I am a freshman at UAH pursuing aerospace engineering. I am from South Dakota, which makes this a long ways from home. I mainly chose this school because of a) rocket city and b) scholarships. If I stay here for four years, I will graduate with almost $0 debt (not completely sure if I will have any or not). However, I am considering other options for a degree. I have been interested in fund management/finance/quant stuff for a year or two but never considered it a strong enough interest to pursue. As of right now, I am equally interested in both aerospace and finance.
If I choose to change my major to finance/econ/math (or similar), should I look to transfer or should I try to stay at UAH because it’s nearly free? I don’t necessarily want to live in Huntsville… I’d prefer living in Minneapolis (big city close to where I am from). Obviously, firms in Minneapolis hire out of UMN and UW and maybe UChicago, so I feel like getting a finance degree at UAH, while free, will have drawbacks when it’s time to find a job back up North. On the other hand, if I transfer to a more reputable finance school, I could have an easier shot at jobs/internships/experience but I will have more debt.
Is there a winning situation here?
Also, since I am from South Dakota, I have in-state tuition to UMN. If I transferred and got a degree in three years, I would have around $50,000 debt (after scholarships). This doesn’t factor in if I work or get more scholarships from UMN.
DISCLAIMER: This advice is based of off anecdotal experience. There’s probably someone more qualified on this forum that may be able to give you better advice.
Just my two cents. IMO, there are some pretty great firms in the south. I don’t know if UAH is a specific target school for specific firm(s), however it doesn’t hurt to perhaps work at a southern firm, see how it goes, and then you could go back up north, perhaps get an MBA at a northern university.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure to keep your grades up, as that’s a big, BIG factor.
Could you not minor in some kind of business/finance with your aerospace degree? $0 debt versus $50,000 is a lot of money. Try a repayment calculator to get an idea of what your payments might be. You just got there, see how things go after you’ve been there longer.
If you decide to transfer regardless, do what @TransferStalker suggests, make sure to keep your grades up.
Payments would be around $500 - $700 for 10 years, depending on how much I work and how much housing/meals would actually cost if I commuted from an apartment.
$50k is about twice what you can borrow on your own with federal student loans. Who is going to cosign loans for you? Why would that person think it makes sense for you to have about twice as much debt (half of which would also be theirs) as most folks would consider to be the max an undergrad should borrow?
$500 in increased expense each month means you need to make an extra $700 or so before taxes, or about $8,400 more each year for 10 long years which comes to about $84,000. Think about what you could do with that kind of money, and/or what you could do with your time if you don’t need to work that hours required to earn it.
Don’t worry about transferring just yet. Get yourself through this first semester, and see what you think about your possible majors.
A lot of people are hired for quant/finance jobs that have an engineering degree. They often pursue those types of internships in the summer to prepare for such a job upon graduation. I don’t think you need to change majors or universities at all. The quant/finance employers will primarily be interested in the quantitative background (math courses and modeling, e.g.) that is inherent across all types of engineering, hard sciences, math, statistics, computing and finance majors. You can go to websites like Indeed and look at job ads for quant/finance jobs, and you will see that many of them just specify quantitative majors including engineering. If you have room to take electives, choose math, finance, computing or statistics courses. If there are clubs relating to finance and investments on campus, get involved in those, or start one if there isn’t one already. The reverse is not true – if you major in finance, e.g., and decide later you want to work in aerospace engineering, you won’t be able to easily do that without obtaining another degree.