<p>My dilemma: I got in to MIT, but with minimal financial aid (I'll basically have to pay everything). I've also received a full tuition scholarship at BU through the Trustee scholarship, and full tuition at Northeastern for being an NMF. My parents have said they will pay for about half of MIT. I plan on majoring in physics, and most likely going to grad school later. I'd love to hear opinions from MIT grads: is it worth going into $100k of debt for an MIT undergrad education, or should I take one of the other offers?</p>
<p>If your family could afford it, I think you should definitely choose MIT. You are looking at the BEST physics program in the world - you can easily make the money back in the future with a MIT education. On the other hand, you won’t have another opportunity to be a MIT student again. So come to CPW and see if you like it. If you do, don’t make cost your most significant factor in your decision because at the end of the day, you cannot put a price on a MIT education.</p>
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Just so you’re aware (many rising college freshmen aren’t), grad school in the sciences is supported completely by the PhD programs themselves, generally through federal grants. Grad school in physics will not cost you anything, and, indeed, you will be supported by a stipend while in graduate school.</p>
<p>So $100k is serious debt to go into for your undergraduate education, but you can be confident that you will not need to go further into debt to finance your graduate work.</p>
<p>You situation is fairly common among MIT applicants. Many are offered scholarships at state schools or other private colleges. But in the end, very few turn down the opportunity of an MIT education.</p>
<p>Your opportunities on graduation from MIT will be vastly greater than from nearly any other school in the country, especially if you want to pursue grad school in the sciences. Getting into a top PhD program is essential and while theoretically possible from any college or university, the likelihood is much greater with an MIT degree. If you decide for any reason not to pursue graduate school it is also much easier to get a well paying job with an MIT degree, whatever your major. The $100K investment you would make by attending MIT could be the wisest investment you will ever make.</p>
<p>Taking on 100k debt if you are planning to move from undergrad to grad school is a tough choice. </p>
<p>Are your parents willing to sign the loan papers with you? On your own you can only borrow 5.5k each year from what I see in other threads.</p>
<p>This depends on so much. Will your family be able to support you on this? Friends of ours did this, and regretted it because as an engineering major at MIT, he made exactly what the kids from StateUs were getting and he had loans to repay, and family that was in dire financial straits that could not help and were hitting him up for money as soon as he was making what they felt was a fortune. His sister appealed for help for him for her own college. It was a tough going for him. Had he gone to state U, he would not have had all of those years of loan payments, and that was 30 years ago when the debt is a lot less since costs were less. $100K is a lot of money to owe and physicists do not usually make a whole lot of money. You will only be able to borrow $5500 yourself freshman year, so how are you thinking of getting the rest? Will your parents cosign? Can they co sign? Are they even credit worthy? MIT might be a wise investment to make, but to borrow to invest is not advised in any investment scheme.</p>
<p>the choice is simple. MIT is great if you’re looking into getting a job after graduation. but for grad school, i think MIT isn’t that much of an asset, assuming you will do well at BU and participate in research. (no knock down on MIT, that’s a great place). Sure, your future grad school will accept somewhat lower gpa from mit than from say BU and Northeastern, and then again, your chances of doing well at BU is much higher, and it’s almost fail-safe. again, if you’re sure of going to grad school, BU will be just fine, and may even be a better choice – you can go to grad school at MIT or anywhere else you want. your chances will not be lower. a sub-par gpa from mit will not get you into top grad school. take a look at grad students at MIT and other top school, not all are from MIT or pother top schools. there are so many from average schools such as K-state, LSU, UCI etc. BU is much better. so, why pay 100k, and take that risk. go look at faculty at top schools where they studied undergrad – not all come from a top undergrad school, but most from a top grad school. so in essence it’s the terminal degree that matters, especially so in your case. save your $, and focus on doing well at BU and get involved in research – which should be a no-brainer as a trustee scholar.</p>
