When they told me I was a National Merit Finalist I brushed it off, considering all but 1,000 semifinalists become finalists. Then, last week, weird stuff started happening. Schools started mailing me stuff saying they’d pay for my entire college education. Right now, of all those schools, the one I like the most is Arizona State (Oklahoma and a crappy school in New York are the other two who have given me offers). Now, I have yet to hear from any of the schools I actually applied to, but I hear from GW this week. I really want to go to school in Washington, preferably Georgetown but GW would do, but four more years of free education are very tempting. Any thoughts on my situation? Oh, and my family is upper-middle class, so we can afford pretty much anywhere, but a free pass would be nice.
I was a Finalist in '96. I could have gotten in just about anywhere, but wouldn’t have gotten a lot of scholarship money most places. I accepted the only big offer I got, a full-ride scholarship to a small public university, and it worked out really well for me. In some ways, the education I got there was probably better than at a big, impressive-sounding school. The classes were small, only a dozen or so people in most of my major classes. Except for a couple of science labs and PE courses, all my teachers were real professors, not grad students, and the professors were actually interested in undergraduate teaching, not just research. I got to know a lot of them really well, could drop in on them anytime for help or advice. I think I made the right choice.
Hope this helps a little. YMMV
I would say go for the free school. You metioned Arizona State? That’s certainly not a bad school by any standards. Since I go to a very expensive school (about $33k a year total,) I almost wish I had choosen the school that would have cost me less than $5k a year (St.Lawerence)…but then I couldn’t study what I wanted (engineering.)
If Arizona State offers what you want to study, I say go there.
Ah, a thread I can respond to… I was a finalist in 1999 and thought about applying to schools like Tulane or Georgetown. Ultimately I decided on the University of Memphis where I am now because it was in my hometown and they were offering me a free ride plus stipend. My brother and sister were also finalists and chose Georgetown(eerie, huh?) despite similar offers from the U of M. Since our parents are fairly well off, Georgetown wasn’t offering anything. My brother ended up staying the whole course, but he’s said since then that he felt it was a mistake. He later returned to the U of M because he decided he wanted to be a doctor and needed more science courses. My sister left Georgetown after a year and finished up at the U of M and has said that the classes here are of equal if not better quality. I think it comes down to a lot of people stuck teaching who want to be researching. Of course, this is just one family’s experience, YMMV.
-Lil
For a bachelor’s degree, the college attended is only going to make a difference in a small number of situations. MIT or Yale or Stanford are great schools, and having attended one of them, and graduated, is, perhaps, a bit of a boost when hunting for that first professional position.
And in certain career paths (most notably law), the school of graduate work can be significant when coming out of the gate.
But things remain fluid in most of the professional world, and five, ten, twenty years down the road, as employers, we don’t generally place much significance on your school.
In my field (oil & gas exploration), the Colorado School of Mines flushed MIT by a long shot, but twenty+ years into it my track record is far more important than having gained a baccalaureate degree at the University of Texas. And one of my best friends, a School of Mines grad, is hustlin’ pick up work.
Ultimately, pal, the college experience, if you’re going to have that, as opposed to attending an urban commuter college, should be one of your prime considerations. That’s life for four to six years, maybe more. You can get a good education at a lot of places, and I’d avoid the lingering debt if at all possible.
Will you have or make friends there? A state school will be where a lot of your friends wind up, and they’re usually at least competitive. Maybe you want the challenges of the upper tier schools. I just don’t happen to think they really offer that much more than the good state schools.
Good luck!
Hey, I’m in the damn EXACT same situation as you BigKahunaBurger. Even the Arizona State thing. Cosmic…
It may just be that I know strange people, but I know an inordinate amount of people who went to Georgetown and hated it. They’ve said terrible things about both the teachers and the other students.
One of those people is doing two straight years abroad in South Africa just to get the heck out of there.
Of course you might be different. All I can say is go to the school you want to go to, not the one you think you ought to want to go to.
Well, I was in a similar situation myself. Let’s see, I graduated HS in '98. Merit Finalist (ask me sometime why I was only a “Finalist” and not a “National Merit Scholar” if you want to see someone err… tell a story about getting screwed by bureacracy), choosing between highfalutin rich-kids school and public university for free. And I mean free – I was offered the Regent’s Scholarship at UCSC, where not only do they pay tuition, they pay for your books, living expenses, pocket cash, you also get first priority in choosing classes, dorms, etc. But I didn’t want to go somewhere close to home. So I picked the insanely expensive school with the good reputation.
