<p>My son is a senior in HS this coming year and has narrowed his college choices to UT Austin or the University of Houston downtown.</p>
<p>First a little background. He is ranked second in his class at a very large and rigorous high school - has all the bell and whistle extra activities. Volunteerism maxed out. GPA 4.0 in nothing but honors/advanced classes. He desires to be a mechanical engineer and will immediately continue to get his MBA before he joins the workforce. I have my MBA and his Mom is retired from Dow Chemical as a Government Relations/PR manager. I add our credentials simply to show that we're not rookies at this college game.</p>
<p>Question : He can easily get into either UT/Austin or UH/Downtown. The situation is that our home is about 30 minutes by Hwy to UH - a veryyyy easy drive. In other words he can sleep in his own bed and eat his Moms cooking while he completes his education at UH. To go to UT it will require the apartment and leaving home thing that a good rule of thumb equates out to 1000$ a month conservatively. So if it takes 60 to 72 months to get the ME and the MBA at UT he's in 60 -72 grand before he ever walks on the campus. And frankly the 60 - 72 number is well on the low side just to keep it simple.</p>
<p>Is the difference between the two schools worth it? I know that here in Texas UT is much more well thought of than UH. But we learned something while at Dow. It was amazing how many of the major managers and future board members went to schools nobody had ever heard of. At least at this one firm, it seemed to be a lot more about what you did with the education after you got it.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading and any/all opinions will be greatly appreciated. </p>
<p>Good luck in your careers as they unfold in the future.</p>
<p>Sounds like you’re savvy and already realize that, while UT-Austin engineering is excellent, the Department at UH has some great assets as well. And…any distinctions probably aren’t significant enough that they would substantially impact upon a career as an engineer, particularly in Petroleum Engineering and Chemical Engineering.</p>
<p>That being said, being a commuter can have distinct disadvantages, and I don’t mean social. A 30-minute drive for an underclassman can be problematic. An underclassman’s schedule isn’t as flexible as that of a graduate student who might choose to commute. The STEM fields of study will require much, much time to study and do well. You wouldn’t want to spend that precious time on the road in a traffic jam or making your way through a detour. Sure, many students with heavy work-loads choose to commute. It’s not impossible. But investigate the residential options near the UH campus to see if there are less expensive alternatives.</p>
<p>What does your son want to do?
Full immersion into the college experience at UT- living in Austin, yes!
Or commuting to a satellite UH campus and living at home with a retired parent monitoring your every movement, expecting you home for dinner.
No thanks.
If you make him stay in Houston, why can’t he commute to the main campus?
Your money, your rules.
You will continue to pressure your son to go with your plan, what can we say here to sway you?
Did you and your wife commute to college?</p>
<p>Lake, its true about the commute. My oldest son rode a bike or jogged to campus and it surely helped his performance.</p>
<p>Beer, thats the trouble here. He brought up the cost thing - his mother and I could care less. Lol, we are probably the exact opposite of helicopter parents. This is completely up to him. Money is in no way a factor in this decision as far as his parents are concerned. The quality of education is. He is one of those kids who was “born grown”.When he goes to a firecracker stand he negotiates for an hour. For him college is totally about academics.</p>
<p>The way we handled this whole thing is we asked him to make up a list of where he wanted to go. He came up with UT, Texas AM, and UH. So we went on trips to all 3 campuses. I know that all 3 offer a darn good education. About half of our family went to UT and the other half to A&M.</p>
<p>For some reason he did not like the AM campus. Not sure why and he didn’t say. He immediately liked UT and also UH. While we had him in Houston we also went through Rice University. He wasn’t interested in it either.</p>
<p>The way we’re gonna handle this is he is going to make the decision and we’re gonna support him 100 %.</p>
<p>Its always interesting to visit with people who are “in the trenches” as it were. I guess what I’m interested in is are we crazy to consider UH when he can easily get into UT?</p>
<p>His mom and I went to school in the East and drove several miles from a residence.</p>
<p>Again, please believe me that he will not be pressured in any way as to where to go based on money or parental preference. The question about all this is his.</p>
<p>MBA programs often look for post-bachelor’s degree work experience. Also, having an MBA is not necessary to work in management in engineering. I.e. an immediate MBA after a bachelor’s degree may not be particularly valuable. It is also not necessary to attend the same school for bachelor’s degree study and MBA or other post-bachelor’s degree study.</p>
