GT grads get jobs offers from a wide variety of companies including big tech. So no you are not wrong. I personally would not fork over an extra 100k to turn down GT as it is an excellent school. If the tables were turned I would also say not to turn down U Penn for 100k to go to GT.
I’m a proud Penn alum, but in your areas of interest and given the $100k difference in price, I’d choose GT.
FWIW one of my D’s good friends turned down Cornell for GT (also with a significant price differential) and never regretted her decision.
GT all the way! It’s one of the best engineering schools in the country and it’s $100K cheaper! You need prestige deprogramming if you’re not convinced.
@Shiprock1976 basically summarized what I’ve wanted to say from the beginning, but demurred to facilitate further discussion. Penn cannot hold a candle to most pedestrian state school engineering programs and it’s $100,000 MORE than one of the world’s elite engineering programs, yet there is concern by the OP. Blame USNWR for doing absolutely NOTHING positive for the college search experience and brainwashing multiple generations.
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“cannot hold a candle to most pedestrian engineering programs” is a very broad statement unless of course you have spent time at SEAS and employed underperforming Penn graduates.
So many threads talk about how it does not matter where you attend an ABET engineering program. I can tell you that CAS and SEAS courses take a deeper dive than most CC discussed engineering schools. Most Penn engineers made a conscious choice to not want to be, just engineers. That also does not mean they are all headed for Wall Street. Exposure to what such an integrated university that caters to undergrads offers is at their fingertips and we are continuously amazed at what they can accomplish in addition to their ABET degree within 4 years without diluting their core. There is no prestige swaying our observations as we are products of great traditional private engineering schools. We however have worked with and hired many engineers that do not have the soft skills to be promoted.
Every family needs to decide on a college environment themselves. You can’t take the 100k with you when you die or redo all the development and maturity that happens for your 18-22 year old.
Unfortunately, you can’t guarantee that Penn will develop maturity over what will happen at GT. Personality is typically something fairly hardwired by the time students enter college. Introversion, shyness, etc. don’t change much. Confirmation bias can easily lead us to believe that the school choice has a major impact on personality, when it most likely doesn’t. Different personalities simply choose different schools.
What you can guarantee is that you’ll have $100,000 less if you attend Penn. That money, if invested over 40 years at 7%, will be over $1,500,000. In 20 years, over $390,000. That is the true cost of choosing Penn over GT on a pure financial basis. All other factors aside, which can be highly subjective, that’s a huge opportunity cost. That money will allow different choices later in life, all other earnings factors equal, which they are very likely to be.
What you can also guarantee is that GT will be more heavily recruited than Penn, probably by a significant margin. It is seen as a “go to” institution by lots of employers, deserved or not.
Finally, any class that is taken that is not a tech class means taking one less tech class. It is a zero sum game. I’m not saying there is no value in non-technical classes, but I do believe most employers would prefer to see advanced vibrations, advanced heat transfer, tensor calculus, numerical methods, etc. over philosophy, history, etc.
" You can’t take the 100k with you when you die" - Most families don’t have the savings to cover reduced-rate college and are unlikely to be able to spare $100k more. (Even if they do, there are still plenty of reasons to seriously consider GT instead of Penn.)
Thank you all for your inputs. I just committed to Penn!
Thanks for the update. It appears you didn’t really need advise so much as a way to discuss the topic more and reinforce your own strong preferences for Penn. (Sometimes that is how these threads work.)
“The difference is 100K. We are not super rich but my family will support me with whatever decision.” - Please tell us your parents agree with the choice and will not be going into debt to make this happen.
Thanks for letting us know. Congratulations. Hope you have a wonderful 4 years and make the most of your opportunities at Penn.
@magic19 Congratulations on making your decision. Meeting Kumar and Gutmann, their best advice is to register for your major required courses and then explore a new interest. Take courses or do research outside your major.
Get to know your OPA as you register for courses. You can use some of your AP credits but may be engineering major specific, meaning that the AP course equivalent for a science requirement many not fulfill the Chem, Physics or Bio course requirement for your major.
@eyemgh Nothing in life is a guarantee. Definitely NOT confirmation bias, based on current students’ interdisciplinary research (Penn’s focus) and personal achievements but can’t share more here. Never had concerns about recruitment and now none about PHD admissions. Engineering solutions are discovered/developed all over campus, often outside of the engineering quad.
As you know, brain development is by no means completed by 18, prefrontal cortex through age 25, especially for males. Personality Is not necessarily the only barrier to social emotional growth, environment and practice are very significant factors. One does not leave Penn without immersion in a structured social environment or networking skills, a mini-adult world. It’s dubbed the ‘social ivy’ for a reason.
We have a different view of the potential of an engineering undergraduate experience, industry and adding breath and/or depth. All teachers deliver curriculum, some create new ways of educating and train their peers, all physicians can treat patients, some develop novel procedures and make discoveries. All engineers can calculate, optimize and design in their field but some have tons more potential.
@colorado_mom Families with need are offered financial aid at Penn with no loans. Our family has contemplated this age old question because both of us will not live long enough to attend a graduation. Sorry, my comment was not meant to be sarcastic.
@eyemgh. My S20 is developing his college app list right now. GT is one of his top 5. One of my consulting clients is c-suite at a multinational tech firm. During his climb, he oversaw the hiring of thousands of engineers, and he was a GT grad (and got an MS in engineering at a SUNY). He is a HUGE fan of GT, but he regrets going there. He has a classic engineer temperament and claims a broader undergrad experience would have helped him immensely. Just one data point.
I think it’s fair to say most GT alumni appreciate attending GT, but some also feel they may have missed something by not attending a more comprehensive school. When we toured GT a few years ago, a group of students driving by yelled at us to “Don’t come here!”. That’s very much a Tech joke, one I had to explain to my son. 
If anything, GT is even more “STEM” heavy since the recent surge in OOS students. From 2002 to 2012 or so, the % of degree’s award to STEM majors made up about 71% to 72% of the total. In 2016, it was up to 79.6%. For comparison, Cal Poly-SLO is 43.4%, U-Michigan is 39.1%, UC-Berkeley is 35.5% and UF is 29.5%.
GT and other STEM focused schools are great, but the experience will be different.
@cypresspat, I was not trying to say that GT is the be all end all. It isn’t. My son didn’t even apply. He avoided all schools that would be considered tech only like MIT, Caltech, etc. He wanted a more rounded experience. He chose one of the schools @Gator88NE mentioned, Cal Poly, and paid less than he would have at GT. The primary point I was trying to make was that I didn’t think Penn was worth $100,000 more than GT.
Now let’s consider the opinion of your client. We only know the schools we attend(ed) for the most part. in regularly conducted surveys across all majors roughly 80% say they were happy with their undergraduate school. That’s irrespective of where it fell on their list in the first place. That leaves 1in 5 who weren’t happy. The question is, are they “the grass is always greener” personalities? Do they only see what they missed without seeing the positives of what they gained. No school is without flaws. I once heard a student say that attending Berkeley was like going to school at the DMV.
I take the information as you did, as a single data point.
Wow! good and more power for your son but does that mean that everyone has to follow??
@IncorE206, Nice jab, but you clearly have not been following this thread. What I advocated was for the OP to choose Georgia Tech, the path my son DID NOT choose.
“He has a classic engineer temperament and claims a broader undergrad experience would have helped him immensely. Just one data point.” - This example engineer ended up in c-suite (an opportunity that may or may not have been possible without the GT background - it can be hard to say, since there is no “control group” in real life) … so it sounds like it worked out OK.