I was accepted at both Purdue and Northeastern as a transfer in design. I haven’t received scholarship for either school so there is a $30,000 price difference between Purdue and Northeastern. Purdue is a well known school for engineering but I haven’t heard much about design or the arts there so I don’t know what the design program is like there. I really like the location and opportunities at NU, but is it actually worth the extra money?
Would the NU program be four semesters of tuition and two co-op semesters, for a total of three years?
What about Purdue - would you be done in two years or would there also be co-op options?
One way to look at the price difference is that for the $60K total you’d save by going to Purdue, you could do a whole year of grad school at Northeastern and get a MS in Design. (MFA would take two years and cost twice as much, but also an option).
Point being, try not to think of the price differential as a vaguely large amount of money, but rather think of the most valuable thing you could possibly do if you had that money left over, and then compare the value of that thing to the value of Northeastern over Purdue. (By which I mean the subjective value to you; I have no basis to say that one program is objectively better than the other.)
(And congrats on the acceptances!)
@aquapt thanks for the advice! The programs at both schools are slightly different so I would finish at NU in three years but it will take me four years to graduate from Purdue. (I’m transferring after only one year of college.)
Oh, okay… so it would probably take you four calendar years to get through either one, but at Purdue that would be four years of tuition whereas at Northeastern it would be three years of tuition and one year of co-op (where you’d be making money, but probably not enough to make much of a dent in the school costs). Is that correct?
So, Purdue would cost around $40Kx4, whereas NU would cost around $70Kx3? Actual difference of around $50K, perhaps minus a little in co-op earnings?
Do you have the money for Northeastern? There’s a big difference between spending money you have, and digging giant crater of debt…
I have some familiarity with NU’s design program, and none with Purdue’s. What kind of design do you hope to end up doing? Is one program better tailored to your interests than the other? Have you looked into Scout, the student-led design studio at NU? https://web.northeastern.edu/scout/ Does Purdue have similar opportunities, or different ones that are attractive in their own way?
@aquapt Yes that would be correct. I don’t think I will make enough in co-op to significantly lower the tuition costs so NU would end up costing around $50k more than Purdue.
I won’t need to get a loan to pay for NU but it will be a bit tight to get that amount of money.
I want to pursue either industrial design or graphic design. I was accepted at NU as a design major with a concentration in graphics and as an industrial design major at Purdue. I have some familiarity with graphic design because I have taken some courses before and know I enjoy it. Industrial design is a newer interest for me and I have yet to take a course in it, however, I think I will like that as well.
I hadn’t heard of Scout before. But, it seems like a really good opportunity closely related to what I want to pursue. I will look into that more. Thanks!
Purdue also has a co-op program where you can choose to work with someone as an intern or 3-5 sessions. Although I haven’t found any opportunities similar to Scout at Purdue, there are several clubs and galleries to get involved and work with other designers.
It sounds like you have your decision pretty well distilled.
Northeastern may well be the better choice for graphic/interaction/information/experience design. (Though there may be stuff at Purdue that I don’t know about) In particular, if you wanted to blend design with computer science and could scrape up the difference in money, I would steer you toward the combined majors Northeastern in a heartbeat, because the CS department at Purdue is competitive to get into and hard to access otherwise, whereas Northeastern makes it dirt-easy to blend CS + Design or Info Science + Design. (Not to say the classes are easy, but the path into them is!). My sense is that Scout is also mainly oriented toward computer-related areas of design. If you want to do the considerable work to get that CS/Info Science skillset and combine it with design, then go to Northeastern and become incredibly marketable in UX, etc.
But if serious computing stuff isn’t your thing and you want to do product/industrial design, then Purdue would be the clear winner even without the price difference. Northeastern really doesn’t offer those specialties at all; and Purdue is a fantastic place to pursue that kind of work.
The thing with graphic design is that there are a lot of pretty anemic graphic design degree programs out there… so if you go into that field, the more tech skills you can acquire to set yourself apart from the “I’m good at designing pretty brochures” crowd, the better-positioned you will be. My humble opinion is that if you’re not going to bite the tech bullet and do at least a minor in CS or info science, then you’re not going to be getting your (considerable) money’s worth from Northeastern’s strengths. Those CS classes are a big commitment and definitely not everybody’s jam… but IMHO that crossover is where NU really stands out. Otherwise, if I were you, I would go with Purdue’s strengths and get the industrial design training there, which won’t in anyway burn bridges for you on the graphic design side of things.
Both are terrible options. $40k x 4 is $120k. If Northeastern is $280,000, it won’t matter which school you go to. The debt would crush you and potentially sink your career along with it. It’s like asking which choice would bankrupt me less? You really need to re-think your options.
Purdue is 160K, Northeastern is 210K, and OP said that neither will require loans.