Decisions Help!-- full ride Vanderbilt vs. Columbia?

metalpawn
Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:47:38 +0000

Hey everyone! I’m planning to go into Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Columbia (also, CP Davis Scholar here) or if I attend or study Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt. The COA for Vanderbilt for me is ~9,000 after some scholarships (including full tuition). My COA of Columbia (after Financial Aid ) is 50,000. My family is ready to pay 30000, but the rest would have to be personal loans from my parent’s savings/retirement funds. I would rather attend Columbia-- it’s a much better fit-- but money is an issue. We already talked to the financial aid department, the grant amount isn’t changing. From talking to an ORFE professor at Columbia, it seems like most kids go straight to Wall Street jobs and such as opposed to grad school. Any opinions/advice? I feel really torn.