I’ve asked a lot of people renting at UIUC and they are the ones giving me these numbers, Im not pulling them out of my ass. Isn’t the general rule of thumb total undergrad debt < projected average starting salary? Again, I wouldn’t be considering UIUC if that wasn’t the case. PPL here are honestly kinda split… Some like u are saying it’s not worth it, others are saying that I would break even quick. I have talked to ppl I know irl who worked in industry and they say the same thing. Opportunities at SBU r just not the same as UIUC.
@deathhater9 My guy, congrats on getting into two amazing schools for CE! UIUC and SBU are two fabulous schools and would both be great options for your future! I’m at the same point and trying to decide for CS between UCB and USC. USC gave me Trustee and Viterbi fellows and Berkeley gave me a 95% scholarship. If I was in your shoes between UIUC and SB. I’d go to Stony Brook. Smaller classes, Honors courses, decent CE/CS and in NYC. The rankings don’t matter. IT’s what you know that counts to employers. Best of luck and let me know what you end up deciding on!
yoo thats crazy how Berkeley gave u that much in scholarships, you must be an insane applicant. I still really wanna go to UIUC, but the comments I got here are kinda pushing me against it because the critiques of my plan are fair. It’s like 50/50 at this point between the two. I still have a couple of people I want to ask advice on so I’m gonna wait until then to make a decision but its honestly a toss up at this point.
Your making the biggest mistake every young kid makes about college - you got emotionally attached.
Never get emotionally attached because you need the best overall situation.
My daughter was going to American U - she didn’t care the cost or otherwise.
Now she’s going to College of Charleston and AU didn’t make her top 4. We set parameters quickly. AU was over budget. While she hated to, she had to eliminate it.
You are setting yourself up for a difficult financial life - and depending on your family - for stress for them as well - if you can even find a private lender to loan you the money because you’re over the limits.
OK - i’m off on this one - you understand.
You will learn in life - you, not your institution, will ultimately lead to your success. Yes, one might give you an easier path in some ways but it will kill you in others (or in this case, drown you with debt…that by the way comes with interest).
Good luck to you. I enjoyed the banter.
yea… thanks for the advice. I’m still gonna get some third and fourth opinions but SBU doesn’t seem like that bad of an option anymore. I’m not exactly emotionally attached to the school per se but I am attached to the opportunities it can give me lul. Not saying I can’t get them at SBU, but it is a lot harder.
Math:
27k become 31k with interests over 4 years.
How much will you pay after 4 years foe what you intend to borrow?
If it takes 10 years an average college graduate that makes 55k to pay back these 27k (31k) - how long will it take you to pay back what you intend to borrow if you make 110k (twice as much as the average, upper end of the UIUC salary)?
110k is not double the average for a CE grad from UIUC. Their three year trend report says it is somewhere between 92-99, with 110k being on the top 25% and 80k being the bottom 25%. I was looking at loan calculators, and for a 10-year repayment plan, it’s like 1100 a month.
Their three year trend reports are here:Box
I meant double the average salary for a typical college graduate (ie., paying back 27K/31K over 10 years on a 55K salary) - since 110K is on the high end for CSE graduates at UIUC.
Let’s try and make a real-life simulation, assuming you work in Chicago (relatively low cost for a big city) – because it’s very hard when you’re young to understand how much “life” costs.
$110,000 salary
after federal, state, and local taxes, take home pay becomes roughly
$78,000
next, you have to pay for housing; you find an average 1-bedroom
$46,000 left after rent+ garbage/sewers, electric/gas etc.
You’re lucky, you live in a big city, so you don’t need a car, no expenses for car repairs nor gas. Your unlimited ride pass adds up to $1,260 and you keep a little for Lyft or cabs (nothing extravagant but depending on time/place you prefer not taking the L) but use your bike whenever possible.