Here I am four years later; broke, unemployed, in gigantic debt, education-free, and 100% degreeless. Who’s to say how things would have turned out had I made a different choice, but I can say with confidence that I wouldn’t owe $20 grand had I been a little less stuck-up about my choice of colleges and made some clearheaded decisions about what I was really looking for.
YMMV. The only actual point here is the last part – try to figure out what you actually want from a school, and where you are most likely to find it.
I’ve been on the other side of this one - as a faculty member at a private college, watching our administration decide how much aid to give the students it wants.
The message here is:[ul][li] Colleges, in effect, bid against each other for the desirable students. So:[/li][li] This gives you leverage in dealing with other schools. Use it, then make your decision. [/ul]Seriously, when you’re talking with GW or G’town, or any other schools that haven’t offered you aid yet, let them know that you’ve gotten offers for a free ride, and from where. Let them know that you’re not expecting them to match it, but that how much aid you receive, particularly the type you don’t have to pay back later, is certainly a factor in your decision.[/li]
JFTR, everybody’s offering aid to the students they even mildly want, if there’s any attempt by the prospective students to shake the money tree. And as you’ve discovered, schools will throw money at you, without your having asked, if they decide they want you badly enough.
So in today’s environment, anyone who pays “list price” for their college education is either rich, or a sucker. Do some research, and learn to play this game.
But ultimately decide which school, based on the whole picture. Visit the campuses, talk with the students, find out about the programs, and so forth.
Many big public universities have ‘school within a school’ setups for their brightest incoming students, the ones they’ve made a special effort to land. Which means you take the intro classes in small sections with fellow students who are as bright as you, rather than as part of the cattle-call arrangements, and you usually get some preference in signing up for electives that fill up. Programs like these are, quite frankly, often every bit as good as what you’d get at a prestigious small college. See what ASU has, and take that into account.
Good luck!
If your family is as upper-middle-class as you say, why not just attend the school you want and let someone else who really needs the scholarship money have it?
tsarina - if only it worked that way.
If Kahuna doesn’t take the money, chances are awfully good that some equally un-needy student will receive the aid instead; it’s the relatively affluent who have the college aid game figured out best. It wouldn’t be all that different from seeing $100 lying on the street, and leaving it there in the hopes that the next person walking by needed it more than you.
Heck, the odds might be better with the $100 on the street.
I had the following options:
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Polytechnic University for free (Long Island campus).
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Rensselear (RPI) for 10k a year.
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Cornell for full price.
I chose option 1, and I don’t regret it for an instant. I graduated in '99, have a great job now, and no school loan debts to worry about.
I am of the opinion that a Bachelor’s degree is merely proving that you can learn and do as you are taught. Everything you learn for a job you learn on the job, the degree proves that you can. Thus a completed degree from any school is good.
Plus, the “full scholarship” on the resume is always impressive.
I agree with most of the other posters–the school you go to for undergrad doesn’t affect your professional life very much. I went to the state school, so I could afford to go to a kick-ass grad school.
Nothing to add here but except, wherever you go, GRADUATE. Dropping out of Georgetown will look worse than a BA from Podunk U.
Well, I made a different choice. I was offered a free ride for four years to the University of Nebraska, and I turned it down to go to a small private school in Virginia where we had to pay a lot of the bill.
I suspect that I still would have made it into my PhD program (rated #1 in the country) with a degree from Huge State U. The question is whether I would have tried, what path I would be on. For me, I found that going to a school in a different part of the country, with strong academic values and an honor code, was very much a character-building experience. I changed a lot, as did my aspirations and expectations.
People are 100% right when they say it doesn’t matter about that first job you think you can get once you graduate. But there are other intangibles. I’m not saying they necessarily matter to you, but I had to chime in because “go for the cheapest school you can” is not always sound advice, and the reasons why don’t just have to do with how sexy that resume looks in four years.
Also, not every alum loathes Georgetown. Just so that gets said.
Can I just bring up what no one has yet?
What you get out of a college education is due largely in part to what you put into it.
In other words, student A goes to Podunk U, and works his butt off. He gets a great education.
Student B goes to Ritzy Pricey U, and slacks, graduating, but barely. He got a crappy education at a great school.
