NUS vs Lehigh vs UBC. Help!! Urgent!

confusedkid3
Thu, 23 Apr 2015 02:05:33 +0000

Hello folks!

I am an international student who got into University of British Columbia, Lehigh and National University of Singapore. All the places have their pros and cons and I cant decide where to go.

For UBC, I got the International leader of tomorrow award, one of the most prestigious scholarships in Canada.
Hence the pros for UBC are that its fairly cheap ( i have to pay around 3 k per year), the scholarship might look good on my CV as its a pretty selective scholarship and that UBC is in Vancouver, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
The cons are that UBC is not that great for engineering (my likely major) and well not a really prestigious school itself.

At Lehigh, I have received full merit scholarship
Pros: Lehigh is completely free!!
Lehigh has a great reputation in the US.
P.S. I intend to move to the US after undergraduation so in that case Lehigh might be good for me.

Cons are that it has a repuatation of being a party school and that due to certain issues I will have to defer my admissions by a year, so in effect, I will be wasting a year. Lehigh also does not have a high world ranking.
I might feel slightly secluded at Lehigh because of its majority rich, white student body.

Then its NUS
Pros: Ranked 12th in the world for engineering. The best school in Asia.

Cons: I will have to take a huge loan and sign a 3 year bond according to which I will have to work in Singapore for 3 years inorder to repay the loan. I really want to do my masters at some top place in the US and this might delay the masters.
From what I have heard, NUS has a very nerdy feel, with 0 focus on anything except academics. This might be a problem as I really want my undergrad to be a diverse and enjoyable experience.

Which place to I go for? Would the superior ranking of NUS considerably improve my job prospects? Is it true that NUS really has a nerdy environment? Should I take into account the cool experience of living in Vancouver, when making my final decision? Will the scholarship at UBC really look good on the CV and make a difference? Would there be too much peer pressure at Lehigh?

I am really really stuck.

Thankyou everyone.