In other words, if your family could pay no problem for both…then both are affordable - regardless of the cost delta.
If your family has to strain to pay for Ga Tech but not Williams, that matters.
Not having visited Williams is a concern.
Can you go visit a regional, small school, in the boonies…just to get an idea of the isolation…maybe a Sewanee or something - you can do in a day trip. It won’t be the same but it will give you an idea. Oxford (Emory) would be too small to see…but you’d see isolation and it’s close.
gotcha - I am anti loan. But this is not a huge loan - you can work a summer job and eventually get internships that will cover it.
Think about - the other things - are you sure you won’t get home sick and need to come home mid semester or your mom won’t come up, etc. and other fees - trips, even hikes for the day with others when you go out with friends.
They’re both great deals and honestly both are affordable.
Williams will open your eyes more and you’ll get more support but as others said above, your education will certainly be more broad.
If you truly want no loans, then you have an answer - but honestly this amount of loans isn’t an issue - you might even have them paid before graduating. And don’t forget, you spoke of APs - Ga Tech is taking more but many kids will tell you to repeat the science/math classes again - you might be surprised how hard the next level will be in college.
Not an easy decision but going into the unknown sight unseen, also has a lot of risk (at least to those who don’t handle change well).
One very small point: I think, if possible, it is an excellent idea to go to college in another part of the country, one you are not so familiar with. That in and of itself is part of the education, and broadens one’s horizons.
Furthermore, at Williams there will be grants/stipends available that are not detailed in the financial aid letter, for things like internships, travel, study abroad. You may be given a laptop. Etc. An institution with a high endowment per student (and Williams’ is one of the highest) means tremendous generosity and opportunities for its students.
All of those things will cost op less than the difference between the two schools. I don’t know much about support for low income students at Georgia tech, but Williams provides incredible support and since their aid is no loan and no work study there are many work study jobs, at the MA minimum wage which is twice that of Georgia so he would easily be able to make spending money and money for extra trips home.
We are full pay for Williams and my S has spent a lot of time looking at on campus jobs for spending money. There are tons of jobs in typical areas but you could be a teaching assistant or a grading assistant or do research, all of which pay $15 an hour
It’s not even really $1,800 - Williams added a grant of $1,000 on top of cost of attendance, plus annual bonuses to cover books, health insurance, travel, plus a one-time $500 grant.
So I’m guessing the $1,800 are for indirect costs and would not be billed to Williams.
Not sure the authors of the NYTimes piece linked above are humanities majors–one is a VP at LinkedIn. The point, in any case, is not that STEM majors are one-dimensional robots, but that if they see college as simply career prep rather than an opportunity to explore and develop other kinds of skills/interests, they risk trending in that direction. This balance seems part of the decision the OP is facing.
So obviously you are never going to get a consensus from other people about what you should do. I suspect you have also gathered all the information you can.
So here is one practical suggestion. Make a decision tonight. Then sleep on it, and see how you feel about that decision tomorrow. That may sound like it shouldn’t work since on some level you know you can change your mind. But for whatever reason it works for a lot of people.
Maybe it would have been better if Georgia Tech had offered you a conditional acceptance/guaranteed transfer option which required you to take several courses at another college or university before entering Georgia Tech, then you could have experienced an LAC in a fairly rural New England environment before deciding whether or not to complete your college degree at Georgia Tech.
Unfortunately, GT’s conditional pathway program now appears to require a past or current connection to the school.
Please do not be swayed by a few thousand dollars a year; prioritize your goals–do you want to be a software engineer or do you want a CS degree from an LAC ?
Too bad that Williams College did not offer to fly you in for a visit well in advance of tomorrow’s deadline.
