I’m going to be studying for Mechanical Engineering
Pros Minnesota:
-cheaper ($35,000 per year with my parents offering me $10,000 each year for what my scholarship saved them)
-with my AP scores (and hoping I get 4s and 5s on my remaining 5), I will have 42 credits that could help me double major/early Masters because of the 4+1 BSMS
-Got into the honors college so better rooming/education than normal
Pros GTech:
-super duper prestigious
-will get me well off in the future
-promotes study abroad for engineering major with in-state tuition for each semester abroad
-would be willing to live in atlanta even though it’s not the closest to family and friends (8 hr drive to back home)
-great co-op opportunities
-smaller state school
Cons Minnesota:
-I hate the location because of the cold
-It’s really far from any of my friends and family (of course I want independence but I don’t want to be incredibly lonely)
-not that prestigious of a school (but still #25 for engineering ranking)
Cons GTech:
-Costs around $50,000 per year (but will be less depending on if I study abroad)
-will have to start college June 20th because I got admitted summer session (meaning I won’t be able to go on a trip with my best friends to China and will have to break up with my boyfriend of two-and-a-half years about a month and a half early)
-Will be an incredibly difficult school (but I’m used to working hard; got 4.0 gpa, graduating top 2% of my class, 12 AP courses)
Thoughts:
- Minnesota is a great school, especially with the honors college.
- Georgia Tech will not make you any more well off in the future than Minnesota. Engineers don’t get paid more or less based on where they went to college.
In your other thread, you mentioned that UCLA would put you deeply into debt. Is Georgia Tech the same? You only say that Minnesota is cheaper, but how are you and your family funding the difference?
I mean, regardless of that, your parents are offering you ~$40,000, which is a lot of money. You could save it up and use it to move to somewhere sunny and warm after you finish at Minnesota; you could use some of it for lavish vacations to sunny places in college and still have some left over afterwards.
Minnesota does start you in a pre-engineering state, after which you apply to the major. Admission to major is assured with a 3.2 technical GPA, but is competitive below that GPA. http://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/cgi-bin/courses/noauth/apply-major-statistics suggests that some students with technical GPA in the low 2.x range were denied from ME, so that may not be as much of a risk as for chemical or biomedical engineering.
You need to think about it a little differently. Let’s say you get married and you’re spouse is also college educated. You inherit her $30k in student loans. Let’s say you graduated from GA Tech and you come out $200k in debt. You’re now starting your life $230,000 in the hole. Let’s say you get a decent job and you can make the student loans payments on a tight budget, that’s a big “IF.” I can think of at least a dozen life events that could leave you with big financial problems. You break your leg putting up Christmas lights. Baby #1 is premature. You get laid off and have to take a sizable paycut. Tax laws change and now you suddenly owe $6,000…(that actually happened to my Dad last year). The funny thing about life is that all of these single events are rare. It’s just that you keep getting hit with new ones once every couple of months. Really, I shouldn’t ever have grown up. It was so much better being a kid. With lower debt those things are manageable. With higher debt, you could get crushed under the weight of life very quickly.