Too good to pass up?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I was admitted to UCSD... BioE: PRe Med</p>

<p>I received my financial aid package and was told that my estimated cost of attendance was 40,093...</p>

<p>I was given a grant for 3,404
I was given federal work study = 2,150
A perkins loan for = 311
Subsidized Stafford Loan = $2,625<br>
Parent PLUS Loan = $19,968<br>
Other Outside Aid = $0 </p>

<p>The school expects me to pay an additional 1,439
And they expect my parents to pay an additional 10,196</p>

<p>My problem now is realizing that this is a very very large amount of money for an undergradutate education.... Do I swallow the cost and go (I'm majoring in BioE... what UCSD is known for.) </p>

<p>Or do I go somewhere cheaper?</p>

<p>I want to live in CA as an adult, hopefully attend grad school somewhere near the San Fran, Berkeley area (I like the Berkeley/UCSF joint BioE grad program.) Is it much harder to get into grad school at berkeley being out of state? Do they not care as much about the "out of state" factor when it is grad school? Arghh this is so depressing... </p>

<p>I jsut want to go as far as I possibly can academically and dont want to pass up an excellent opportunities... I am willing to work my ass off no matter where I go... for both money to pay, and my education... </p>

<p>But the thing is I could go to Rutgers in NJ for 10,000 a year...</p>

2

<p>It's your future, your decision. You have more information than any of us.</p>

<p>I honestly have no idea. My opinion is completely unqualified, like most others given on this forum.</p>

3

<p>sameish boat, if you read the other post I put, i'm thinking about just going to rutgers and making the most of it.</p>

4

<p>EEW @ your "financial aid"(this is BY NO MEANS 'aid') package. A $20,000 loan? IMO go to another school. $100,000 debt after you graduate = not pretty.</p>

5

<p>eew? sorry im so new to this message board language...</p>

<p>and yeah tell me about it.... 20,000 dollar aid... i think im going to rutgers... lol</p>

6

<p>"eew" as in the sound you make as when you are grossed out by something</p>

<p>Ex: Ewww that color is nasty. </p>

<p>yea...first thing that popped into my head...</p>

7

<p>Berkeley's heard of Rutgers. If you continue to work your tail off as a pre-med at Rutgers, as you presumably would have done if you'd gone to UCSD, I don't see why you wouldn't get into Berkeley for grad school.</p>

<p>As a caveat, though... The UC system is kind of snarky about funding these days... While most of us structural folks were given full money at other places, none of us got full funding at Berkeley, though we all pretty much got in. Even the one crazy-brilliant guy I went to both undergrad and grad school with, who's now cruising with an NSF fellowship at UIUC, got really stinky, nearly non-existant funding from Berkeley. So... I don't know how it is with other fields, but Berkeley's rather proud of its #1-ranked structural program, and they didn't dole out squat, despite the massive grants I'm sure they've got rolling in for various projects. Do some further research, since it may totally not apply to bioeng folks, but in my experience, funding from Berkeley grad programs isn't a given.</p>