UCSB (Financial Math/Statistics) v. UGA (honors, pre-finance)

tmeg01
Mon, 08 Apr 2019 17:53:04 +0000

My D is having a difficult time making up her mind between UCSB (Financial Math/Statistic major) and UGA (honors, pre-finance). We are OOS to both (Arkansas), but she has a decent scholarship to UGA that waives most of the OOS tuition. She also has other great options (SMU/honors/Cox-direct admit, UMiami/Presidential scholarship/finance, UArk/honors/free, Ole Miss/honors/free) but she has narrowed it down to UCSB and UGA. She has a large education trust that will cover the OOS cost to UCSB.

She likes that UCSB would be very different from her southern roots and more in line with her liberal mindset. UCSB is higher ranked than UGA overall, but it doesn’t have a finance/business program and the classes are more theoretical than practical application. An advisor told her at our visit that she could switch to pre-Economics, which has more business course offerings, but still not your typical business degree. She’s heard that business employers don’t recruit at UCSB as much, and she would have to work harder to obtain internships/jobs. She won’t know anyone at UCSB, although we do have family a couple hours away. The campus is nestled between the desert mountains and a fabulous beach. It’s hard not to be mesmerized by the beauty of the area.

She was admitted into the honors program at UGA as a pre-finance major. The Terry Business college has a brand new set of buildings and is a well respected school in the south. The honors program grants a lot of perks, and she would have first dibs at class registration. She likes the big sports aspect of UGA and that Athens is a fun town that caters to the students. She is concerned about how Athens is 1.5 hrs from a large city and airport. She knows a few kids there, and the transition to UGA would be easier.

She plans to get an MBA after working a while after college. Her objectives seem to lean towards UGA, but she thinks she may regret not going to UCSB because it is so different from everything she knows, and it would challenge her in ways (culturally, socially, geographically) that UGA wouldn’t. She also wants to have lots of fun. She’s very smart, but also very social, and plans to embrace campus life (intramural sports, clubs, greek life) for the full college experience. I feel like we are in the thick of the forest, and fresh perspectives would be appreciated.