What is your ultimate career goal? Do you want to go into industry, or are you looking at academia?
You should not go to an unfunded PhD program. You have four excellent programs that are offering you full funding.
I don’t know what UW is (Wisconsin or Washington)? All four of the schools you’ve been accepted to are good civil engineering PhD programs; Wisconsin is ranked in the top 10, but if it’s Washington that is also a good mid-ranked program.
You are unlikely to get an on-campus job that will pay you enough money to cover your living expenses that will also allow you to do the work you need to do, so you will likely have to borrow money. The costs at UT or Berkeley will be enough that you’ll have an enormous debt load at the end that will be difficult to pay: even if you manage to live on $25K a year and it takes you 5 years to finish, that’s $125K of debt. And that’s not even including the cost of tuition, equipment, and fees.
This is not a “little financial burden” or “a few bucks.”
@VAMom23 Academia mostly.
I don’t know why you would accept an unfunded offer, that’s just a bad decision. An unfunded offer is basically the school saying they don’t believe in you.
Hey, @hanks864! I’m also Brazilian. Can you PM me? Wanna talk with ya.
Do NOT go to ph.d without funding!!! So many of my friends in Ph.D program told me this.