<p>@mommyrocks: I am so sorry. Your Duke friends must be suffering from dementia (for example, one can walk from the Freshman Dorms on East Campus to Brightleaf Square or to Ninth Street – both have great eclectic, shopping and dinning – in <10 minutes).</p>
<p>The reason I say I am going to have six figures of debt is because of the way Duke calculates their financial aid figures. In my particular situation, I have divorced parents, and my non custodial parent personally assured me if I go out of state he won’t pay a penny of it. However, even though I wrote that my NC parent won’t contribute, Duke still formulates how much money they will give me based on both what my NC parent and custodial parent make, and my custodial parent makes significantly less than my NC. </p>
<p>So the answer is simple. You can’t afford Duke and thus either must go to UCF or apply to other schools which will give you great merit aid.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I can afford Duke, I would just be using money that would’ve been used for grad school. </p>
<p>Seeing that I can’t change to regular decision, the only thing I can do at this point is wait and see if I get accepted to Duke or not, and how much aid they offer me. </p>
<p>???</p>
<p>If you are “using money that would go towards grad school”, then you wouldn’t be taking on debt, no?</p>
<p>Or are you counting loans as “money for grad school”?</p>
<p>Basically I have X amount of dollars to pay for undergrad and grad, and I could afford either with X but not both </p>
<p>Then I guess you’ve made your choice.</p>
<p>You can hope that spending money on undergrad will allow you to succeed better (due to better support at higher-ranked schools + peer group emulation) and that will allow you to get funding for grad school. If you can do that without loans, it seems an easy choice - at worst, if you graduate without loans, you can take some for grad school, but your gamble is that you’ll get funding, or decide to get a job before grad school (as most students do).</p>
<p>@MYOS1634, however, generally only PhD students get funding, and those programs are harder to get in to. Some Master’s students at state schools get funding as well, but they’re also hard to enter.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you have the money, there are master’s programs at elite schools that aren’t terribly hard to enter.</p>
<p>So while going to UCF means that you have to keep your grades up, you would have money available to pay for some master’s program later on (at an elite school if you so desire).</p>
<p>Duke undergrad may be worth the extra cost to you in its own right, but I would not go in to significant debt for it.</p>
<p>^I agree on the debt - it was my understanding that OP had the money to pay for Duke. If OP doesn’t, then UCF makes more sense.
But UCF is overcrowded right now (although it’s tried to keep up with buidling/facilities, it’s quickly become one of the largest schools in the US at an unprecedented pace), all Florida publics require summer school as well as online learning to ease that problem but it can be an issue is you planned on having internships or working over the summer. So it’s more comfortable to attend Duke if OP can get in and pay for it outright. It doesn’t mean OP would have a bad time at UCF or not learn, it just wouldn’t be the same learning conditions. I’m also wary of “saving for grad school” from a senior in high school who may or may not want, after 4 more years of college (or 5), to go straight into grad school - most students prefer to take a 2-5 year break from school and work, and if they’re lucky their employer may subsidize some grad school classes, or they may be able to save money for grad school off their salary (especially if they graduate from college debt-free), so that the point may be moot 4-5 years from now.
Your point is also good that if OP manages to be at the top of his/her class at UCF they could go to an elite Master’s program, but there’s no indication that attending Duke would lead to a lesser grad program than UCF - the only issue would be money, and only OP can know whether that’s a concern significant enough to become the #1 factor.</p>
<p>@MYOS1634, however, generally only PhD students get funding, and those programs are harder to get in to. Some Master’s students at state schools get funding as well, but they’re also hard to enter.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you have the money, there are master’s programs at elite schools that aren’t terribly hard to enter.</p>
<p>So while going to UCF means that you have to keep your grades up, you would have money available to pay for some master’s program later on (at an elite school if you so desire).</p>
<p>Duke undergrad may be worth the extra cost to you in its own right, but I would not got in to significant debt for it.</p>
<p>Sorry for the double post. The refresh on my phone did that.</p>