What would you do if you were me?

College Search & Selection
1

I am a high school senior trying to decide where I will be going for the next stage of my education. My choices currently are CMU, Cornell, and Columbia for 60k a year (which feels like daytime robbery). I can go to Cooper Union for 40k a year (which seems more reasonable). Or Rutgers Honors college for 15k a year (which is very affordable).

I plan to do electrical engineering, and I was considering the 5 year masters program at Cooper Union. My parents made 280k this year but they only have about 20k in untouched cash and we would need to take loans for any school that isn’t Rutgers. I personally would prefer to avoid debt, but I want the opinions of others. What would you do in my situation? Thanks for you for your input.

My current criteria to rank these schools are:

  1. Rigor of Courseload/Program Quality
  2. Net Cost
  3. Rank
  4. Internship Availability and Quality

5.Richness of Experience/Diversity of People/Opinions I would encounter

2

Out of all your options, I’d go for Cornell. It has prestige as a college and has a decent engineering program. The other schools are not really known for engineering…

3

“The other schools are not really known for engineering…”

???

There seems to be a rash of this going around. Over on another subforum someone annouced that Cornell wasn’t well known for engineering.

So for the record, IMO: CMU, Cornell and Cooper Union are, actually, really well known for engineering . Any of these would be great. Columbia may be fine for what OP wants too. I’m less familiar with Rutgers, but it’s the flagship state U in New Jersey and I’m guessing Honors Rutgers engineers get jobs. But I won’t talk about Rutgers because I know nothing about it.

I’ll addres the various points as best I can:

  1. Rigor
    The most whiners are found at Cornell and Cooper Union. It is unclear to me whether that is because their work is harder or they are just whiners. For the life of me I can’t see why, if you take kids with similar abilities, who have similar aspirations for subsequent goals, and put them in similarly curved courses (which most lower level science courses are, basically everyplace) why there would be any material difference. If you’re going on unsubstantatiable allegations on CC, I would put Cooper Union #1, Cornell #2, CMU #3 and Fu #4. But I don’t really buy it.

An opinion that might interest you is on this thread:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18326499#Comment_18326499

  1. Net Cost
    You have most of the tuition-reated numbers. A few more esoteric items you might throw into the mix are: a) living, entertainment & misc, expenses (likely be a lot higher in NYC); b) travel expenses to/from school.

  2. Rank
    http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/electrical-engineering-rankings
    http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate
    http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-electrical-electronic-communications
    (etc)

  3. Internship Availability and Quality
    I am only familiar with Cornell.IIRC I knew some engineers who worked in various labs in and around campus during the school year, doing electronics. They knew how though. Also bear in mind engineering course work is pretty demanding.

They have a coop program offering work opportunities, http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/academics/undergraduate/special_programs/coop/
Students in my era who did the coop program thought it was great. It materially informed their course selection in the later years, and also frequently led to job offers.
It is not open to everyone though, there is a GPA cutoff IIRC.

5.Richness of Experience/Diversity of People/Opinions I would encounter

I dont know what it’s like now, but in the past Cooper Union was dominated predominantly by students from working class families in NYC. They have no campus.

Cornell’s student body has an unusually wide diversity of types, due to the presence of the contract and specialized colleges there. Nearly half the students there are studying in specialized colleges other than liberal arts or engineering .About 1/5 of the students receive subsidized tuition from New York State at the contract colleges, so there is more of a middle class presence there than at many other private universities.

It is considered to be not as homogeneously liberal as some other Northeast universities are represented to be. And that’s likely true. To give an old example. when radical students took over the student union in the 60s, students in the engineering college staged a counter-protest. It’s still runs liberal though, overall. And the City of Ithaca is way liberal.

The university is also geographically diverse, but has relatively high representation from NYS due to its location and subsidized tuition at the contract colleges.
To give you an idea, in arts & sciences about 20% are from NYS. In the contract colleges almost 50% are from NYS.

The experience there is a campus-centered university in a college town, completely different from your other choices.

