<p>After 3 years, I managed to obtain my associate degree from my community college at my own pace, and now i'm planning on attending a University this coming fall semester. It's a bit nerve wrecking however, because through out most of community college I was incredibly indecisive about what I wanted to major in, so I took a variety of everything to help me decide what I liked. I ended up deciding on engineering when I graduated, but I can't help but feel horrible because I racked up about 15k in student loans already. I killed off most of the pre-requisite classes ( pre cal and trig and ENC 1101 and 1102, intro chem, since i took no AP courses in high school) and now I'm ready to take engineering calc, physics and all the classes for the freshman year of an engineering major. This, like I said, makes me worry, since it will take a possible 4 more years till I graduate, and while I have pell grant and bright futures scholarship, I will also have to take up a little more in student loan, and I also will be getting a part time job to also pay for the bills, so that makes me reconsider even taking the standard 15 credits for the sake of overloading myself and dropping my GPA. </p>
<p>Is my situation ab-normal for most transfer students? Or am I just being way to over-reactive ?</p>
<p>It’s going to take me what will be about 3 years at community college and then probably another 2.5 to graduate with an engineering degree. How much cheaper will it be to get a different degree and what will you do with it? How much more/less would you make with it? How much less would you like it? </p>
<p>5+ years for a BS is annoying but unavoidable at this point, if you want to be an engineer.</p>
<p>I do like engineering and I find it interesting, however, what it boils down to is me wanting to have a well-paying job that I won’t dislike for the rest of my life. Would you consider this a bad investment to continue down this path?</p>
<p>Wow… 15K for CC… is that in-district tuition or out of district? Are you planning to attend or you are attending and just waiting for semester to start? I don’t think it’ll take you 4 years if you did your prereq and got associate. I’m guessing HIST, GOVT, ENG are taken care of. What university are you attending or plan on attending? </p>
<p>I’ll have to wait to express my opinion on your situation til I get your answers for the above questions.</p>
<p>You’ll just have to pick something and learn to stick with it. Every major is flawed in very significant ways, but by being indecisive you’ll really just get the worst of all of them.</p>
<p>Sometimes, it’s more important to simply make a decision than to make the right decision. This is probably one of those cases. Quickly look at the majors and then make a choice and stick with it for the next however many years.</p>
<p>“I do like engineering and I find it interesting, however, what it boils down to is me wanting to have a well-paying job that I won’t dislike for the rest of my life. Would you consider this a bad investment to continue down this path?”</p>
<p>No. Is it the best path? No clue. I have no special passion for engineering and similarly just thought it would be interesting and employable. I also think that there are plenty of other ways to make your way in the world and plenty of ways to make more money.</p>
<p>If you seem to get on fine with ENGR, and don’t particularly want to do anything else, it seems like the best option. You could have done a degree that didn’t take 5 years probably, or started this one more efficiently, but what’s done is done. Would changing degrees be faster? I don’t want to knock other fields, but if just getting a decent job is the main goal, there are a lot of people who would LOVE to give up an extra 4-8 months or w/e it would take to have a pretty employable degree like ENGR.</p>
<p>Sorry for the late reply SobeGreenTea972, I’m fairly new to this site and It wouldn’t let me submit any private messages. To answer your question, yes it was in district tuition. Through out community college I was receiving Unsubsidized loans every semester since my bright futures didn’t cover all the expenses for some of my costs, and I was taking approximately 2.5k every semester, which after 3 years has added up to 15k. My parents said it was naturally to take this many loans, but honestly It feels like they just buried me in a financial hole that’s going to be a pain to dig myself out of when I graduate college all the while incurring more debt. </p>
<p>American history, science electives, intro chem and some anatomy, intro biology, anthropology, and ENC 1101 and 1102 I took already to fulfill my associate degree. I now have to complete engineering calc and phys, on top of the required engineering classes. I’m going to be attending University Of South Florida this semester.</p>
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Sadly this is true. $15k isn’t insurmountable but beware of taking too much more. Being buried in debt is all too common these days.</p>
<p>It is your money, so your parents don’t really have a right to tell you what to do with it. If they are wrong, then ignore their advice.</p>
<p>Kinda weird. In TX its only like 54$ per credit for CC. I never had a semester with higher than $750 tuition, that’s why I thought 15k was pretty high. Unless u’re spending the leftover $ on personal stuff.</p>
<p>Personally ,I would stick around CC and do the Calc, Phys, and Chem to save $ and whatever else course is on xxxx engr curriculum at USF that’s offered at CC. Did u qualify for the transfer scholarship for having 3.3 gpa?</p>
<p>For me, CC is <$2K/semester, and Pell more than covers it.</p>
<p>I’m not too familiar with that transfer scholarship? However when I transferred over, my GPA was a 3.4</p>
<p>It won’t take you four years to graduate since you have an AS’s worth of GECs under your belt (provided they all transfer).</p>
<p>Just pick the engineering major right for you.</p>
<p>Because you have a relatively good GPA, there are many engineering schools where you will be a competitive candidate for admission and for financial aid. You need to concentrate on schools where you would be in demand. This would mostly include private universities. Yes, it’s state schools that have the strongest engineering programs, but aid to non-resident students is a very scarce commodity these days. You need to draw up a list of schools that fit your interest and your financial situation, including your own state’s public engineering colleges</p>
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Go BULLS! ;)</p>
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It just might. I’d say it’ll take 3-4 years depending on their discipline.</p>
<p>I also thought $2500 was a higher than average amount. That’s the amount of a semester of tuition at USF!</p>
<p>Might want to call the FA office then again might be late already, 3 weeks til school starts. <a href=“http://usfweb2.usf.edu/admissions/pdf/Transfer.pdf[/url]”>http://usfweb2.usf.edu/admissions/pdf/Transfer.pdf</a> this is the Transfer scholarship.</p>