<p>First of all, do you need to take (additonal) $10K/year to attend U chicago? If so, it depends on whether this feels like an undue burdent on your or not. Only you can tell whether this is something you can live with or not. If not, can your parents shoulder additional $10K tuition burden? If so, then you can only look at the merit of these two schools, and decide. If not, then this is the discussion you should have with your parents. </p>
<p>However, if I were your parent, I would say, with $10K difference, there is NO WAY I would recommend my kid go to UT when he has an option to go to U Chicago. </p>
<p>In general, in this day and age of state budget crisis with politicians who think cutting funding for high education is a totally risk free way of pretending to balance the budget, I don’t understand why anybody would choose a public university as an out of state student paying tuition almost at the same level as a private school. How do you know that UT system wouldn’t think raising the out of state student tuition is a very easy to increase the revenue? After all, this won’t ire their voters, will it? We hear about students not able to graduate in four years in popular majors due to the course offering conflict, etc etc in many public schools these days.</p>
<p>And, to boot, UT is NOT even close to U Chicago in terms of prestige, quality of education, diverse and thoughtful student body, ample faculty access, etc, etc. There is absolutely no dimension where UT excels U Chicago. U Chicago is an international powerhouse. In fact, in most international rankings, U Chicago is ranked within top 5, or at worst top 10, and within top 3-4 among US colleges. </p>
<p>So, I am scratching my head why this is even a hard decision. </p>
<p>Regarding advertising major: well, if you know that you will NEVER change your mind for a major, perhaps, your indecision has some merit. However, you are only 17 or 18 year old. Kids change their mind wrt the major. </p>
<p>At U Chicago, you will be surrounded with student body that is FAR more diverse (not even a fair comparison) than UT with interesting peers from all over the world. You will have easy access to top tier faculty members (at least my son has had VERY EASY TIME accessing all of his faculty members even as a first year). You will have employers from all major elite companies recruiting on campus, not just REGIONAL ones. You will have the best preparatory education for any top tier ultra elite graduate school programs.</p>
<p>Note: when it comes to which school, I don’t normally go so ballistic in favor of U Chicago. In fact, when it comes to Berkeley, UVA, Michigan as an in state student vs. U Chicago, I have ALWAYS favored the public schools: the tuition difference was way too big. When it was between U Chicago vs. its peers, my vote was “it depends”, and I frequently made a case in favor of the other schools.</p>