I did Mechanical Engineering at Michigan and I’m doing a part time masters at Uconn while working. Kinda stuck w/ uconn because it’s the only school around here and it’s a free degree so… Anyway, I go to the Storrs campus a lot, and I can tell you that your experience will be quite different. Uconn is alright. The gym sucked. Even my local YMCA (which is crappy by the way) has a locker room bigger than uconn’s. It’s something that bothers me a lot. Oh ya, no AC in the summer and it’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s some diversity, but not enough. There’s a lot of diversity at Michigan, including many Asian organizations that you can take advantage of.
You mentioned other states for jobs. I have plenty of friends who moved to Texas to work for the oil industry and all over the US, so that’s not a problem. I think Michigan had over 300 companies for the fall career fair.I looked it up for uconn a while ago, I think it was half of that. I’m sure you will be fine upon graduation, but like other posters have mentioned, your options will be quite limited. You’ll likely be stuck in CT. You will perhaps stay in CT for the rest of your life, which I’ve seen plenty of my coworkers do. I think it really depend on you: what do you value and what makes Michigan a more desirable choice over uconn? For most people, it’s not worth it. 140K or so is a significant sum, but your family is able to afford it. Think twice before you decide.