I thought the OP was looking for PA programs, to engineering nor medicine. Do either of these schools have a RN program?
PA school is the same as med school - it doesn’t matter where you do your undergrad, just what your GPA is.
Unc is great. Auburn is a terrific school as well.
Maybe show her the bio for the CEO of Apple. Auburn worked out for him. Lol.
I would also choose UNC for less. However I’m not going. You are. It will work out but remember your mom really has only one goal and that’s your best interests.
From their common data sets:
Auburn SAT middle 50%tile 1160 1300
UNC Chapel Hill middle 50%tile 1300 1470
So you want to pay more for a college that is not as “good” as UNC?
bobber - perhaps the OP’s criteria for what makes a good college isn’t just test scores.
My cousin (who goes the Chapel Hill) has invited me up for a weekend to go to a basketball game and stay with her in her dorm for a night. My parents hope it will even up the playing field since I’ve been to Auburn many times.
In regards to money, I will be using part of my dad’s GI Bill (he’s military) and to be completely honest I’ve always worried more about the money just because I hate feeling like I’d be a financial burden so my parents eventually told me not to worry because of the GI Bill, and because I have a few people “investing in my future”. I also hope to continue applying for scholarships.
Auburn cost of attendance: about $49,000 per year
(keep in mind a yearly merit scholarship that takes a chunk out of this total)
Chapel Hill cost of attendance: about $24,000
(tuition, room, board, books, etc, included for both)
My little sister will be attending college next year, and she is thinking either UNCW, ECU, or App State.
Well the Tar Heels have not had one of their best seasons this year. But with legendary Coach Roy Williams they are always tough come tournament time.
There will be no loss of school spirit but they might be outplayed this Saturday. FYI
Its good your keeping an open mind. What is the actual cost of Auburn with your merit etc applied?
My thinking is people generally only have one chance to go to college as a full-time undergrad. So if @mjbryant really wants to go to Auburn and it’s financially reasonable, then do it. A smart, motivated kid is going to do just fine at UNC or Auburn and have a very successful life regardless of which school they go to. But you don’t want to go to UNC and regret not going to Auburn because you let people talk you out of it.
NC State or Auburn are the obvious choices for engineering . If the OP is using the GI bill , tuition becomes irrelevant too. The only variables are travel and housing costs. If the OP qualifies for scholarships, such as NM, the comparison becomes more even if the GI bill only covers some years.
@mjbryant , rather than approaching this like a debate and gathering data to support your current preference, why not have a real conversation with your parents. Really listen to them. Are they worried about job prospects? Money? Do they understand your ambivalence about your career goals? Have you not articulated that because you don’t want to disappoint them? Don’t go into it with the goal of convincing them to your point of view, but to really understand where they are coming from.
This is an interesting time in a parent child relationship. Parents often don’t share lots of their worries or concerns with their kids in order to protect them. Kids often don’t share things with their parents so as not to disappoint or anger them. Getting to a point where you can have these conversations, where you really listen to each other, will make everyone more trusting of each other.
I am a parent and am much more comfortable with my kid’s decisions now than I used to be because I trust he has heard my concerns and I in turn trust his ability to think things through and ultimately, his judgment. It has taken a while to communicate as adults with each other. You are at the beginning of that but can really play a good foundation in how you deal with this situation.
Where did this kid say she wanted to be an engineer! She didn’t. Someone upstream posted that IF she wanted to be an engineer, it could not be at UNC CH, but that NC State and Auburn had Engineering.
In reading this thread…it sounded like this poster really hadn’t chosen a major, but sort of led her parents to believe she wanted to be a PA.
Maybe one talking point would be that she has not really chosen a major …yet…like many college students. Perhaps the parents will understand her perspective better if she comes clean bout her major.
@thumper1 Quote from the OP: “I know Auburn’s acceptance rates to med-school are not quite as high as UNC Chapel Hill’s, but if I end up deciding against following through with a profession in the medical field, I know that Auburn has a plethora of other opportunities for me to choose from, including Engineering, which has always been another interest of mine.”
Well then…if the student is interested in engineering, it would be hard to top the instate cost at NC State.
But frankly, this student isn’t sure what he or she wants to major in…and that should factor into his or her conversation with her parents…who are assuming something in the medical field.
The OP should also know…it’s not easy to transfer into engineering…so they should check how easy it is to do so at Auburn and NC State.
I had to look up Auburn because I didn’t know anything about it. I assumed it was a small school and maybe UNC was too big…maybe the OP wants a small school. Nope…Auburn has over 24,000 undergrads. Definitely not a small school…it has more undergrads than UNC.
The OP wants a walkable town and big D1 spirit. This confuses me as well…because UNC has a walkable town and big D1 spirit.
Was this student accepted to Auburn as a biology major? How easy/difficult is it to transfer into the school of engineering if one changes his/her mind?
I do understand how this parent feels (I would feel the same), but if Auburn is affordable…I would allow the student to choose.
You keep making vague references to a merit grant at Auburn. What’s the actual net cost to your family for each school? It looks like Auburn’s highest merit award is $15k/year. The next highest one is $8k. That brings the net cost to $34-41k/year. Can your parents afford an additional $40-68k for your education?
Where your sister plans to go to college doesn’t matter. If she’s thinking about less expensive schools it doesn’t mean you’ll have more to spend.
How do you know how their family is willing to allocate their money? I always find it interesting how people read so much into these posts. I know we all see them through our own filters because it’s impossible for people to provide every single bit of detail in the posts, but maybe the OP’s parents told them that if one of them goes to a cheaper school then the other will have more money available. We just don’t know.
Parents can tell a younger child they have to spend less so an older child can go to a dream school, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Comparing med school acceptance rates is a tricky business.
First of all, you’re talking about two schools with a different range of student achievement upon entry, so you’d expect the acceptance rates to differ just based on that pre-filter; but that doesn’t mean comparable students at each school fare any differently.
Secondly, without digging much deeper, you cannot know how much the premed field at either school is winnowed down, through “weeder” courses and through the particular school’s policy about providing the all-important endorsement for med school applications. (Some schools have very high med school acceptance rates because they won’t endorse any but the most qualified candidates. The actual ratio of accepted students to those who wanted to apply can be much, much lower.)
Given how these factors vary, that one number (while it may sound great) is a terrible way of comparing whether one specific student (i.e. you) would have a better shot at med school via one college vs. another. It’s entirely possible that you-in-particular would have better odds at Auburn than at UNC, if being closer to the top of that particular talent pool would improve your chances of a stellar GPA. Then again, that’s not a foregone conclusion. (Competitive admissions do not always correlate with tougher grading curves.) All I’m saying is that you have to dig a lot deeper. I don’t necessarily disagree with your mom about the opportunities at Chapel Hill - as a parent, I would feel dubious about paying more for the sports-fan experience over top-tier academics, and it’s not even as if the Tar Heels are unworthy of fandom. But I don’t think she should be hung up on the med school acceptance rate specifically. And sometimes “fit” and “vibe” can be more important than “rank.” (The question is, if in fact you’re right about being happier at Auburn, would it be the happiness-begets-success kind of happiness, or the having-too-much-fun-to-worry-about-success kind of happiness?)
Also, as others have asked, how close in cost is “a good bit closer,” exactly…? What program/major are you accepted to at Auburn? (If not engineering, do you know whether that option is still realistically open to you?) Are you accepted to the Honors College?
Nobody here can tell, from what you’ve said, what the better choice would be; all we can do is pose questions that may help you and your family to figure that out for yourselves.