Need help choosing a school!!! UCI vs. UCR vs. SCU vs. USF

College Search & Lists
1

Hi everyone!

I have to choose between 4 schools for the Fall of 2015.

I am a CCC transfer student and I have been admitted to SCU, USF and UCR. I’ve been waitlisted at UCI.

USF Pro’s:

I really love USF and it’s campus + location. The Richmond district is just amazing, and I love the Golden Gate Park and the things that surround it.

Small class sizes (average class size of 20 people).
Jesuit “Educate Heart and Mind” curriculum

USF Con’s:

I only got $7K’s worth of grants and $5500 worth of subsidized federal loans. This isn’t a lot of financial aid.

SCU Pro’s:

$20,000 of Grants (%50 scholarship)
Strong sports teams, (Soccer – I love soccer, great facilities, fun experience)
Local Prestige
Focus on undergraduate education
Small class sizes (70% 30 or fewer students)
Professors teach every class (no T/A’s)
12:1 faculty-student ratio
Jesuit “Educate Heart and Mind” curriculum

SCU Con’s:

Campus is small, seems a little boring.
Mission Santa Clara is unique but less beautiful than USF’s Chapel.
Lot’s of undergrad pre-reqs for majors and minors, this means I can’t double major easily like I wanted too.

Privileged Rich Kid Stigma – which is totally false, but it makes me feel bad when I hear others speak about me in that way just because I’m considering a school with a $40,000 price tag.

UCR Pro’s:

It’s cheap(er) by $13,000 total (than SCU over 2 years).

It’s a UC, so it gets name recognition.
It’s a UC, so the faculty is strong.

Motivated peers, perhaps more sexual activity at a big public school (that’s a plus, right?).
Newer and larger facilities.
Med School – means unique research opportunity if I wanted it.

UCR Con’s:

Large class sizes.
Impersonal.
the “lowest” of the UC’s besides Merced (Stigma).
I only applied because I thought I could get in, I never really wanted to go here.
Bad location (Smog from LA blows in??).
“Work hard play hard” mentality – leads to unpassionate, superficial students?
lacks the Jesuit curriculum

UCI Pro’s:

It’s cheap(er) by $13,000 total (than SCU over 2 years).

It’s a UC, so it gets name recognition.
It’s a UC, so the faculty is strong.

Motivated peers, perhaps more sexual activity at a big public school (that’s a plus, right?).
Newer and larger facilities.
Name recognition (Better than SCU?)
Lots of Asian girls (?).

UCI Con’s:

Large class sizes.
Impersonal.
“Work hard play hard” mentality – leads to unpassionate, superficial students?
lacks the Jesuit curriculum

2

It sounds like you don’t like UCR, so I’d take that off the table. UCI hasn’t accepted you and it sounds like you don’t like it either.

Choose between USF and SCU. What is the cost difference between USF and SCU either yearly or over the two years?

3

How will you be paying for the uncovered costs at any of these schools?

What are your parents saying about paying?


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Privileged Rich Kid Stigma -- which is totally false, but it makes me feel bad when I hear others speak about me in that way just because I'm considering a school with a $40,000 price tag.

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??? Well that is crazy since USF costs the same.

SCU is NOT boring. @thumper1 please comment.

Frankly, tho, nearly any of the Jesuit schools, except G’town, are becoming schools for the more affluent simply because they dont’ usually “meet need”, particularly for the modest income. But it’s amazing that you got such a great scholly from them as a transfer. Others should take note.

If UCR is the school that you can afford, then go there. Why didn’t you apply to Merced? It has the small school feel. (since M needs students, I wonder if you could get admitted there still?)


[QUOTE=""]
Campus is small, seems a little boring. Mission Santa Clara is unique but less beautiful than USF's Chapel. Lot's of undergrad pre-reqs for majors and minors, this means I can't double major easily like I wanted too <<<<

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Double majoring is rarely needed for anything. Employers don’t care about double majors. What is your major and career goal? What is the desired second major? Can you minor in the other, but take add’l classes?

The only serious reason to double major is if your first major is a talent one where getting a job may prove more difficult, so the academic major is the Plan B.

4

[QUOTE=""]
as a psych major a

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Well, UCR is absolutely fine for that. What is your career goal?