45,400
You need food - groceries, occasional pizza delivery, occasional going out with colleagues
39,000
you get the cheapest bronze plan for health insurance and your employer pays part of it
33,000
What about cell phone plan?
Internet access?
Clothes? Shoes? Laptop?
Cleaning products, laundry soap, toilettries?
A few pots/pans/plates/cutlery, rugs (one-time purchase but still adds up)?
Don’t forget: Roth IRA or retirement savings?
(very minimal and basic would be $3,000 a year)
Renter’s insurance? Money left on basic checking account? Fancy a weekend off somewhere?
How much, yearly, goes toward your loan + interests (4.53% for the federal amount, 7.13% for PLUS) ?
I may have forgotten stuff.
So, with a very high $110,000 you could do it without starving, but it means you do have some restrictions and need to be lucky or thrifty, something a $110,000 salary wouldn’t let you expect. And if you end up making 85K, then you’re in trouble.
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Bruh there’s no way the government takes 32k in taxes. If that’s really the case I’m moving to Texas. U did put it into perspective tho so thanks for that. I did some maths, and it looks like the debt minus the room and board costs that my parents are willing to cover will be around 92k give or take 5-6k cuz these are just estimates. For a ten-year monthly repayment plan that would be around 1k a month, or 12-13k a year. Like u said, it could work, but I would have to be conservative with my money, and the idea of living conservative for 10 years after I graduate isn’t exactly the most enticing thing for me either. This whole decision wasn’t predicated on whether I could pay it back anyway it was on whether UIUC is worth double Stony. Right now, I am still on the fence because that answer is still a maybe.
You might want to check payscale (early career and mid-career median salary)
UIUC($64,200 $117,800)
SB($60,100 $111,000)
Not a huge difference.
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Stony Brook is a good school and the right choice.
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I guess you’re moving to Texas - where you’ll also earn a lower salary than most parts of the country.
In any state, you are paying the Federal Tax Rate (minus your standard deduction of course) + 6.2% for FICA (social security) and 1.45% for medicare.
Those last two are not refundable - so even if you made less (because you just had a summer job) and get a full refund. You don’t get back that 7.65%.
Then you have your Illinois 4.95% state income tax. It adds up.
That’s before sales tax, taxes on your motor vehicle registration, and more.
btw - what happens if like so many kids you decide - CS isn’t for you. Or CS decides you’re not for it - and you have to change to say - business or something else that interests you. Happens every year.
Or - you think any of the engineering majors from last year expected to not be hired at graduation - that there would be a pandemic? I’ve been through three of four cycles when no kids of any major could get hired - and when the economy recovered they were “forgotten” for the next year’s college class. You are assuring yourself of a job at $80K+ - you’ll learn many times in life nothing is assured - except death and the aforementioned taxes.
And I don’t know what your folks do for a living but in my case - what happens if I get laid off or get aged out of my job (same thing, layoff)? Again, borrowing, if you’re even deemed credit worthy by lenders, puts not just you but your family under such stress - and while I can’t speak for your family - for most, things in this scenario have to go perfect every which way to pay off for you.
I’ve read of lot of nice people offering you good information that you dismiss. You’re young - so you don’t yet realize - but one day you will and I hope it doesn’t eat you up. Bruh.
Good luck.
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To be more explicit, and in total agreement with what @dimkin , @MYOS1634 and @tsbna44 have nicely told you, it is very possible that you will “screw your future self over” if you decide to go to UIUC with a huge level of debt. You might start with a 100K/year salary if you find a job in the San Francisco Bay area but the cost of living there is crazy. In the greater NYC area, 100K/year starting jobs are not that easy to find.
Be aware that that high paying computer engineering jobs are not that stable. R&D budgets are typically linked to revenues. When the economy slows down, revenues fall, R&D budgets get cut, highly paid employees get kicked out.
Within ten years of your graduation, you might be married with small kids. If the economy slows down and you get shown the door, you will notice that unemployment checks barely cover your health insurance premiums. That is not when you want to finally realize that you could have taken a better path.