<p><a href=“Cost & Tuition Rates - Texas One Stop - University of Texas at Austin”>http://finaid.utexas.edu/costs.html</a> indicates that room and board costs for on or off campus living at UT Austin would be about $12,000 per year. Remember, however, that him staying at home and commuting is not cost-free, since he consumes food and utilities at home, and commuting by car involves extra car costs (fuel, maintenance, insurance, and perhaps the need to have an additional car). So the cost difference that you would actually bear would be less than the price of the dorm or off campus housing.</p>
<p>Most engineers like to work in the field for a few years, before entering an MBA program (and usually it’s because they want to move into senior management and away from day to day engineering (and the company is paying for program!). Of course, there are exceptions to this as it’s much more common for an Industrial engineer to earn an MBA after the BS, than a ME (ME"s are much more likely to earn a MS in engineering, than a MBA). Then again, I had friends go into med or law school, so it’s really up to him.</p>
<p>One of UT-Austin’s advantages is that it has more options/resources available. Would your son want to take advantage of them?</p>
<p>A couple of things to look at…</p>
<p>What Student design projects are available at each school? As an ME, he’ll want to join one or two. Perhaps he really wants to work on the SAE Formula Car Team? </p>
<p>What areas of focus (within ME) are available? Perhaps he wants to focus on Acoustics? Maybe Biomechanical engineering (which is a technical area within UT’s ME department)?</p>
<p>Finally, if he’s interested in undergraduate research, which schools do research in the fields he’s interested in?</p>
<p>I am a bit lost on this thread. I am not certain UH -Downtown has engineering and even if it does, it is definitely not worthy of someone who is able to get into UT Austin for Engineering.</p>
<p>UH Main Campus is quite good for engineering. UH Clearlake is also good for Computer engineering and CS. Downtown is more for people who are working and trying to get a degree or people on a much slower track of completing a degree.</p>
<p>Texas, this is my fault. Around Houston most either attend UH/Clear Lake or UH/Main Campus. Many distinquish between the two by calling the main campus “downtown”. Sorry.</p>
<p>If he can get into Honors (not too tough with those stats), UT will come down to $15k/yr which is fairly cheap for a college of that caliber (especially in PetroE). If you can afford to pay that, I’d really suggest doing so since Cockrell is on a whole another level. UH does have some good pipelines (I know Main Campus has a solid pipeline for ExxonMobil, no idea about Downtown though) but the environment is going to be totally different between a commuter campus that attracts second-rate students for the most part- and a state flagship that attracts some of the top talent in the nation for engineering, especially PetroE, has some very solid pipelines, and a community of the best professors and students. It’s a whole different thing.</p>
<p>If you can reasonably afford it without trimming anything but savings, then go for UT. If not, consider Main Campus UH before UH Downtown not just for the experience but because there is a real difference in quality. I mean, the whole “Calculus is just Calculus if it’s ABET-accredited” thing is like saying AP Calc BC at one school is the same level at the other school- sure they meet the same minimum standards, but one has a ton of extras that the other doesn’t- and you don’t want to miss out on them if you’re a strong-enough student to end up in that crowd for a reasonable price. Investment > savings.</p>
<p>Derp I seriously misread. Not sure how big of an advantage there would be for MechE. UH is a positive environment but still not on par with Austin.</p>
<p>It is great your son is being so analytical and crunching the numbers, but see if you can get him ( and you) to look at some of the unquantifiable facts. Would it benefit your son to live away from home? To be on his own? Make new friends and take care of himself? IMHO a big part of college is the out of the classroom part. UT is such a dynamic place, there is so much to do, so many opportunities, I would urge your son to take a good look at it.</p>
<p>Also, while he sounds very certain of what he wants, do keep in the back of your mind the possibility he might change his mind. As someone noted above, which environment would be better for that? </p>
<p>However, it looks like both the OP and son made the mistake of ignoring the costs of living at home and commuting when comparing the price difference between the two schools. The price difference narrows once these are included in the cost of attending UH.</p>
<p>I don’t see SAT/ACT/SAT II PSAT numbers here.</p>
<p>UH has some great guaranteed scholarships for national merit (full ride - tuition/room/board etc) and TIER 1 scholarships for high standardized test scores to cover tuition.</p>
<p>One has to get into Honors engineering and then wait for the department to decide how much to give at UT (I have seen full tuition (11-12k) to just 3-4k per year). </p>
<p>If someone is NMSF, A&M is a great choice for engineering since they have auto free tuition + some money.</p>
<p>I don’t believe it will be easy to plan to move from MechE to MBA at UT but it should be possible to do so at UH.</p>