Out of all the colleges that accepted me, the University of Texas Dallas, Illinois Institute of Technology, and North Carolina State University were the ones to give me the most amount of scholarship/grant money.
The field I wish to major in is Mechanical Engineering. I am an international student.
For the University of Texas Dallas, my parents are expected to pay 14k out of the total cost of attendance of 51k.
For IIT they are expected to pay 15k out of the total cost of attendance of 65k along with a 5.5k loan (The subsidized and unsubsidized loan that most colleges give) along with around 3.5k for Federal work-study.
For NCSU they are expected to pay 22k out of the total cost of attendance of 45k along with a 5.5k loan (The subsidized and unsubsidized loan that most colleges give) along with around 3k for Federal work-study.
Which one should I go to? Should I pay a lot of attention to the college rankings? Or does it make sense to go to a cheaper college to save money for a Masters Degree?
Are you a true international student, or are you a US citizen who has been educated abroad? If you are an international student, you don’t qualify for federal loans or federal work study and you need to take those figures out of your aid packages.
Can your parents afford to pay 14k each year? In one of your other posts, you indicate that your family is low income. Where will that money come from?
For engineering, the ranking of the university isn’t particularly important. What matters is if the program is accredited by ABET http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx You can safely choose the cheaper program.
Well, I am not a true international student as I was born in the United States and have a US passport. I should have specified that clearly. My bad.
Also, please disregard that post, as I did not have an accurate idea of my father’s income (As stupid as this sounds, in my country that was still a pretty high income, so it was a little hard for me to distinguish). My dad’s actual income is close to twice of what I had previously specified (should be around 90-100k).
Also, thanks for taking the time to answer!