I am a prospective engineering student that will be attending a college in the fall of 2019. I have looked at many prestigious schools such as Wake Forest, Lehigh, Lafayette, University of Rochester, and Carnegie Mellon. My family is giving me $100,000 over the four years, the rest of the money I will be taking on as debt. Not considering any merit scholarships, are any of these schools worth over $150,000 in debt after I get my degree. My other options instead if these types of schools are my in-state public universities which are Rutgers and TCNJ.
$180,000 in debt is not worth it. Even $80,000 in debt is not worth it.
Go to your instate publics and graduate debt free.
No. Take the 100k plus the $27k student loans you can get plus money you have/can conservatively expect to earn and that should be your max budget for 4 years in school. Include tuition, room, board, books, fees, travel. Anything your parents won’t pay for. Expect costs to increase over your time. A few of them (plus others) have merit available.
$150,000 debt is way to much for an undergrad major in engineering.
Get your degree at an ABET accredited college that is within your family budget…so a public in your state…or someplace where you will get merit aid to bring the costs down.
What is your GPA? What is your SAT or ACT score? Maybe someone here can give you a suggestion.
You can’t borrow $150k. You can only borrow $5500/year (~$27k total over 4 years). Either look for merit to bring costs down to your budget or go to your state schools.
My D went to Lafayette and loved it BUT I would not take out that level of debt to send her there. Even if you could take out that amount of debt, graduating with $150,000 in loans would handcuff your life decisions for 20+ years after graduation. The large payments you would have to make to cover the payments of your undergraduate loans would interfere with every adult decision you make – it would mean you probably couldn’t take that amazing job at a start-up for less pay, get that new car, take a nice vacation, get the home you want etc. I would definitely go for the affordable options.
No. And actually, you may want to look at Rowan. Their Engineering program rivals that of some of he schools you mentioned. Seriously. Stealing from @NJWrestlingmom who posted the following on a different thread…
From last month’s alumni magazine (engineering only):
$15k/year average cost of attendance (sorry, I said $19k!)
83% graduation rate (national ave is 60%)
96% job or grad school placement rate
$69,750 ave starting salary
9 Bachelor’s degrees, 6 master’s and 5 doctoral specializations
220+ industry partnerships and an exclusive 4 year co-op with Lockheed Martin
22:1 student-faculty ratio
$11m in research funding
$80m in captial improvements to academic/research facilities.
You say your folks will contribute 100k total. What is their EFC? Are you likely to get any need based aid? Some of the schools you mentioned provide a lot of need aid based on EFC.
You have wonderful parents. A gift of $25k/year towards college is truly great.
As someone mentioned upthread, ABET is where it is at. The nice thing about engineering is that ABET accreditation pretty much means that you’ll get the same education everywhere, as the accrediting body makes sure that all engineering programs meet certain standards for instruction.
The differences are in the programs themselves- let’s say for example you want biomedical engineering. There are quite a few fine institutions that offer this field. Some of them may concentrate in certain research that you may be interested in, and some of them will have better research and internships. That’s on you to determine ahead of time.
Your $25k may just about cover the cost of your instate flagship that offers engineering. If you find you want to go out of state because you MUST go to one particular program, chase merit to fully close the gap between that $25k/year and the cost of attendance. It’s hard to appreciate the opportunity you have to graduate debt free.
Engineering undergrad is hard enough to get through without worrying about debt or working a part time job.
Signed, MissB, PE (married to another PE and Mom of two kids currently working on their undergrad engineering degrees who will be graduating without debt because they chased merit to go out of state…)
To the OP…why do you think this high debt is necessary when you have three instate public universities with decent engineering programs…that would pretty much match your parent contribution.
The best debt is no debt.
Lehigh, Lafayette, and Rochester offer merit scholarships but they may not be generous enough to get you to your target budget and they are also quite competitive. You also might want to look at Case Western, WPI, and RPI to see how the finances work out.
Now is the time to use the Net Price Calculators on each college’s website to determine what would be likely in terms of merit/need-based aid. You and your parents can do this together so you all have a clear idea about likely costs.
As mentioned upthread, Rutgers, TCNJ, and Rowan are also fine options and would likely be affordable combining your parents’ contribution plus a federal student loan and some part time employment. Total cost at Rutgers NB is nearing 30K per year. Merit scholarships are very competitive there; somewhat less so for TCNJ and Rowan.
Good luck!
There’s no bachelors degree worth $250,000, and going $150,000 into debt for. There’s this stubborn little contingency called life that throws expenses at you like a government conspiracy, especially when you get married and start a family. Here’s another twist. I would still check out merit aid if I were you. If you can get a scholarship for your bachelors degree, the college money you currently have can be used for graduate school. Having a masters degree debt free is a very big advantage.