My son is a high school senior who is hearing back now from the colleges he applied to. He still has a couple of “reach” schools that he hasn’t yet heard back from, but has been accepted everywhere else that he has applied to, including his current top two contenders: the University of Connecticut (UConn) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He plans to major in some type of engineering.
As you might expect, one big issue is money. The total cost for UConn is estimated at about $30K/year (in-state full-time living on campus). The total cost for RPI is about $65K/year (full-time living on campus). Both have offered him some merit award money (i.e. grants). UConn has offered $5K/year, and RPI has offered $20K/year. So the bottom line cost for UConn is about $25K/year, and RPI is about $45K/year.
In your opinion, is an engineering degree from RPI worth the additional $20K/year over a similar degree from UConn?
(For the sake of discussion, assume that we can afford UConn, and that anything in excess of the cost of UConn would be in the form of unsubsidized loans.)
I agree that it’s worth it (RPI BSME '88). You might go back to the financial aid department and mention that UConn would be cheaper. My father did this when I was an incoming freshman and we were able to get more money compared to the aid package offered by Carnegie-Mellon.
Why not split the difference? Get the general stuff out of the way at the cheaper school, then transfer to the more expensive one for the specialist stuff? I’ve often heard that there is little difference in the quality of a liberal arts education no matter what school you go to.
Sorry. I didn’t see that you propose to get $20,000 in unsubsidized student loans each year. (Is he also getting the $5,000 or so in subsidized student loans?) If you’re proposing that he’s going to assume the cost of those loans, I might change my opinion. I’m not sure I’d want him to graduate with $80,000 in unsubsidized student loans that can’t even be discharged in the event of a bankruptcy. On the other hand, he could well be making $80,000 in starting salary, depending on his major and what he ends up doing. So perhaps it’s worth it? Do RPI and UConn publish the average starting salaries for the graduates of their engineering schools?
Engineer may be different as it is more technical than other majors. Similar, if they require an externship, it may be easier to obtain at the place where you have made contacts for a couple of years vs a new place where you’re not as well known.
I would advice first to check the ratings of both schools according to sources such as US News, or even the engineering websites at both schools. And also talk to alumni from the schools, and tour them, if possible. That way you and your son can compare both campuses and what they have to offer in terms of academics and non-academic stuff.
Also second requesting more financial aid. Not just from RPI, but from UConn too!
In general, it’s not worth it. The math might change if the private school were one with a lot of cachet and networking possibilities (i.e. Ivy League), but I’m not sure RPI is that school.
(Also, $30k/year for in-state? What the hell is wrong with our country?!?)
Look carefully at the RPI award package. Are there strings on the scholarship money? Private schools tend to require students to maintain certain (not always plausible) grades, keep a more-than-full-time load, stuff like that. State schools do it too but not to the same extent.
It’s not my field but I seriously doubt the lifetime earnings potential differential justifies even a quarter of the cost difference.
ETA: That $30K/year would appear to include the cost of housing and stuff. That’s not unreasonable, particularly at UConn, which is not just any state school.
A huge factor in a successful career in engineering or anything else is the personal connections you are able to make–to the future leaders of your profession, to professors, to professional contacts, etc… Prestigious schools often aren’t better than cheaper ones because of the content or quality of the lectures. They are better because the students who attend there, the professors who teach there, and the firms who recruit from there are all better. That social capital is worth every penny.
That said, I don’t know whether one’s undergraduate degree is the place to make those connections as an engineer. For a lot of careers, it makes sense to get a cheap undergraduate degree, and then go somewhere fancy for graduate or professional school.
Thirty years ago, RPI had a program in which graduates of certain community colleges were guaranteed transfer admission, based on grades. So it was possible to complete two years cheaply and then come in as a junior.
What he will get out of Uconn is very much what he will put into it. I know many people who have went there and they range from movers-and-shakers who are flying with political elites to people who wasted their time partying and are thousands in debt. A big school like Uconn will not hold its students’ hands as they attend college , while a smaller college like RPI is going to work much harder to ensure that no one falls through the cracks and that everyone will be successful. Be honest with yourselves–if your son is someone who is very self-motivated and works hard of his own accord, he will likely have the same opportunity to succeed at Uconn as he would anywhere. But if he isn’t – if he’s an ‘intelligent slacker’ or otherwise needs external help to succeed – he will likely do better at a smaller school.
