<p>well while I'm not sure yet, this is the decision I'll have to make sometime in the future. I'm going into engineering in college, and I'll have to choose from A. Top ranked school (MIT, Stanford, Princeton) versus B. scholarships. If I also plan to go into graduate school for engineering, how can I ensure I get a stipend?, and even so would it be wise to pay 200k for Stanford?</p>
<p>It would be a dumb idea to spend $200k to go to Stanford when you could go for significantly less/free at another good school.</p>
<p>If it’s $200k at Stanford vs. $0 at UConn, then I’d choose UConn. However, there might be a middle ground. What about relatively inexpensive schools like Iowa State or U Minnesota?</p>
<p>Not that there’s anything wrong with UConn, if you’d like it there.</p>
<p>why are there so many people paying full tuition at schools like stanford though? there must be a reason.</p>
<p>and also there are some scholarships like at UMich or USC that are much harder to get but still possible. like between half off at USC and Stanford, what would you pick (for engineering)?</p>
<p>If you’ll be looking for jobs right out of college, you may get much better offers with much higher starting salary graduating from Stanford than UConn. It can happen UConn too, certainly, but it’s going to harder.</p>
<p>Also, for graduate school, applying from a top undergrad school can help.</p>
<p>“why are there so many people paying full tuition at schools like stanford(sic) though? there must be a reason.”</p>
<p>-Because they are rich or ridiculously smart and get a full ride.</p>
<p>Ok, so since I could afford the 200k in total, will I be able to do a graduate program for free? because then I could spend 200k on undergraduate study, and then with RA/TA get a masters or PhD. but how do you know you could get a Stipend? and will anything change by the time I get out of college (4 years)?</p>
<p>Also, for graduate school, applying from a top undergrad school can help. </p>
<p>How much does it help? I thought with a good undergrad GPA you can go almost anywhere…</p>
<p>"“why are there so many people paying full tuition at schools like stanford(sic) though? there must be a reason.”</p>
<p>-Because they are rich or ridiculously smart and get a full ride."</p>
<p>Generally you have to pretty much be ridiculously smart to just get into Stanford. They actually give little merit aid, but are pretty good with need-based aid.</p>
<p>I would take $0 and goto UConn or like someone else pointed out, choose a middle ground attend something like a Purdue, Michigan or Illinois. Depending on which engineering major you choose, those schools will be very close to Stanford in how employers view you.</p>
<p>If money is not an issue, then always go to the perceived better opportunity. The student peer quality level may be different and the level of work. Do not assume because you have the capability and ability to go to a particular school, its not a guarantee, not even a good bet to make this assumption. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1009383-opportunity-value-education.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1009383-opportunity-value-education.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1014565-venting-over-money.html?highlight=opportunity[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1014565-venting-over-money.html?highlight=opportunity</a></p>
<p>Getting into a Grad School is also a long shot. Gotta get thru undergrad school with good grades and LOR’s and activities and outside interests. Getting a scholarship for a MS engineering is remote. You got 4 years to work to consider your options.</p>
<p>
How much did the last 4 years change for you? Everything will be different in 4 years.</p>
<p>If you’re rich enough not get any FA at Stanford, you can probably afford to pay the full 200k. In any case, I would pay 200k for Stanford over UConn. At Stanford you’ll get lots of interesting job offers and you can essentially choose any industry you want. UConn (or even better public schools like Michigan or Purdue) won’t offer anything close to that.</p>
<p>Some people really want to go to Stanford. They are smart enough to get in and they’ll come up with the money anyway they can to make it happen. Some people don’t care as much, they’d be just as happy attending a less expensive school as Stanford. That is the choice that they make and they end up doing just fine down the road. It sounds like you might be in the second camp.</p>
<p>The best way to decide if you want to go to a school is to visit and hopefully you’ll have some intuitive reaction, is this where you want to be? In your case the cost differential may be the deciding factor. Like I said, I’ve known people who’ve turned down schools like Stanford for less expensive State schools and they’ve never regreted it.</p>
<p>
I personally would say that a $200k nest egg right out of undergrad might be kind of handy regardless of whether you get a stipend should you decide to go to grad school. But that’s just me.
<em>citation needed</em></p>
<p>Seems like if you’re willing to consider it, you’d be okay not going to Stanford. Then again, if your parents are able to afford it, go. If finances were a problem, there’d be no question that going to Stanford is not worth the cost, but it could help you in the future in ways you might not even think of now. You might decide to get into a field where pedigree matters. No one knows. At Stanford, if you change your mind and go into physics, you still have an amazing program. If you decide to go into literature, you still have an amazing school.</p>
<p>Whoever said you need anything beyond research, letters of recommendation, and a good GPA for graduate school is nuts. Activities and stuff like that doesn’t matter. Generally for most sciences, if you have those things I mentioned above you can get a stipend somewhere. Where you can get that depends on how good your ‘stuff’ is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, pretty much every decent firm recruits at Stanford. There are good companies at UConn, but there’s still a huge difference.</p>
<p>
However, it does not logically follow that “[a]t Stanford you’ll get lots of interesting job offers and you can essentially choose any industry you want.”</p>
<p>Also, you need to provide a standard for the relative goodness or decentness of a company.</p>
<p>
is 1. it easier to get a better GPA at Stanford than Michigan for example (similarly ranked schools), or is it the same?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>do you have more research oppurtunities at Stanford over UConn or Michigan?</p></li>
<li><p>do you have a chance to get better letters of recommendation at places like Stanford or Princeton?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Also Job Offers don’t matter to me not that you can’t discuss it because I’m only looking to go to graduate school. (or does it matter?)</p>
<p>
Just a tad presumptuous? Your stats must be pretty amazing, even for CC standards, to merit such a statement.</p>
<p>
Obviously it will be more difficult, but you will learn more. There are these things called qualifying exams in graduate school that if you fail (they’re taken usually after you take all your graduate courses, so 2nd year) you only get one chance to retake them before you’re kicked out with a consolatory master’s degree. Because of this, I’d say that a good education is highly important, disregarding all of the reasons you should learn as much as you can based solely on principal. You shouldn’t go somewhere just so you’ll get a good GPA, that is not the point of education.</p>
<p>
Stanford is a world class school for a lot of things, like I mentioned before. The guy teaching your partial differential equations class could be a giant in the field of differential equations research in mathematics, or the lady teaching political theory in your 2nd year could be one of the most influential authors on philosophy in the world. There’s not a huge chance that you’ll get to work with these people, but think about who gets to work at Stanford; they have to be the best. At Michigan, you might find a lot of brilliant people that just weren’t lucky enough to be able to work at MIT or Stanford. It’s not terribly likely to find that sort of brilliance in every field, should you decide you don’t want to do chemical engineering or electrical engineering or computer science.</p>
<p>
Well it depends on who you choose. You can’t base your decisions off of this, you’re short-changing yourself here. The reason why the entire system is so bastardized is because students, like you, are trying to cheat the system. Now of course that isn’t your fault, but there’s a certain limit to how much you can predict and you really cannot use who might be your lecturers, which of those lecturers you might make a good impression on, and which of those will think you are worth a stellar recommendation. The thought is just ridiculous.</p>
<p>
You can’t know right now how you’ll feel about graduate school in 4 years. You might be so good that Google will offer you a job and you’ll forget about graduate school. Maybe you could have had that chance had you gone to one school over another. Maybe you sucked at school so much that you barely got by and you just want to get out of academia. Maybe you knocked up a hooker and she took you to court so now you have to pay child support. Who knows? Not you, not me, not anyone.</p>