Trouble deciding...UMD [$35k] vs. Georgia Tech [$50k] + paying for UC Berkeley [$89k] [civil engineering, have $200k total]

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I’m stuck between the University of Maryland College Park and Georgia Tech for civil engineering. I’m in-state at UMD ($35k/yr) and got some aid from Georgia Tech so it will be $50k/yr. I have a budget of $200k. I visited UMD and the civil engineering department multiple times and I absolutely loved it, but didn’t get into the Honors program (got Scholars). I’m visiting Georgia Tech next week. I know that UMD seems the most obvious cost-wise, but I have seen that Georgia Tech has a higher ROI, even at the OOS cost compared to in-state at UMD. Any insight?

Also wanted to add this on here…is there any possible way to pay for a UC as an OOS student? Berkeley is my dream school but it’s 89k/yr…

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Georgia Tech is a bit over $50K if you just look at tuition, room and board - not sure what type of aid you got.

Honors/Scholars - getting nothing - it doesn’t matter. There’s no place to put it on an app. If you get an interview, you can bring it up. Do you think any employers knows the difference between Honors or Scholars or cares - the answer to that starts with an N and is a two letter word. Put your ego aside. Many kids who get Honors in college don’t even finish - they just like the benes like better housing or early registration.

You like UMD.

Question - why did you apply to a UC? The cost was known - but you are including all costs, not just tuition, room and board. You knew there was zero way to make it. If money mattered, there are schools with similar outcomes down to $20K - so you could have applied more wisely than a school near double your budget. But since you can only go to one, it doesn’t matter.

I like to look at career outcomes.

Ga Tech shows an overall knowledge rate (knows the outcomes) of about 1/3 of kids (35% but not broken by major). 82% of Civ Es that wanted a job had one so that’s a high rate of seeking. I don’t know the timeframe they measured - like at graduation or 3 months later. The median was $76K.

UMD shows most are employed locally - not all but most. They showed 74% working, 12% in school, 11% still seeking. Their group is actually Civil and Environmental. They don’t show a knowledge rate. They show a $78,510 average salary, so higher than Ga Tech but jobs typically pay by the where, not the school - so it might just be that DC is a higher cost higher than Atlanta. I put a list of employers at link below.

Just for fun, UCB shows 53% working, 44% in school, 3% seeking. They don’t show a mean salary but the median is $89K - but think where it is and cost of living, including taxes.

Both UMD and Ga Tech are reasonable choices but Ga Tech is really stretching your budget. What if you go over?

Congrats - UMD and Ga Tech are two great options.

Employers for Civil Engineering | A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

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Congratulations on your acceptances!

ROI is but one factor in your decision, as it seems both of these schools are affordable for you, even though Tech is at the top of the budget.

Based on the data tsbna shows, it looks like UMD’s ROI could be higher for you if we use averages (higher average salary and you will be paying less than you would at Tech.) BUT averages might not apply at the individual level, we have no idea what the job market will be when you graduate, and you will need to hustle to get internships and a job upon graduation. Neither school is going to make those things happen for you.

I would wait until you visit Tech before you make the final decision. IMO, UMD is more of a traditional college experience than Tech. By that I mean more diversity in majors = more types of students around, more school spirit, etc. But those things might not be important to you. Engineering majors grind at both schools but overall Tech is a more grindy, academic-y place, IMO again.

Not if your budget is $200K for four years. And that’s ok, you have two excellent affordable choices.

Good luck, let us know how the Ga Tech visit goes.

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Why is UC-Berkeley your "dream school " ?

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You “loved it”. Keep that in mind. Plenty of very happy UMD students who are not in the honors college.

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Remember that financial ROI is better if your investment is smaller for similar return. For you, it looks like your investment would be substantially smaller at Maryland, which would give an advantage in financial ROI.

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My insight is that you can only predict one element of ROI- what your costs would be. There is no way to predict what YOUR return will be- what kind of job you will want, what kind of job you will find and who will hire you, where that job will be (which is a key driver of how much you will be paid).

Folks on CC love ROI- the real world, not so much. Making a decision based on fallacious data is no better than making a decision without data. You don’t know if you’ll be graduating into a recession, a robust hiring market, a “completely disrupted by AI” talent market, etc. Too many unknowns to state with any confidence which college has a higher ROI than another.

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Hard pick. We are from Maryland. Dd got to UMD Honors with Presidential, and we happily gave it away for GaTech BME. Honors or not at UMD has very little value in my opinion. It is just sales tactic of UMD. Dd was absolutely not interested in Honors with required classes in Women in Revolution from some Global Honors(I maybe wrong with names a bit. ) Furthermore, she was not interested to live with Engineering majors . So all that Living Learning community was useless in her case.