As for “prestige”…now that UCR has a med school, you’re going to see its prestige rising quickly. It will soon become a highly desired school especially since it has some reserved MD seats for its own students…a marketing plan to help its profile.

All UCs are respectable…all of them.

as for class sizes…you’re a TRANSFER student. You won’t be in those mega classes that are for lower division students. Upper division classes, particularly in one’s major are much smaller, much more personal. As a psych major, you will get to know your profs.

5

My goals are to go on to grad school, but I haven’t taken any upper division courses (obviously) nor do I have any real research experience, so I need to hone in on a specified field and quickly. At any rate, I have a decent idea of what I’d like to do and regardless I’d love to go on to a competitive funded Phd program.

As for what is cheaper, well, the costs are all estimated. I did infact get half tuition from scu, I did not get any aid from the UC’s (besides federal loans). In fact, I may have underestimated the cost of the UC’s a bit. With my financial aid from SCU tuition isn’t all that dissimilar (both are very cose to $30,000 per year including housing). USF is dead expensive for only $7k in grants (roughly $50,000 per year with housing). It’s probably off the table since I was given so much at SCU.

I was surprised to see so much aid from SCU in a sense, but it really isn’t THAT shocking. They have a huge endowment fund and a low number of students, I’d be schocked if they didn’t meet aid for students, but maybe my app stood out to them.

I want to double major because psych is too easy by itself. I love it to death, and I plan on doing research in it, but I think I could --and enjoy-- walking away with a degree in english and a minor in religious studies or journalism. I figure this would look good on a grad school app since I’ll have to do lots of writting publishing papers. These things will also compliment psych in a marketing setting, which I may have to work in one day to actually pay bills and support a family or what not (depending on how things go).

I don’t see how these degree’s could ever hurt me. The prereqs are many at SCU, but english isn’t too bad and I wanted a degree in lit., theology or classics. I find psych and lit have a huge overlap, the science in psych is forced at times and I’m not entirely sure why non-premed or strictly nueroscience and public health majors would need all the bio, calc and chem that the UC’s are adding on to the psych programs (so e even require physics now…)

So anyway, SCU is roughly similar in cost to a UC. As for cost, well I’m planning the loan route. I can go parent-plus or private for now.

I have ties to silicon valley companies and feel confident in my ability to get a good job (I could probably get a job now if I wanted, but I would like to pursue education and conduct research for the simple reason that I’m passionate about it). I just know the right people I suppose, so cost… I should be able to pay back ~$60,000 in loans.

Like I said, I’d like to go into a funded PhD after undergrad. If I can, well I wouldn’t need to pay down loans until graduating. Otherwise I’ll go to my “network” of contacts and secure a job of some kind, work to pay back a portion of loans and then maybe at that point in my life I’ll have a clearer idea about what to do for grad school and what not.

I feel very fourtunate to be in a relatively good position with scholarships and good schools to choose from. :slight_smile:

I agree with UCR med school bringing it’s name up, I might have to visit the campus to really make an educated decision. But, I’m open to hear other opinions and such!

I think my decision will have to boil fown to “fit’” as well as student body, and maybe even who places more undergrads into competitive PhD’s.

6

If you have to borrow most of your costs, then you should go to UCR. Because tuition is 13k and SCU is 44k/2= 22k. So The difference of 9x4=36k is not insignificant. You can reduce 60k in borrowing to a much saner 24k then do that. 60k is $650 a month for 10 years. Money that could go in the bank toward your future.

It is fine for you to explore what you want to do. But grad schools will not be impressed with random bunch of different majors and minors. You can explore what you want on your own without having to jump through the hoops of an actual minor with set required classes. Science classes would support a pre-health major and statistics minor would be useful for a psych major for both going to work and for grad school But no one will care if you have a lit or religious studies double or minor. Grad school look almost only at your major and electives in your major and directly related studies and research.

7

I have thought about statistics as a minor (I love stats!) but it doesn’t seem to be a popular minor because a lot of schools don’t list it as an option for a minor.

@BrownParent Thanks for the words of wisdom, however, I think you may have missed that I’ll only be doing 2 years as a transfer. There isn’t a $36,000 difference over 2 years. UCR will cost me at least $60,000 for two years. Tuition plus living expenses equates to $30,000 per year (give or take) at all the UC’s. 4 years is a $120,000 investment and CSU’s are more like $100,000 for 4 years. Most private schools run ~$200,000 for 4 years at full price, so a BA is expensive no matter how it’s sliced – with my scolarship the cost difference between private and UC is reduced to a + or - $5,000 a year (in that ballpark depending on housing and personal expenses).