<p>It is just nonsense that the odds are the same for the average grad at State U to get into a top PhD program compared to an MIT grad. Look at the baccalaureate origins of grad students at MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton or Caltech. The overwhelming majority came from top undegraduate programs. Recommendations are key for access to top grad programs and the professors at top research universities all know each other and typically accept students from programs they are familiar with. Sure, it is possible to get into a top program from other schools but the odds are very low. The vast majority of MIT undergrads get into top grad programs, first and foremost at MIT itself, which has the top ranked physics PhD program in the country. I don’t believe there is a single BU student in the program. </p>
<p>As far as jobs directy out of school, it is like day and night between MIT and even a good science/engineering school as far as career opportunities. Most recent science/engineering grads can’t even find a job, let alone one that pays a decent salary. The top employers that recruit on the MIT campus don’t even recruit at most colleges so the opportunities are nowehere near the same. Furthermore starting salaries for MIT grads are significantly higher as all recruiting stastistics bear out. According to the most recent student exit surveys, the average salary of a graduating student from MIT with a BS is $74,000 including bonus, far more than the national average. For those with a MS or MEng the average starting salary is closer to $100,000. For EECS grads starting salaries can be as high as $130,000. Even science majors make much more than the national average. Physics majors average $70,000 starting salaries, 50% more than the national average. </p>
<p>As an MIT graduate, you also have options virtually non-existent elsewhere for engineers/scientists such as consulting, IB, or joining hot startups. Where else could you get a job at Morgan Stanley or Bain & Co. as a physics major straight out of college?</p>
<p>This is a tough decision, and ultimately, it’s a decision you have to make collaboratively with your parents. In our family, the decision was resolved as a result of a visit to CPW. My daughter’s father went along, and because he was the holdout, that made all the difference.</p>
<p>Posters here are right: every student admitted to MIT receives multiple offers from other places, and some of those offers come with massive amounts of merit aid, sometimes up to full tuition. That was true in our case also.</p>
<p>We ended up choosing to pay full freight for our daughter to attend MIT, and this decision was largely based on the opportunities she would have as a student. We were not disappointed. As a student at MIT, you’ll have the chance to engage in research through the UROP program, and that experience can be either for pay, or for credit. Our daughter was extremely frugal. She lived in a dorm with a kitchen, and she went after a UROP every year at MIT (not for the money, as it turns out, but because she loved research), and in the end, those decisions probably saved us around $30,000 overall. </p>
<p>She was a physics major, and as Mollie has told you, physics graduate students receive offers that range from covering all tuition plus a decent stipend to everything covered plus a good living wage. She worked during her summer after graduation and is now into spring semester of her first year of grad school at Harvard. I was in Boston just this week on business, and she told me she’s been able to save money. So perhaps you can not only attend graduate school, but begin to pay down some undergraduate debt as well. </p>
<p>There’s a risk with every decision. Good luck!</p>
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To add to this, I have been able to pay off almost all of my undergraduate debt so far in graduate school. </p>
<p>And for the record, I agree that, for me, having attended MIT (and having participated in significant research in the lab of a world-class professor) was a major factor in my acceptance to top graduate programs in my field, including the one I currently attend. I do not flatter myself and think that I could have gotten in from anywhere.</p>
<p>If your parents are going to pay for half of MIT, that is about $28K they will pay each year. Where are you going to get the other half? You will qualify for loans of a big fat $5500 freshman year from the federal government, but anyplace else your parents will have to step in and at least cosign the loans. In most cases it will be cheaper for them to take out the loans themselves. You will have over $100K in debt upon getting your UG degree with interest clicking away at it. Do the actual numbers yourself.</p>
<p>Perhaps try to take a gap year and get a job to pay off some of that debt “in advance”.</p>
<p>Would you rather be the head of a chicken (though BU is probably better than a chicken), or the down of a phoenix? Yes, there are a lot more opportunities at MIT, but there are going to be opportunities at BU as well.</p>
<p>IMO, if you are sure that you want to go into grad school, there isn’t too much of a point of going to MIT, especially if you have a lot of debt. Most employers place more weight on your last degree than your first. If you actively try to find opportunities at BU and work hard, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting into an amazing grad school.</p>
