Daughter trying to decide between UW Madison and UT Austin and Purdue for Elementary Education/Special Education.
With that major, the most important consideration is cost. You want zero debt if possible. I wouldn’t take extra debt for any of them. If debt is equal, then I would look at where you more likely would like to live after graduation.
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If looking at Education, the most important factor is where she wants to end up after graduation as well as cost. Depending where she wants to end up, you need to look and see if a teaching certificate is reciprocal in the state she wants to wind up in, otherwise she will be deficient in certain areas and need to take more classes. UW and UT are both very expensive for OOS and quite honestly, if my kid told me they wanted to go into education, I wouldn’t send them to either of those schools for that. I’m a former teacher and there are schools that are specifically known for teaching and you’re basically guaranteed jobs, but to pay $40k+/year in tuition to go to either of those, no way. I would encourage my kid to major in something else and then go and get a Masters in Teaching, which is what I did. It made me very versatile as well as marketable. I have a business undergraduate degree and a masters in teaching. There are programs for people to get masters degrees if they have an undergrad for something else. Purdue is much more reasonable, but as far as I know, not known for education and if your child isn’t a math/science person, they will be taking courses with all the engineers and that may be quite challenging. My step daughter went to Purdue for hospitality and barely passed due to that fact because she couldn’t keep up with those students in the required courses.