That’s why I did CCC first (and I’ll be graduating with an AA in Liberal Arts and Humanities). I was able to cut costs in half at the expense of freshman year memories and some awful teaching.

Note My parents aren’t going to pay a dime towards my education. They will co-sign a loan as a last resort (I don’t really think they have a good understanding of how things work, but such is life. They never really went to college. My parents did a year or so at a CCC when they were in their 20’s and both droped out and worked full time ever since).

I guess it’s worth noting that I could TAG into UC Davis (or Irvine) if I chose to stay another year at CCC, but I’m not sure that makes a whole lot of sense at this point (I didn’t use a tag when I applied because I switched to Psych major Fall of this academic year! I’m surprised to have options switching at the last min. like that!).

In any case, I don’t feel their is an advantage to UC Davis in Psych over the other schools except for maybe USF.

8

Do you know if your parents’ credit and income are good enough to QUALIFY to cosign $60k in loans? Do they have other debt?

With a psych degree, what Silicon Valley companies would hire you? to do what?

BTW…SCU’s endowment is not huge.

If UCR and SCU cost about the same, and if those are your only two choices, then go to SCU.

BUT…be aware that you’re borrowing too much for a psych major. It’s really too much, especially for someone who will be going to grad school. That $60k is going to be a LOT more by the time you graduate from GRAD school.

9

@mom2collegekids

Well that is a good question. I think my parents have good enough credit to qualify for loans. We’re very much middle class and about as average as average gets. If average doesn’t cut it for student loans I’m not quite sure how the vast majority of students pay tuition. Fico is probably a “moderate” score.

My Fico is pretty high, I’m not sure that it matters.

10

If you can TAG into UCDavis for Psychology, that’s what I’d do - that or SCU then since costs seem similar. If you have enough credits for an AA, then you should have enough credits for UCDavis’ TAG, look into it.
For grad school purpose, you’d be better off taking various classes that relate to your major even if they’re not in psychology. You can take a couple English classes that interest you, a couple Religious Studies classes that interest you, and take a lot of BioBehavioral, Psychology, Forensic Science (etc) and statistics classes.
The first thing grad programs will do is check how many statistics classes you’ve taken. A minor is not necessary but 2 would be a minimum. Then, you should be able to present your choice of classes as a coherent whole - if you took Religious Studies classes, how does that relate to your research or study plan (counseling? seeing how faith affects behavior? research on how people prepare for mission trips?)

11

Hi everyone. I’d like to bring this thread to a close.

I’ve decided on Santa Clara University. Aside from the grants they have given me, I have been able to network with current students (after visiting the transfer welcome day) so that I will be able to live off campus for half the cost of on-campus housing.

I’ve also be given a spot in the LEAD program for first generation college students (like myself), which allows for even more personalized attention from the already small personal private school. With LEAD, I’ll get priority registration, special personalized attention from counselors, access to scholarships (exclusive for first-generation students), and special treatment from basically every avenue available to me as a Santa Clara student.

I have also learned that, as a Jesuit student and Institute, all Santa Clara University students are given the right to use ANY of the resources of ANY other Jesuit school in the country. So that means I’ll get access to all the alumni networks and resources as a Santa Clara University student (this means USF, Boston College, Georgetown University… etc.).

Finally, as a future alumni I’ll have the privilege of enabling my siblings to further their own education by providing my brother (who is 11 years old) a legacy admit status when he goes to apply for college – helping his chances for admission greatly. I am proud to have the ability to help my brother’s admission prospects later in life, and frankly, a great University with the amazingly supportive faculty and staff, and of course, LEAD.

Finally, after attending the Transfer Welcome Day, it’s apparent to me that Santa Clara is a tight community that is not similar to the UC atmosphere. I feel, especially as a LEAD candidate, that SCU will personally go out of their way to help me succeed (the direct opposite of the UC experience).

With all things considered, I would be foolish not to attend SCU. I am proud to be a future Bronco at the oldest University in Califonia. IHS.

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