Help Me Decide: Dartmouth vs Brown vs Rice vs Georgia Tech vs......

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1

A little about me: born and raised in Austin, TX in an upper-middle class family (income above $150,000) so very little financial aid was offered. Plan to study Biomedical Engineering, but this could change. Future career plans include going straight to work after undergrad (as a biomedical engineer), going to grad school for engineering, going to business school, or going to medical school (maybe…).
I would probably be happy and get a great engineering education at any of the schools below, but I can only attend one… I have two huge concerns now: COST, aka how much debt I will have, vs. PRESTIGE, aka how much “value” my degree will have in the job market and among everyday people.

I was accepted to Johns Hopkins with a $32,000 per year scholarship, making it fairly affordable.
Accepted to Georgia Tech with a full ride including room, board, expenses, and money for study abroad etc.
Waitlisted at Olin College with a half tuition scholarship - but (because they are special…) a waitlist means that I am guaranteed admission NEXT school year. So I could take a gap year, or even attend another college and basically get a guaranteed transfer.
Accepted to Brown, Dartmouth, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, and Harvey Mudd** with zero financial aid or scholarships.
Waitlisted at Cornell (my first choice) and Stanford, probably with zero aid. I must make a decision on one of the others, then after May 1st, I may hear good news from these two. Or not.

** <-- I might be able to convince these starred schools - Rice, Carnegie Mellon, and Harvey Mudd - to match my scholarship from Johns Hopkins. But I’m not sure right now.

Note: I don’t care about size, isolation, weather, etc. I have preferences (largish, around 15,000, and in a big city) but these are secondary. Again, the most important things to me are (1) cost and (2) how much my degree will be “worth” in terms of job opportunity and prestige.

Please help me decide which school to enroll at. :slight_smile: I would appreciate any opinion, especially if you have personal experience or more info. Thank you!

Note #2: If all you have to say is “it doesn’t matter what school you go to, just what you do there…” please know that though I acknowledge and appreciate your standpoint, I have heard this many times before. As I said, any of these schools would “work” for me. I just need help deciding which to choose!

2

Your top priorities are cost and value of degree? Easy. Go to Georgia Tech and get on Olin’s wait list. After your first year at Tech you’ll know whether you should stay or go.

3

Thanks for your response, jeffgordon. Are you saying that Georgia Tech has the best prestige as an engineering school (and thus worth in the job market)? I’m only asking because I have had some very different recommendations.

Also, because I’m considering going to business school or medical school after undergrad, would Georgia Tech still be a good choice, or would other schools on my list be stronger?

4

I do not have first hand knowledge of Georgia Tech but they have an excellent reputation and they are offering you far more support than the others. Very generous in fact. Of course they will have paths to all sorts of graduate programs. I am more familiar with Olin. The only major there is engineering. They have had graduates go on to med school. They are adjacent to and closely affiliated with Babson, an excellent business college and the #1 rated school for entrepreneurship. I suspect that, with an almost free ride, Georgia Tech will be a very good fit. But it’s nice to have Olin in your back pocket.

5

Not too familiar with Engineering but for med school, pedigree is not a huge factor. What’s more important is to go to school where you have access to medical facilities and can maintain a good gpa (3.7+ science and overall) which is going to be difficult as an engineering major wherever you go. That said, dartmouth and brown have some grade inflation from what I’ve heard, not sure about others. I believe top business schools care more about pedigree…

6

Undergrad doesn’t matter for med school; only GPA and MCAT (and research/work). Take the full ride at GT without looking back. That’s a lot of money saved.

