless.) </p>
<p>Hence, if I was facing the OP’s decision, I might be willing to pay a lot of money for some universities but not most others, f my goal was to return to my home country and tuition would make a real dent into my family’s finances. That was the OP’s question after all. I was just trying to give examples of scenario’s to consider in case they might be applicable to the OP’s situation. </p>
<p>We do disagree on the value of certain college degrees. There’s very little I can do with a degree from Haverford that I couldn’t do with a degree from Penn State. FWIW, when I was a Bryn Mawr student interested in consulting and finance jobs, I ran into sooo many recruiters in the Philadelphia area who flat out told me that I need not apply unless I have a degree from Penn or Princeton. Now that I am affiliated with Stanford, I am actively being recruited by companies that would have not even read my application before…</p>
<p>University affiliation can make a huge difference, but - in my own experience - mostly at the very top.</p>
<p>b@r!um, Yeah, that is the world of finance and consulting, which has been discussed ad nauseam on this site as being name-brand centered. And it’s sad that you were flatly told not to apply with your Bryn Mawr degree. Maybe if you had, you might have surprised yourself and your recruiter with (gulp!) a successful placement!</p>
<p>And you just contradicted your point that a degree from anything less than tippy-top is worthless “in your home country”, as Philly is USA. So then the uselessness factor is in place in your home country AND here? </p>
<p>It’s the lack of nuance in the argument that bristles so much. To imply that there is some cut-off of particular schools at which taking on debt is misguided is ridiculous. Again, there are many details to consider aside from college brand, such as personal fit, strength of intended major, on and on. If the slam-dunk aspect is enough for the OP to take on 60,000+ a year, then he/she should go for it. If he/she feels situations will arise in which the degree alone, and not other attributes, will open doors, then he/she should go for it. But time and again, personal qualities, initiative and luck as keys to success are underestimated and under-discussed. And until the conversation changes in those home countries with respect to what qualifies as a “wow” college, or what constitutes a “brilliant” person, or even the value of an American “university” education, all the opportunities will fall to those few who graduate from that shallow pool (puddle, more like it) and will be denied to everyone else. This prospect makes me really sad. </p>
<p>But too much philosophizing. I’m just a Rutgers grad with a Masters from NYU. What do I know?</p>
<p>(BTW, Tufts is “known” as more than a community college in plenty of countries, as evidenced in their robust international student enrollement. Maybe you don’t give your fellow home country denizens enough credit?) </p>
That’s probably true but irrelevant since I was talking about one particular country.</p>
<p>
That’s not really evidence for name recognition. Bryn Mawr (like most liberal arts colleges) has little name recognition in most countries and still has plenty of international students for various reason. </p>
<p>
Possible but unlikely. Literally every single person I talked to at home told me not to study in the US for college if I want to return home unless I attended Harvard/MIT/Stanford/etc: employers, university professors, college counselors, even pro-US posters on an US-themed forum. Widespread stereotypes against US undergraduate education.</p>
<p>
I never meant to suggest that there’s a one-size-fits-all cutoff, but there certainly seem to exist fairly clear cut-offs for some purposes in some situations. (e.g. if I wanted to use the degree in my home country; or if I wanted to go into management consulting; or if I wanted to have a research career in pure mathematics) </p>
<p>
That’s just the example I gave because it’s the easiest to describe and justify. I found that now I’m at Stanford, I can apply for random jobs or internships with no previous experience in the area and still get an interview. That didn’t happen at Bryn Mawr: it took a fair bit of effort and preparation and networking to get my foot in the door. Trust me, I was surprised myself how much affiliation matters. I used to think that prestige was overrated. Now I totally get why some people are willing to go into debt for an elite education. </p>
<p>
I completely agree and never said anything to the contrary. However, the OP seemed to be particularly concerned with the selectivity-vs-cost trade-off and I offered some possible considerations in that respect. </p>
<p>So now I’m curious. If one isn’t admitted as an undergrad to HYPMS, then where can a student from your home country attend that is considered a valuable undergrad institution? European/ Canadian/ Asian colleges? </p>
<p>To beat the horse a bit more, it is sad that those stereotypes exist, especially considering the oft-heard arguments that the undergrad education and experience at schools other than HYPMS are in fact superior (small LACs with close faculty/student interaction, for instance; less competition for internships/ research) and that, all things considered, debt should be incurred for graduate education over undergrad, anyway. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s best for the OP to think of his education in terms of stepping stones. b@r!um, your fine education at Bryn Mawr garnered you admission at Stanford, which is garnering you opportunities now. The OP can attend an undergrad institution that’s significantly less of a burden financial-wise, and if he/she wants to continue to grad school, assume that said “free” undergrad education will lead to grad school acceptance, at which point he/she can go for the “wow” factor, rack up debt, impress the folks back home, get a fabulous job, and be set for life (snarky, I know!). </p>
<p>^^ I wish you would read boriums first post in this thread as though it was a paragraph on the reading comprehension portion of the sat (ie carefully). For most internationals a degree from a US college that is not HYPSM and a few more is a waste of a degree, if they are interested in getting a job in their home country. Period. End of story. Employers will not consider the degree precisely due to the fact of liberal arts education. By the time most European kids go to college they have had that liberal arts education in their high schools. So college in Europe is mostly like the last two years of an US college where a student concentrates on their major. However they do that for three years. Which is how long college is, unless its Scotland.<br>
So to answer your question of above - the student from boriums home country attends a college in that country if they dont get into HYPSMetc. </p>
<p>Interesting. There is a not-insignificant German/ Austrian/ Swiss national population in my community. Unless their attitudes shift after living a certain number of years here in the US, I’d say these friends and acquaintances of mine consider the “names” and quality of education of any number of US colleges beside HYPS et al. to carry real weight. They are not feeling any pressure from back home to attend just those schools. Unless they’re keeping mum about it. </p>