In the end, I think how hard you work means more than where you went.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I have found that none of my employers have really cared where my degree came from. (Accounting ain’t rocket science) What’s been more important was my work experience and my work ethic.
For the record, I went to the expensive, private U that offered me the biggest scholarship. I got to have real small class size and personal attention. Choice #2 would have been USC, who offered me less scholarship money. I’m sure I would have gotten a great education there, too, but I don’t regret for a second going where I did.
I agree with most of what’s been said.
Even if you’re folks will be footing the bill regardless, you should consider this: people have great respect for students who support themselves at least partially through school. And believe me, when you can tell someone that you aren’t sucking your parents’ tits, it feels good. It gives your claim of adulthood more validity.
I was fortunate that I was on full scholarship when I was in college. I had several scholarships, and money that went in excess over tuition and fees went straight to my pocket. (National Merit is wonderful! I was living high off the hog because of that baby!) It felt good being independent in this way. I didn’t feel constrained by my parents in deciding what to study or what to do with my time since I wasn’t beholding to them. And–heaven forbid–if you should drop out of school, you don’t have to worry about “owing” your parents for wasted tuition. Like I said, it’s just a good feeling.
But I didn’t put cost over quality. I made myself go to the best public school in my state for what I wanted to do. It’s true you can get an Ivy League-type education in a lot of places, but some places faciliate this education more than others. Go for these definitely. If Arizona State isn’t top-notch in your major, look elsewhere.
I had an offer to go to Cornell on partial scholarship and I turned it down. Knowing what I know now about the place, I have no regrets.
percypercy, even sven I’ve chosen Georgetown because I want to get into poli sci and Washington would be a great place for me to spend 4 years. I interned there last summer and I made many connections, and that was only 6 weeks. If I go to Tempe I’m not sure if I’d have the same opportunities. Also, I love the Georgetown campus, I’ve met a few students and I think I’d fit in well, and there are various other reasons I want to go there. I know the thrust of your posts wasn’t to prevent me from going there, but I figure it should be said anyways. Anyhow, there’s no guarantee I’m getting in to begin with. I hear early April.
RTFirefly Thanks! If there are any other people who are/were involved in the college admissions process, speak up.
SouprChckn Is Georgetown your first choice too? If so, what school?
The rest of the benevolent people offering advice Thanks for the advice as well. I won’t end up in debt, well, at least not due to tuition, when I graduate because my parents are footing the bill. Ugh, I hate sounding like a spoiled brat. If I do drop out, I’ll definitely pay back my parents somehow. I’ve already told them I won’t move in with them after college, I figure that should count for something. Also, I’m not sure if I should get a postgrad degree yet so I figure I should try to get the best undergrad one I can. What I saw when I interned was that it did matter a little what school you went to because many people where I worked made connections at those schools (i.e. someone went to Northwestern with Dick Gephardt). So, as I said before, I think I can get the most out of college by going to Georgetown or GW.
Well, I guess my situation is ALMOST the exact same as yours. My first choices are MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, UC-Berkeley in that order. I’m just going to apply to Arizona State anyway though. I just wonder if by applying there for that National Merit scholarship means that if I get in, I MUST go. Seeing as how I have to make it my “first choice” in National Merit land.
THIS is how they get you. SouprChckn, beware! That innocent looking top-3 list they have you fill out is really put there just to screw you. Be careful – the school you list first on the Merit application will be the only school at which you can receive a Merit scholarship. This exact thing happened to me. Going into the final stage of applications, my top two choices were in a dead heat, and I filled them out on the Merit app in essentially random order. By the time my acceptances were in, I had decided which school to go to – but I could only get a Merit scholarship at the one I had listed first. No amount of haranguing could get me that Merit money at my top choice school, and I talked to a lot of people in the Merit organization. I ended up talking to the head of Financial Aid at my top choice and explaining the situation to him, and he was sympathetic and I got some money for that. But I lost a few thousand dollars in grants because of that lousy list. AND I don’t get to call myself a National Merit Scholar – just a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. I’m bitter.
So be careful! But if ASU is the only school you’re appyling to that offers Merit Scholarships, no problem. That list isn’t actually binding in terms of where you go, it’s just binding in terms of where you can get a Merit Scholarship.
Also, Cal is a crappy school for undergraduate education. Unless your idea of a good education is midterms all year in 500-person classes taught by TAs. That could just be my hometown bias speaking, though.