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My guy, I’m just here to gather opinions. Ur opinion was duly noted five reply’s ago. I’m not dismissing anything, I’m just taking everything into consideration. At the end of the day, I’m just here to hear other points of view, but I’m not gonna make a decision based completely based on what some strangers on the internet think I should do. I still have more people I wanna talk to and I’ll make a final decision by Friday. Both options have advantages and disadvantages. I’m trying to see if one outweighs the other. I’m leaning a little more towards sbu now tho, mainly cuz I can prob transfer out after a semester or two.
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Honestly, i just wanted to use the word ‘bruh’. 
Why go to a school knowing you want to transfer? Why not just go to community college then. Wherever you go - SUNYSB or UIUC - go committed to making the best of your four years, study hard, take part in activities and absorb it. Going somewhere just to transfer out seems like you won’t give it a chance. Also, transfer scholarships are less than Freshman.
You just make me want to keep writing…sorry. Two more days - i hope you make the right decision for you.
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I don’t really see a problem with going to SBU with the intention to transfer since it’s so cheap for me… if I don’t get into a school I want to, I at least have a decent institution to fall back on. Like I said before, the opportunities at stony are just not as plentiful. It makes sense to try again for a better institution a little later down the road. If the financial package isn’t good I just don’t go.
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Go to CC first. Transfer then apply again to a better SUNY School. UB for example. If not, GO TO SBU.
I already got into the honors program at stony, if I go to CC then apply again, I’m not gonna get my spot back. Stony is also the best SUNY for anything computer related so idk why you are suggesting I transfer to UB. Transferring out of stony is just an option, if I go and I feel like I can reach my goals thru there I will stay. But if I dont, I’ll transfer. I don’t see a problem with that
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SB Honors is, on its own, better than other SUNYs for CS, so you indeed risk nothing; if it works well, you’re good… and if not, you’d likely try to transfer to other universities with better reputations and you’d still save money compared to your first 2 years at UIUC.
To understand how tax rates/brackets work:
Some taxes are uniform throughout the country: they pay for all the structures that make life possible in a developed country, the army, the various branches of government, everything that indirectly keeps the economy going and the country stable. (Countries that don’t have that… you really don’t want to live there: broken roads or mud roads or no roads at all, for instance, are a huge problem. Lack of broadband access also is. And of course a military that works for the country, not for the local potentate, is important. National, “federal” taxes are very important in developing national unity and pride, not to mention essential in developing national stability and power.) Think of it as patriotism. Or, as a comedian sorta put it “I lived life in the lowest tax bracket once, and now I’m living life in the highest, and I’d much rather be in the highest bracket.”
Then you have state taxes, which can be lower or higher, or nonexistent; 5-6% is pretty average. Finally, you have local taxes.
Take home pay is NEVER what you see; estimating about 30% is not going to you personally is a good rule of thumb.
If you move to a lower cost of living area, your salary follows. I picked Chicago because it’s a lower cost of living city, but higher COL than many areas. If you move to the Silicon Valley, COL is close to double that for the same things, so in real life you wouldn’t have the same comfort/same things. Of course if you move to non coastal California some aspects would be much cheaper than Chicago (housing, for instance). If you move to Texas, your salary would likely be in the 65-85k range. Salaries are local, to a certain extent: everyone offered a position at a certain company is paid the same, regardless of where they graduate from. It’s true that some positions will only be offered to UIUC graduates, but it doesn’t mean UIUC graduates are paid more for the same jobs as SB graduates.
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I know of someone with an offer to Ga Tech masters in engineering that’s free with a stipend. Attends an Ivy Engineering undergrad. If you have direct admission and know you really want computer engineering Illinois is compelling. Nailing calculus and physics? Stonybrook has a very good STEM reputation. I’m rooting for Case but don’t know how much WL movement they might have.