Having a hard time figuring out which one will result in the best outcome for me in the future.
I’m from New Hampshire, so Purdue and George Mason are costing me out of state tuition.
Price wise, RIT is the most expensive at around $57k. Purdue is around $41k, and George Mason is about the same after I subtract the $12k scholarship that I got from them. Both Purdue and RIT didn’t give me any scholarship money. None of them gave me financial aid because my family doesn’t qualify for it. Parents said that cost shouldn’t be a factor when I’m deciding, but I’m just putting it here anyway.
I’ve been leaning towards RIT since I’ve been getting along well with the people in the admitted students Facebook group and Discord server, and it’s also the closest to me to get to, but I’m not sure if it has the best cybersecurity program academically out of the bunch. The co-op program here though seems to be well established and thought out (and it’s required).
Purdue is technically supposed to be the best (the IT department is apparently #4 according to this website and the cyber seucirty masters degree is apparently best in the nation) but on admitted students day I was only able to tour 1 of the computer networking labs for like 5 minutes there and they were using pretty old equipment. Purdue also seems to have the most career fairs out of the 3. Co-op is kind of messy though since it’s an optional thing and it’ll put you behind the rest of your peers academically since you’ll be missing out on classes for co-op.
I don’t know much about George Mason, other than it apparently has good connections with the NSA due to George Mason’s proximity to D.C. Haven’t seen anything about co-op here.
So as you can see I’m pretty conflicted right now as to where I want to go, any insight from current cybersecurity students from any of these colleges would be greatly appreciated.