I was lucky enough to get accepted to The Dean’s Scholars Honors Program at UT Austin, to Cornell University, and to Stanford University. I’m planning on studying physics with a minor in French. Unfortunately, I’m not from Texas, so UT gave me no money, so Texas would cost ~$50,000 a year. So even though their honors program is phenomenal (especially for physics) they’re pretty much off the table. That leaves Cornell and Stanford. Cornell hasn’t released their financial aid decision, but I doubt they’ll be more generous than Stanford. Obviously, I’m leaning very heavily towards Stanford, but does anyone know of anything that would put Cornell above Stanford that I don’t know about? Thank you all in advance.
No. You don’t turn down Stanford. Congrats!
It’s great that you got into those schools. Don’t put too much hope in their financial aid generosity. Schools like that have every incentive to be stingy. The maximum amount of student loans you can take out for a 4 year degree is 27k. Anything over that has to be either paid for by your parents or co-signed in the form of private loans. I can tell you that co-signing is a very bad idea. Coming out of college with 80k or more in debt would financially sink you, especially if you decide to start a family.
If you want to start a healthy career, you need to first be set-up for success. Excessive debt does the exact opposite. Any bump in salary due to prestige would be easily nullified by your debt payments. Plus, life has a funny way of forcing you to pay for things you don’t want…like a new roof, medical bills, or a pay cut. If you’re weighed down by loan payments, you wouldn’t have the ability to save for those kind of contingencies, and be forced to ring up more debt on credit cards. I say this to everyone…if you have a scholarship offer, take it!
(thought this appeared someplace else)
… maybe San Andreas Fault ??