4

According to Rutgers’ website, their undergraduate engineering program ranks third in the NY metro area behind Columbia and Princeton. Most of the large Land Grant schools, such as Rutgers, are very strong in engineering. Since Rutgers Honors program appears to be highly rigorous and school prestige is said to matter less in engineering than in many other disciplines, I would say Rutgers is your best choice unless money truly is not an issue for your family. Whichever you choose, congratulations on your outstanding list of acceptances!

5

While there is nothing wrong with NYC metro area, a question some might have is to what extent are Rutgers engineers recruited nationallly, out of region.This would be a question for Cooper Union too. If OP cares.

6

Post #1 does not know what he is talking about – it made me blow air out of my nose.

All of the above mentioned schools are ranked for their engineering programs. If you can afford it or you believe that it would pay off in the future years, I’d personally opt for Columbia due to its proximity to plethora of work opportunities.

7

Cooper Union is an amazing opportunity. I would think that might be difficult to turn down.

8

OK, so $15K/yr=$60K. $60K/yr=$240K. That’s a difference of $180K.

You will get a great starting salary no matter where you go, and I doubt if the difference in starting pay between Rutgers Honors and CMU/etc will be very much (I have hired a lot of engineers and frankly, who they were mattered more than college prestige), maybe perhaps $10K-$15K (at most!!). You do the math of how many years it will take to earn the $180K difference. Many years. Meanwhile, you’ll have some crushing debt to be paying off.

And guess what, after a VERY few number of years, no one will care what school you went to, just how good you are at your job. If that time is, say, five years, you’d have to make at least $180K/5yrs = $36K per year more. That ain’t gonna happen.

There is only one intelligent choice here and I hope you make it.

9

Actually OP could make that much more, at least formerly, but not necessarily as an engineer. Last I saw, IIRC only about 1/3 of Columbia’s engineering students actually ever work as engineers. Many of them went into investment banking. Where making that much more was not a pipedream. That was all before the developments of the last several years though, I don’t know where it stands now.Cornell engineers also head off to wall street, I understand, though more of them actually want to be engineers probably from the outset.

There were also some tech companies paying up several years ago, competing with the I banks. A recent engineering grad I know compared offers from an I bank and Google several years ago, and they were ballpark. I know those kind of places interview at Cornell and Columbia. Don’t know about the other schools. I hear investment banks interview at Rutgers , but only for back-office.

10

@digmedia makes excellent sense. I hope OP listens.

11

Carnegie Mellon, Cornell and Rutgers and Columbia will give you more options for non-engineering classes either to broaden your education or if you don’t want to continue in engineering. Cooper Union is less of a broad curriculum.

I think you and your family have to talk about Full Pay or Rutgers. Obviously Rutgers is the best value.
If your parents have to dip into their retirement $$ or take full loans then full pay is not a good idea. Did they not save for college with that salary?

Do other students often get scholarships at CMU? If they do, then you are not a top student there. You are a top student at Rutgers.

12

Regarding non-engineering classes, keep in mind that at Columbia Fu The Core will occupy a significant chunk of one’s non-engineering courses. Those classes may be non-engineering, but they are not elective, or optional.

13

What is the amount your parents will pay from whatever resources they wish to use? Obviously they are well off and can use any combination of assets, current income and debt to finance your college. What are they comfortable with? As a student you yourself can and should only use your student direct loans (27k over 4 years.) So considering what is available per year may leave you with your only choices obvious. If you think the expensive colleges are not worth it, that is valid opinion, although the price is on the website so you could have saved the effort of applying and instead applied to colleges where you could have rec’d merit aid.

14

Cornell

15

Rutgers Honors hands down. Rutgers is a great school with a strong engineering program, it is affordable, PLUS you are in the Honors program.

16

WSJ ranking of top 25 schools for job recruiters

21 Rutgers

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060

Being in the Honors program at Rutgers will be a signal to employers that u are the cream of the crop. It’ll be much harder to distinguish yourself at Cornell or Colombia.