College Park Gemstone or NYU? Advice please.

cerhem293
Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:46:54 +0000

I got accepted by New York University and UMD College Park, waitlisted by all of my “on targets”, and denied/waitlisted by all of my reaches. Assuming that I won’t get into any of my waitlists (based on my luck so far), I’m gonna be looking at one of my three safeties: UMD CP, NYU, or Franklin and Marshall. I’m probably gonna end up trying to transfer, but with such a low transfer acceptance rate at the college that I would love to go to, I’m not getting my hopes up just to get them stomped into the ground again :).

I’ve been notified that I have a full ride with only 2k worth of loans a year for 4 years at Franklin and Marshall. I’m an in-state Banneker/Key Scholar at UMD and accepted into Gemstone. I’ll also be in the neighborhood of a full ride to NYU based on my financial predicament. F&M is a great college, but I don’t think that I would go there over UMD or NYU. I’m stuck between NYU and UMD right now.

If I go to College Park, I’d major in engineering and participate in Gemstone. If I were to go to NYU, I’d major in computer science or maybe also minor/major in something finance related. I like both schools and both computer science and engineering. My question is, which one would be better to get into a top tier graduate school, assuming that I do equally well and at both colleges?