MIT is ranked #2 for CS and Vandy is the top 50 ( 20’s and 30’s)
MIT is academically very strong. Their classes are harder than high school classes, and people tend to get lower grades first term at MIT than they’ve ever gotten. But their grading for freshman 1st term is different. You will either get a pass or fail grade, and not a letter grade. This encourages first-term freshmen to explore outside the classroom and helps them to learn to manage time. Also, most of the homework, especially in math classes requires collaboration amongst the students. encouraging them to work as a team and develop social bonding and network. Yes it is stressful, but if you made it there you are capable of handling it.
MIT alumni network reaches far and wide, which helps when you are looking for research, internships and eventually jobs. The pay scale may be the same, but the connections and networks you develop are vastly different.
Financially it is a personal decision, but I wouldn’t pass MIT under the assumption that you will go there for grad school. It’s easier to get into undergrad than it is to grad school, especially because it is harder to stay on top of your game at a college level than it is in high school. Your EC’s and test scores mean a lot less and your GPA and letters of recommendations have more weight, you need good internships and research papers to make it to MIT grad school
@Wisdom2share I am a MIT grad and obviously know quite a few alums. The network helps for your first job for on campus recruiting. If you are insinuating alums or “the network” will help you get a job later, you are mistaken. They might have a chat with you but they will not refer you to a job just because you went to the same college or school. Company ties might run deeper. Bainies or Bain alums are more close knit because they know the firm does a great job of professional vetting and and training. Bain alums from my experience do more for each other than mit alums
Go with Vandy with 20k/yr. You would not make that much more in salary with a CS job to make up the difference. CS is same whether you are in MIT or Vandy or UIUC unless you want to do a Ph.D. You do not seem like a person with a Ph.D. as your aim.
@stevensPR, I have to disagree with you, first, you are assuming that I am misinformed about MIT alums and that I am not an MIT grad. Secondly, MIT does have an alumni network where they post jobs and seek out fellow MIT grads for everything from research and internships to real jobs. Even if it is a 1st job or an internship you will go far when you that is from places like NASA JPL or Google. Not many places can groom you for an internship like that. It may not be as official a partnership between Baine and Vandy, but personal experience is that if you reach out and seek help there are plenty of profs and Alums ready to guide you in the right path
The founders of Bain and BCG are long dead, and the fact that they went to Vandy doesn’t mean the school has a special partnership with these firms. These firms recruit much more heavily in other schools (ivies, MIT, Stanford,duke etc). Yes I am sure Vandy does well in recruiting, but it is not as targeted for the top business, consulting, tech jobs as MIT (and other top schools too).
It is clear that MIT provides superior recruiting and academic opportunities, and opportunity to learn from a much more accomplished group of peers.
But if OP feels that he would be much happier at Vandy and that he would really not be able to cope at MIT, then i guess he should go with Vandy.
@penn95 cool spouting more garbage as usual. the ties to BCG and Bain still run deep. I’m at Bain now - have you made anything of your time at penn? It is completely erroneous to say these firms recruit “much more heavily” versus vandy. See list of bain alums at vandy here:
Thank you everyone for your responses! To make the decision even harder, UChicago recently gave me a scholarship that would bring down my cost per year to $58,000 a year, making it cheaper than MIT by $7,000 a year but still around $38,000 a year more expensive than Vanderbilt. Thoughts?
Vanderbilt is a great school. You are underestimating the impact huge debt will have in your future. I went through a similar process. Go to V and save the money. The freedom of low debt outweighs any perceived edge you’ll get if you go to MIT. If they were the same price, the choice would be harder, but it’s not in this case
I will echo what many have said…if you plan to go into consulting or CS out of u/g, then take Vandy and the $$. As I have said in other threads, after your first job, the name on your degree means a lot less than what you have done since graduating, and you won’t have a problem getting a first job out of Vandy. That $180K in the bank will change your adult life more than the MIT degree will. Just one man’s opinion.
What I was saying above was that, I doubt that a student who performs well in these majors and lands one of these types of jobs will have problems handling student debt or having money in the bank regardless of the school and this can be taken into consideration when deciding between paying a premium for a school he/she has a strong preference for or when deciding to forego a higher ranked school for a lower ranked one. They’ll be fine either way and can pick based on fit.
Do you really believe job opportunities will be closed off to you simply because you didn’t go to MIT? OP, believe it or not, most engineers didn’t go to MIT. Most people succeeding in STEM didn’t go to MIT. MIT grads, though very bright and skilled, only represent a small % of people in your desired field.
You’re clearly incredibly bright and driven. You will find success whether you go to MIT, Princeton, or Podunk University. College is what you make of it.
Go to Vanderbilt, graduate, and go spend your 20s living in a penthouse. Good luck.