Deciding Between UW-Madison and RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) CS

Midwestmomofboys
Sat, 30 Mar 2019 20:17:05 +0000

Great options, congrats to your student! My kid was OOS at UW – tuition is about $15k less than full pay at a private school ($37.6 for next year) and we found the room and board as well as other cost of attendance estimates on the high side, though your mileage may vary. For a full pay family, UW can be significantly less for an OOS family than a comparable private school. On the other hand, for an OOS family with financial need, UW is generally not going to give aid, so it becomes all loans, and that would not be advisable.

Costs aside – consider admission to specific majors – CS at UW is within the College of Letters and Science, the requirements for the major are not as onerous as majors within the College of Engineering. As a public university, UW is obligated to make a lot of information publicly available so you can look at course lists, past history of grades given in every class in the university etc. For instance, here is the public search function for fall '19 classes, you can search for all courses offered in CS, for example. https://portal.sispub.wisc.edu:7052/psp/public/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/COMMUNITY_ACCESS.CLASS_SEARCH.GBL?

Hopefully the visits will make the decision easier, agains, congrats!