<p>a prestigious college with no financial aid/little scholarship</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>a full ride to a state school</p>
<p>which would be better in the long run?</p>
<p>Former, unless the state school is UCB, UVA, or UCLA.
I’d also consider schools like UMich, UNC, W&M, GIT, UCSD, Wisconsin, Illinois, Washington, UCD, UCI, UCSB, Penn St, Texas, and Florida, but they depend on what my post-college plans are. If medical school or law school is the goal, public unis are the way to go.</p>
<p>Edit: Ah, I see you wanna go to UT. Well, that is one of the colleges I said I’d consider. Obviously, if you get accepted to HYPSM and colleges of similar prestige, I would choose the prestige, because it will help in the job search. Yet, if you are accepted into a top university that doesn’t have as much name recognition (WashU, Rice, Emory, etc.), I’d definitely take the UT road, because although their academics will be better, UT has more name recognition and the money you save will help substantially in the long run.
Also, UT has the girls. Arguably, one of the most important factors.</p>
<p>Former, if it meant going to my state flagship with full aid (which I could do, I already have the scholarship, but I hate the school). I’d much rather go to my first choice school, which is a private LAC… I am fortunate to be in a position to be able to do that.</p>
<p>If it meant going to Michigan or Berkeley (or maybe Washington), I might consider the full ride.</p>
<p>Part of college, I think, is getting away from what you’ve grown up with. </p>
<p>The second part is securing your future success, which can’t be done if you’re broke. I think I’d choose the former just because so many kids from my school go to my flagship. It’s good (UNC), but if I could find a school that was a wee bit more personalized, that’d be lovely.</p>
<p>Can your family comfortably afford the private?</p>
<p>go public…</p>
<p>First of all, ‘prestigious school’ and ‘state school’ are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>That said, most likely I would’ve went to my state’s flagship university (the University of Georgia).</p>
<p>1) The importance of having an Ivy League or similar degree in the job search is usually overrated by college seniors and their parents.
2) The value of not having $100,000+ in debt, however, is much underrated by college seniors, especially high-achieving college seniors.
3) Most public state universities that I can think of have excellent alumni networks that can be just as helpful, if not more, for getting a job as Ivy League and similar networks.
4) I’m at an elite graduate school now. There are people from the entire range of undergraduate schools here, from those who went to Ivy Leagues to those who went to their public state university.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that there’s no value to an Ivy League university at all (or I wouldn’t be at one) but I’m saying that if I had a choice between over $100,000 in debt and very little debt, I’d take the very little debt. I had that choice as a college senior – attend a highly ranked, prestigious university where I got offered virtually no aid, or attend a not-as-highly ranked but still well-regarded college where I got a full ride. I took the full ride and never looked back. I got all sorts of awesome opportunities, got recruited for top jobs and graduate schools, and ultimately ended up at what had been my “dream school” as a college senior (and am glad that I did NOT come here for undergrad!) In addition to a great education and college life, I’m only about $9,000 in debt from that endeavor, which will take me less than 5 years to pay off.</p>
<p>Since I was looking forward to buying a house as an adult, I had the chance to avoid huge student loan payments + mortgage payments and other debt, and I took it.</p>
<p>Not going to say I would’ve made the same choice for any state university, though. At the time, I probably would’ve taken a full ride to Georgia State University over debt from a prestigious college, but looking back I would have regretted it. I think there’s a trade-off threshold between money and prestige that must be struck and that trade-off threshold is different for everyone.</p>