<p>proletariat2–
"Yeah, I’m turning down Pomona, Grinnell, and University of Chicago for Michigan State, which is offering a full ride and plenty of research opportunities. I’ll be in the Lyman Briggs residential college and the Honors College, and I’ll not only have no debt when I graduate, but I’ll be around $40-50k in the black. Whoo! "</p>
<p>I congratulate you for your hard work that allowed you to get into those places, and for having the clarity of mind to see the cost part of the equation, even in the rejection of those prestigious places, but also seeing what you WILL get - the Honors College, where you will have intellectual peers and the research opps. That 40-50k can be used for grad school or to found a company.</p>
<p>I did not know that state publics offered ‘free rides’ (I thought by virtue of their publicly subsidized status that their tuition was already discounted). Are you OOS?</p>
<p>What were your stats?</p>
<p>another note for this thread…
my wife has a book club and their latest entry was ‘THe Help’, a phenomenally successful book now. I saw in the author bio that she was a U of Alabama grad. State public school. </p>
<p>As so many in this forum keep telling us - and you can’t say it enuf since prestige is ‘so good looking’ - it is not where you go as much as what you put into the place: The combined force that you impose on the institution and the institution imposes on you. If I remember elementary physics from a million yrs ago, this might be called ‘work’.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics)[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics)</a></p>