<p>^ Grad schools also place a lot of weight on your last degree.</p>
<p>Take the full ride. Unless you have a very huge knack for Physics (massively accelerated, stellar high school research, competitions like IPhO) and Math (accelerated, high competition placing, etc…) to the point where you will run out of resources at BU or Northeastern or have tremendously diminishing gains on them compared to MIT, you difference in undergraduate education at MIT or the others will not be that different. I concede you’ll probably have to go out of your way to make yourself stand out/go the extra mile to an extent to become a competitive applicant to a top notch Physics grad school if you go to BU or Northeastern, but at least you and the fam. can be happy knowing you will be debt free. You’ll have to time to concentrate on Physics or whatever you love instead of working.</p>
<p>To the naysayers who point out MIT high straight outta college salaries, if ChadBro is intent on going to grad school, I don’t think that data will help swing his vote, sorry.</p>
<p>MIT give better financial aid kthxbai</p>
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At MIT, it’s typical for undergraduate research jobs to be paid, so it’s quite possible to concentrate on physics while working.</p>
<p>I am someone who paid for a significant amount of her own MIT education (I will end up having paid a little over a year’s worth myself, and my parents paid a total of about two years), and did so while attending graduate school in the sciences. For me, attending MIT and launching what has so far been a successful academic career was worth the cost.</p>
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<p>Wow, where do I start? I completely disagree with this. </p>
<p>If a prospective physics major is trying to decide between MIT and these two schools, the difference in the depth and breadth of the coursework should not be the first consideration, although MIT does take the cake in this regard. For starters, not all physics majors at MIT take tons of graduate courses in physics, believe it or not. Whether a physics major will receive multiple offers from top physics graduate programs will depend, not on the number of advanced courses taken, but on the applicant’s demonstrated ability to engage in original and creative research.</p>
<p>What MIT can offer, far above and beyond the other schools, is high-quality research experience. This is not the sort of research experience where the undergraduate joins a lab and sits on the sidelines – at MIT a student can become a collaborative participant in a research team, and can even be paid to do it.</p>
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<p>Yes and No.</p>
<p>There are going to be research opportunities at BU as well. You just have to aggressively try to find them and build good relationships with faculty members. I doubt that MIT undergraduates conduct research that is more novel and advance than BU’s professors.</p>
<p>As others have pointed it may be even MORE important to consider MIT if grad school is the ultimate plan. The path for PhD candidates to faculty positions and eventual tenure is more competitive than ever. The vast majority of PhD candidates never get there: many simply give up and don’t complete their degree, others end up as semi-permanent postdocs and in adjunct faculty positions paying barely more than minimum wage. </p>
<p>In order to get onto a faculty track a top PhD program is absolutely essential. In order to get into a top PhD program, a wlll recognized undergraduate degree with significant research experience is the norm. MIT sends more students to top PhD programs than virtually any school in the country. </p>
<p>You may save some money in the short term by enrolling in a program that offers a lot of merit aid, but may lose out in the long run. The outcomes are simply not the same across all schools. Most studies have shown that in general merit aid incentives don’t compensate for loss of economic opportunity.</p>
<p>Before you make a final decision, you should go and visit the schools and their respective physics departments; ask them how many physics majors actually graduate every year and where they end up after graduation and how many are involved in research on campus.</p>
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<p>That’s not the point. BU professors may do some interesting research but few undergrads participate in it. There is simply no culture of significant involvement in research by undergrads at BU. According to its web site, BU has sponsored a total of 1,500 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programs (UROPs) since 1997 or LESS THAN 100 per year. MIT which invented the UROP back in 1969 sponsors more UROPs in a SINGLE YEAR than BU in 15 years and this with a quarter of the number of undergrads! Research involvement is so imbedded in many departments at MIT that it is part of the core curriculum. That is probably the single most important factor which explains the success of MIT graduates applying to top PhD programs.</p>