7

If your parents are fine with paying(half tuition seems reasonable at your income) and you are set on Biomedical Engineering then I would probably take Johns Hopkins. I don’t trust US News too much but they have Johns Hopkins followed by Georgia Tech as 1 and 2 for biomedical. That’s graduate but I’d assume you’d find really strong undegrad programs at both. If the money isn’t a problem though you’ll probably have a better undegrad experience at Hopkins with smaller classes and a better location. Also it seems like there could be some interaction with one of the top med schools in the county but I could be wrong. Either option would be great and all your other options are very strong but I’m not sure all would offer you biomedical engineering.(fairly confident it’s not offered at Olin and my impression is that most ivys aren’t known for engineering)

8

Thanks for all your responses, y’all have some great advice and info. I understand your points, but now I have a couple more questions:

I’m leaning more towards business school than medical school, so which school would be the best for that? Which school(s?) would be okay for that, and which would probably not get me where I want to go?

Also, if I can get Rice or Harvey Mudd to match Johns Hopkins’ aid, would they be good options? How do they compare?

Thank you!

9

If you’re interested in pursuing an MBA at the big three (Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton) or finance later on, Dartmouth has the pedigree and resources to make you the best candidate by a significant margin over your other choices. Brown, Rice, and JHU could get you there but it will be more uphill…getting there from GIT will rely on being a strong applicant and a good amount of luck.

10

I also heard that Harvey Mudd and Brown have a smaller endowment, so they can’t fund as much research etc. Any thoughts?

11

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/1284648-brown-is-the-best-place-to-be-a-pre-med-p1.html

12

If anyone in a similar situation ever reads this: though College Confidential was helpful, I had much more luck and some VERY informative and thought-provoking responses on this reddit thread that I made…
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/31k41h/serious_is_an_ivy_undergrad_education_worth_the/
(if the link doesn’t work, just search “[Serious] Is an Ivy undergrad education worth the money?”

13

Oh, in case you didn’t get the answer to your previous question: research is generally funded by grants, not endowments. At a school like Brown, with its small graduate programs, it can be far easier for undergrads to do research than at larger institutions.

14

Definitely Goergia Tech bro

15

Go Georgia Tech. Use the money you save on grad school.

16

Georgia Tech full ride is the obvious choice here. Prestige, to the extent it matters in engineering (which is rather less than in investment banking or consulting), is quite high for Georgia Tech in engineering. And the price is right.

And if you do go to business or medical school, the money you don’t spend on undergraduate (or debt avoided by going to low cost Georgia Tech) will be very helpful when looking at the bill for business or medical school.

But note that biomedical engineering job prospects are not that great at the bachelor’s degree level, so consider whether another type of engineering like chemical, electrical, mechanical, or materials may be suited for the kind of biomedical engineering interest your have, but also have other potential job prospects.

17

Full-ride for an OOS student at Georgia Tech? Take it! My D applied to 14 schools and was accepted or wait-listed to 13 of them. Ga Tech is in her top 3 (we’re just trying to figure out the OOS tuition…) BTW, if you have inventor genes, you may enjoy this program http://flashpoint.gatech.edu/

18

If you are positive of your major, you go to the college that provides the best path to success. GT and JHU are the top two ranked schools for your major, then pick one. You’re lucky they are the most financial friendly.

It’s nice that your Aunt can tell the world you went to Stanford but she is not footing the bill. I turned down a full ride to college and I survived the cost but If I had to do it over…

All those people who say it’s the dog in the fight and not the size of said dog are correct. If you got into all these colleges, you have the fight. Set yourself free by being debt free. Debt causes most marriages to fail. Not love or lack of it but debt. Think about that. Owing money means taking jobs you don’t want and living in places you don’t want. That is the real world. You will learn about this world some day. We all do.

If your end all is a B.S., then GT should be an easy choice. It is an extremely well respected school on the eastern seaboard. Enjoy Atlanta…

19

Thanks for your reply. :slight_smile: I have a couple questions:

Is Georgia Tech equally (or still) respected in places outside the East Coast? For example, West Coast or anywhere internationally?

Also, just out of curiousity, which school did you turn down, and which did you end up going to? Did you have any experience with having to take jobs you didn’t want, etc?