<p>Again, it’s ultimately up to the international students here to be the agents of change by pronouncing to those in their home countries who still hew to the mystical powers of certain schools that there are many more of the same quality and value. </p>
<p>mhmm… Had b@r!um included the detail you used in your post, my reading comprehension score would have shot up, I’m sure. And it isn’t a lack of comprehension, it’s a desire to get at the heart of an issue. </p>
<p>And a liberal arts degree at HYP et al. is still a liberal arts degree. Why are these schools exempt from the redundancy argument? And what about specialized schools like Georgia Tech or RPI or CalTech? Just asking.</p>
<p>I didn’t express myself very clearly originally, so I’d like to clarify my position. I interpreted the OP’s post as an inquiry whether the more expensive “top school” was a good economic investment over cheaper schools. The OP gave us some indications of his goals (go back home or law school) but did not name the colleges in question or the country he’s from. </p>
<p>I wanted to make the following points:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I believe that attending a “better” (more prestigious, stronger major program, whatever) university justifies higher expenses sometimes but not in general. (from a purely economic point of view, personal fit aside)</p></li>
<li><p>I believe that differences between universities translate into differences in post-graduation opportunities more so at the tippy top (e.g. Harvard vs Tufts) than at other “very good” universities (e.g. Tufts vs Lehigh). </p></li>
<li><p>We can’t make any statements about how his choice of university would affect the OP’s opportunities back home without knowing where “home” is. I described the situation in Germany (my own home country) specifically because the reputation of American universities in Germany is so different from the reputation of American universities in many other parts of the world. </p></li>
<li><p>His decision is a personal one, and we wouldn’t be able to make a recommendation for one option vs the other even if he gave us all “factual” information. (Precisely because there are “soft” variables such as personal fit and the meaning of money in his family.)</p></li>
</ul>
Are their kids getting a US college degree with the explicit intention of going back to Germany with a Bachelor’s degree? If they will stay in the US after college or plan to go to graduate school, in the US or elsewhere, then my objection doesn’t apply. (However, they probably won’t be going to graduate school in Germany since German graduate programs don’t accept American Bachelor’s degrees for admission.) </p>
<p>
That’s all true and not in contradiction with anything I said. </p>
<p>“Are their kids getting a US college degree with the explicit intention of going back to Germany with a Bachelor’s degree? If they will stay in the US after college or plan to go to graduate school, in the US or elsewhere, then my objection doesn’t apply. (However, they probably won’t be going to graduate school in Germany since German graduate programs don’t accept American Bachelor’s degrees for admission.)”</p>
<p>I’m not sure. I know the matter of American Bachelor’s degrees might have been a consideration for one or two families who faced the possibility of returning to Germany/ Austria/ Switzerland. </p>
<p>The OP noted both the possibility of either returning to his/ her home country or staying here for law school. Given everything you’ve pointed out, b@r!um, it’s hard to give a best answer that satisfies both potentialities. And also hard to answer without knowing the specific schools he/ she is referring to… </p>
Degrees from (Western) European universities are accepted just fine. I recently read an article claiming that more than 50% of Germans who study abroad study in the UK, Austria or the Netherlands. </p>
<p>The “real” issue is that education in Germany is standardized at every level, including college. Germans are fine with degrees from countries where postsecondary education is organized in a similar fashion. They want confidence that a college degree implies competence in one’s major, without investigating an applicant’s transcript or the university he studied at. </p>
<p>FWIW, an Open Doors Report from the International Institute of Education claimed that there were only about 3,000 German students enrolled as undergraduates at US institutions. And many of those probably won’t return to Germany. Given the low enrollment figure, it’s really not surprising that the general German public is unfamiliar with the differences between US institutions. </p>
<p>Yes, I’ve heard about the standardization of education in Germany. I think among the German families I know, there is a certain sense of relief and abandon mixed with trepidation in regards to their elementary and middle grade-aged children completing their educations here. Things are so unstructured by comparison, and for better or worse.</p>
<p>If your intent is to return home immediately after college graduation, you need to find out whether or not your potential employers care about where you receive your education in the US. That includes finding out which institutions are important for which majors. For example, if you will study petroleum engineering, and everyone in the companies that control the petroleum industry in your country attended Never-Heard-Of-It-Before-U, then you had best get your degree at NHOIBU.</p>
<p>Unless you have a direct connection now to a law firm in the US that is ready, willing, and able to go through the headaches of the H1B visa process so that you could be hired there, law school in the US probably makes no sense at all. If you are serious about law, your chances of working here (or in an international firm that could use US legal expertise in your home country) would almost certainly better if you were to complete your law degree in your home country, and then come to the US for a specialized Master or even PhD in law.</p>
<p>inalterable: Can you indicate the cost of each university for which you got scholarships?
If you can, can you indicate the name of the university, or just indicate “Top 20 university”, “top 20 LAC”, “Top 100 university”, etc… so that we have a better idea of what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>First of all, thanks for the feedback everyone! I’m from Greece and the prestigious college I was talking about is a top 25 University and the rest that gave me scholarship and I got accepted to are pretty much top 50 LACs and top 50 universities. As many of you said, it is a personal decision and there are many aspects that should be considered beforehand. It seems like what I should be doing next is to figure out if studying law in the U.S. makes sense… Consequently, I feel like my best bet would be to attend the “Top 25 University” if I stop considering to go to law school (which seems very likely) since it is pretty known by many employers in Greece. I really appreacite all of your help and feedback!</p>