IMHO - I am very dubious about the marginal cost/benefit of the more expensive school. Once you reach the level of comparing good schools, you have to ask yourself - “what am I actually getting for the extra $80-$100K?” (I say $100K because tuition WILL continue to rise over the next 4-5 years. (Often engineering programs can’t be completed in 4 years.))
Some have noted that premier name schools provide networking/job opportunities. That is a reality - some schools are better at that than others. So that is something to weigh into consideration. But the trap I see people fall into is feeling that their #2 school is closer in rank to the bottom of the heap than to the top, and that the more expensive school must be better because it is more expensive!
This is an excellent point. I went to a (gigantic) state school and did poorly because there was no hand-holding; before that I mostly attended private secondary schools, where I was an A student.
I think this is also true of RPI. I know people who managed to fall through the cracks and not shine. It’s also not a school for slackers.
And a big thing about RPI is that it’s almost purely a nerd school. So if you end up figuring out halfway through that engineering or the sciences is not for you, there are few non-nerd majors to which you can switch. (Plus if engineering isn’t for you, part of that realization often comes with shitty grades. That’s going to make it difficult or impossible to transfer to a good university. We called that status “failing in.”)
Yeah, absolutely. Expense (and prestige) is a very loose proxy for social capital.
I would judge likely social capital this way:
[ol]
[li]What is the quality of peers in each program as measured by incoming students SAT and GPA?[/li][li]What is the quality of the professors as measured by their CV, fame, and (to the extent you know) connections to industry and government? (And how much contact does the typical student have with those professors?)[/li][li]What employers recruit from the school?[/li][li]Is the school in a location near people the student would want to meet?(e.g., NYC>SLC for most professions)?[/li][li]What is the general reputation of the school as measured by surveys and rankings?[/li][/ol]
I also wouldn’t get too specific about any of this. That is, I wouldn’t focus exclusively on engineering. A high school senior planning to be an engineer may well become something else. So I would ask those more general questions.
What is each school’s retention rate? How many incoming first years graduate? This can help inform you somewhat about how well the school prevents kids from falling through the cracks.
I agree with a lot of what’s been said here. Grad school matters a lot more than undergrad, so that’s a factor. State schools are easier to get “lost” in because they are so big with so much partying, etc.
I went to a state school and then transferred to a smaller more reputable school where I graduated. Here’s some differences that I noticed which haven’t been mentioned yet:
Prestigious schools will have a higher quality of people, and that can matter for networking or connections later in your career. A girl I hung out with at school was a senators daughter. Another was the daughter of a CEO of a huge corporation and had a management job waiting for her there. People from my fraternity there ended up as hedge fund managers and executives.
But, the private school crowd can also be bad for networking, because you never see them. People come from all over the country to go to good schools. When they graduate, they scatter and you don’t have as tight of a circle of college friends as alumni.
People that go to state schools tend to be local. The people you meet and become friends with your freshman year of college tend to be a circle of friends that you stick with for life. If they are all from a state school there’s a good chance you’ll still be seeing them regularly decades later. I know I am.
The books are the same. The better school on your resume is good, of course. But picking a good major is more important. Better to be a engineering grad from UMASS than a political science grad from RPI.
If he sticks with engineering the school probably doesn’t matter too much.
The difference between a prestigious private school and a good public college can be huge or insignificant, depending on your career ambitions and dreams.
That is, if your dream is to sit on the Supreme Court some day or become a partner at one of Wall Street’s top firms, you’re MUCH better off paying top dollar to go to Harvard Law School than you are playing it cheap and going to the University of Oregon (or Texas or Michigan…) Law School. If your ambitions are lower and more local, the state university’s law school may be a great deal.
I know little or nothing about the engineering program at UConn. RPI has an excellent reputation for its engineering program. Is that reputation alone worth the extra tuition? Hard to say- in the days right after graduation, an RPI grad may get some interviews that a UConn grad won’t. But ultimately, in the tech world, what you KNOW is paramount. So, if you CAN learn everything at UConn that you could at RPI, I’d go with UConn.
Can you, in fact, do that? Do your research and figure it out.
RPI is a great school and I have several friends who received graduate degrees from there. It has a solid reputation that will open doors just by mentioning the name. I know nothing about UConn.
That said, I have to agree with others. The less expensive school is probably a better option for an undergraduate degree. If the question was where to go for graduate school, RPI would probably be worth the extra cost, but for a BS it isn’t. Just my 2 cents.
The answer would be different if he was interested in something besides engineering.