For DD it was right decision. Because UMD had Bioengineering and GaTech had Biomedical, and she wanted Biomedical. Those are very different. I know nothing about Civil, so can’t help there. But take into consideration that market now is very difficult for recent graduates. It is hard to get job in DC area without connections. UMD may give you more connections in the area.

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I agree everyone’s situation is different. But you can make a guesstimate with data which of course is based on the averages.

There will be people at UMD that make more than Ga Tech and vice versa. There will be kids at both that struggle - either due to themselves or the environment.

UMD likely places in higher cost of living areas - which I noted.

If we all knew someone’s future, we’d be AI on steroids.

But when someone is looking to analyze, then you use the data you have, which is based on others of a shared set of past happenings.

So I will disagree with the attempted takedowns.

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Not a takedown. A well known phenomenon in statistics. There are many “datapoints” which are irrelevant when making a decision. Melania Trump and Ivana Trump were immigrants. They married a billionaire. Both of these statements are true. However, it is fallacious to conclude that the best way to end up married to a billionaire is to be an immigrant.

Just because something can be measured doesn’t mean it’s a valid input statistically. And “ROI” of two colleges when the only thing you can predict is how much they will both cost is an example of this phenomenon. Student A gets a job as a civilian working for the Department of Defense constructing various sensitive projects for our military. Mediocre pay, but after two years, this professional will be able to leapfrog over his/her colleagues for jobs in the commercial sector. He or she will have a high security clearance, exceptional experience working on projects worth billions of dollars of infrastructure investment, etc. Student B gets a job working for a large contracting firm. Much better pay than the military, but the projects are routine (fixing overpasses for interstate highways, addressing flooding issues near wetlands). And at modest increases per year for strong performance, Student B will lag behind Student A by year 5 and never catch up.

Not a takedown. This is how the labor markets operate. Many, many, complex inputs which cannot be boiled down to ROI A is better than ROI B.

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Forget Berkeley unless starting your life with a crushing debt load is also part of your dream.

UMD is a great option and makes sense financially. GATech is likely doable with small loans and perhaps a bit of part-time work if it is your strong preference.

IMO your post-graduation opportunities will be determined more by what you accomplish during college rather than which one of these fine schools you choose to attend.

Congrats on the wonderful opportunities.

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This is the easy part. Basically the answer is no. From what you have said you just cannot afford to attend UC Berkeley. This will by the way save you a lot of cross country airplane flights (which is something I have done enough to get quite tired of them).

Fortunately you have two other exceptional opportunities. You can only attend one so you are in great shape.

This brings us down to UMD versus Georgia Tech. They are both very good universities with very good engineering programs. I was quite sure that both are ABET accredited for civil engineering but just checked anyway and according to Google AI yes they are.

In terms of average salaries after graduation, and other ROI measures, this is impacted by majors and by where graduates end up working, and it is common (but not necessary) for graduates to end up working near the school. If you look at university-wide numbers these are impacted by the percentage of students with each particular major. Georgia Tech for example probably has a relatively large percentage of their students in engineering, which will tend to push up university-wide averages. However, a Civil Engineer from Georgia Tech and a Civil Engineer from UMD may frequently end up working side by side, and getting the same opportunities and being paid the same. They are both very good universities.

In terms of long term outcomes, I doubt that there is any significant difference between civil engineering at UMD versus civil engineering at Georgia Tech.

I wouldn’t worry about this. One daughter did get into the honors program at a different university, where she attended (for reasons that did not have anything to do with the honors program). Freshman year she lived in the honors program dorm, which was nice, but it was just a dorm. Other than that the honors program did not have anything that she wanted, so after two years she just dropped it. This was a while ago. She got her doctorate last May and is currently a veterinarian. Being in the honors program really did not add anything meaningful to her university experience, and she would be in exactly the same place today with or without it (and she is where she wants to be).

If UMD is $15,000 per year less, this will give you a bit of a cushion in case prices go up or something goes wrong or you want to save a bit of money for graduate school. A master’s degree is possible for civil engineering. However, at $50,000/year it appears that GT does also just fit your budget.

On rare occasions some engineering students do take more than four years to graduate. In the unlikely event that this happens, merit aid usually ends after four years but if you are at UMD you will still be in-state. By the way when I got my masters it required five classes at a time to graduate in one year (three quarters where I was), and some students instead intentionally only took four classes at a time and stayed for one additional quarter and finished over the summer (this was at a university that is on the quarter system).

Which brings me to the conclusion that UMD and GT are both very good schools with very good ABET accredited civil engineering programs, both fit the budget, and you would be best off wherever you are happy. This brings me to…

To me that is the answer, and saving a few dollars is not a bad idea either.

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