If you borrow $80,000, you will be paying about $1000 a month for 10 years to pay it back.
Here is my suggestion…if you think you have $1000 extra a month, start putting it in the bank in a dedicated account this month…and then continue to do so. See if this is sustainable for your family. If not, maybe this debt load is too much.
Engineering…find an accredited ABET school. Get your degree. You will get a job.
My DH graduated in engineering from a college that I think is ranked somewhere in the 400’s or so…I’m not kidding. But the engineering program was highly regarded in the area in which we live. He had an excellent career and thanks his lowly ranked abet accredited school for getting him where he was.
Excellent post that should be pinned. Engineers state that on CC consistently but the message seems to fall on deaf ears a good bit of the time.
I will add that taking on loans is not a good idea. You never know when your financial circumstances will change. We were doing very well as engineering consultants and then the Great Recession hit. We were thrilled if we got a $500 job. It was right before our oldest was heading off to college. 14 years later, we’re still trying to catch up. Your son has the chance to get an excellent education for very little money. You should count your blessings!
@peanutmom1 he means that $80,000 in debt would strangle you as a family financially.
I will say…this is true for some people. BUT only your family can decide what amount of debt you really feel you want to take.
I think $80,000 for an undergrad education is high debt, but not everyone would agree. I think it’s particularly high since you clearly have some options that sound appealing and are more to your price point.
My oldest child is graduating from college this May. A big topic of conversation in her friend group this entire year has been “What is next?”.
The largest amount of angst has been expressed by those friends who are graduating with debt. Their choices and decisions are much more constrained than those who are graduating debt free.
As they’ve gotten closer to graduation, the debt they took on is becoming more and more real, and one of the primary reasons cited as to why they are making the decisions they are making as to next steps.
Honestly, I think this would be a much tougher decision if your local school were weaker. It would also be a tougher decision if your kid were bound and determined to go out of state, either for “familiarity breeds contempt” reasons (the oft-repeated “everybody from my high school goes there!” complaint) or because they truly dislike the culture, political climate, weather, etc. of their home state.
But you have an amazing financial deal on offer, at a flagship university with a very solid engineering program; and your kid actually likes the idea of staying closer to home. This seems like a win-win-win to me.
While of course you don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket, and so should have some other viable options in the pipeline, this decision has “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” written all over it.
Living on campus for the first year could be a great investment. They’ll build stronger relationships that way, and be fully immersed in campus life, using their time to get involved instead of spending it commuting. After the first year, once they’re well-established, commuting to save money might make sense… or not. That’s a decision that can wait.
And if kiddo starts to feel like they need to widen their horizons after a year or two, that’s where either an NSE domestic exchange or study abroad could come in. As fiftyfifty1 pointed out, there are some excellent engineering schools, all over the country, that participate in NSE. And the UNM study abroad portal allows you to search programs by major, and selecting MechE brings up a fairly long list of overseas programs that could work for him, if they’re interested in going abroad.
The ROI here is going to be very hard to beat. It’s not the only way to meet your budget, but I doubt that any of the other options at 25K/year or less will end up offering something meaningfully better than this bird-in-the-hand. And it will be a rare unicorn that will be worth taking out loans for in comparison.
The bold things in this post…we didn’t pay for any discretionary spending. Up front, we told our kids we expected them to work during the summers and up to ten hours a week during college to earn their discretionary spending money. So…Ubers, Greek, travel, outings…those were on our kids’ dimes. We did give them some cash gifts every so often, but they had to earn their own fun money.
We were paying tuition, fees, room, board, travel back and forth to school. That was plenty.
Having said that…it’s nice to have choices when the time comes to select a college to attend. So…keep looking. There could be something else out there too. And kids do change before May of their senior years in high school.
I think you’ve gotten some great advice so far, and i think your family is really ahead of the game in terms of thinking about the financial issues and having these conversations early.
I agree with those that I would avoid debt (for you or your child) if at all possible…and it sounds like it’s definitely possible, including with some terrific options.
UNM has tons of opportunities and would be hard to beat. But since it’s nice to have options, here are a few:
Fort Lewis (CO): If your kid decides a smaller school is preferred, this option has about 3300 undergrads. Fort Lewis is ABET-accredited in general engineering and computer engineering. So if your kid is really confident engineering’s for them, a school with more expertise may be preferred, but this school still gives options. It’s a 3h37m drive, according to Google Maps. WUE tuition comes in at $11,340/year.
U. of Houston (TX): On a complete different side, scale-wise, is U. of Houston (about 38k undergrads). It has an array of programs, and your kid would be likely to get merit aid here. Additionally, students who get at least $1k in merit are eligible for competitive in-state pricing. There are 4-6 nonstop flights/day between Houston’s two airports and Albuquerque. If you were to get in-state tuition, that would cost around $12k, plus subtracting whatever the merit aid reward was.
U. of Texas - Dallas: This campus has more of an academic reputation. There are about 21k undergrads here, and the same financial advantages of U. of Houston would be true here. There are 8-11 flights/day to Dallas, between its two airports, from Albuquerque.
Illinois Institute of Technology: This private school is another small school option, with fewer than 4k undergrads. They tend to be generous with merit aid, but I don’t know if they will be generous enough to get the price down to $25k. There are 2-3 flights to Chicago (between its two airports) from Albuquerque.
U. of Denver (CO): This is another mid-sized school of about 6k undergrads and it’s ABET-accredited in computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering. There are 5-7 flights daily from Albuquerque to Denver, or it’s a 6.5 hour drive.
U. of Utah: This school has already been mentioned here, but costs would be a bit under $14k for tuition for WUE status. There are 2-3 flights per day from Albuquerque to Salt Lake City or it’s a 10-hr drive.
North Central (IL): This is another small school, this time in a suburb of Chicago. It’s ABET-accredited for computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering. It tends to be very generous with merit aid offers.
Northern Arizona: A 4h46m drive from Albuquerque and ABET-accredited in civil, computer, electrical, environmental, and mechanical engineering. WUE rate is $17k for tuition.
Northwestern (IL): You can run the NPC here to see if it would be affordable. Again, same travel times as for other Chicago-area schools.
Rice (TX): Run the NPC, but it has the same travel times as for the other Houston school.
Seattle U. & Seattle Pacific are both ABET-accredited in mechanical engineering, among other fields. They are on the small to mid-sized side of schools. There’s 1 flight/day to Seattle from Albuquerque.
Southern Methodist (TX): SMU is a mid-sized school and your kid could get lucky with sufficient merit aid here. Same travel info as for the Dallas school above.
In engineering, after the first job, all that matters is whether you can do the work. Choose the option that you can afford, that works best for you and your kid.
The numbers above unfortunately don’t reflect all costs. Housing and food are the two major ones. Fort Lewis for example is $28,412 per year for in state. Total with WUE will be well over $25K. I suspect that every school on this list will exceed $25k/year.
The reality is that very few schools will hit the budget.
Utah State would with a 1450+ SAT and maintaining a 4.0.
Yep - the only thing we don’t know is the need equation - this is where (and not easy) a Rice or others like a USC could come into play - but then you have to get in.
But it would be helpful for OP to run an NPC for meets need school.
But wanting to stay near home - UNM and U of Arizona would both be great choices as would NMSU and New Mexico Tech.
Not much further than Denver but still within range - would be Wyoming - which is $8K on WUE.
I have been doing that…I did look up schools that meet demonstrated need and they are MUCH more affordable according to the NPCs. As it will surprise no one, they are all extremely competitive. They’re on our list (and I am ruthlessly culling our list as we speak as I run NPCs).
I did show my kiddo the UNM MechE racing team and they were more jazzed about it than anything that I’ve seen from them re: UNM. Immediately asked to tour when they saw on the website that facility tours are always available. Thanks for the encouragement, y’all!
Look at Utah. But I doubt you’ll get more merit than the WUE offer if you only have 4-5 APs. That’s going to be slightly over $30K per year for tuition, room and board. Utah State is inconveniently located and very Mormon, likely not preferable to UNM.
Arizona probably won’t be offering great merit for class of 2025, given their budget deficit. They said they make a loss on anyone with more than 3.75 GPA, suggesting COA will likely be $40K+ going forward.
Have them follow the racing team on Insta. And anything else they might be interested in. Following interests on Instagram really got my kid excited for visits and helped him figure out what he wanted to see and learn about on our trips.
Too late to do anything now, but I really wish I had known that 4-5 APs was a lowball. It might not have made much difference anyway, since with their advanced courses and ECs it felt like they were doing all they could whilst still keeping a good GPA and staying sane. What is a good number of APs these days?
One should take the rigor that’s right for them. If the school offers a lot of APs and the student takes few, that’s going to likely put the RIces of the world out of reach.
But given the student’s location desires, they’re fine. You can’t look back and many a solid engineering program will love to have your son.
It just means he’ll have to take a few more courses in college. Of course, those directly related to engineering (math, science) are often good repeats anyway. In fact, at the Mines admitted student day, on the student panel, the kids said to do exactly that - repeat those classes.
Since Utah dropped consideration of SAT/ACT it looks like they want full IB or around 7-8+ APs (plus close to 4.0UW) for the higher level merit offers. WUE is much easier (my S23 got it with 3.7UW/4.0W and 5 APs). They make far fewer merit awards nowadays, my D18 (who attended) won a full ride with 4.0UW/35 ACT/9 APs (8 5s and a 4). It’s a great school in a nice city, especially good for outdoorsy kids.
UNR has an ABET certified Mechanical engineering degree and has a solid path to get under budget with WUE and their presidential scholarship. I am not suggesting it’s a better option than UNM, just a different one.
Definitely to live on campus though.