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I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

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Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#231

Post by hef19898 »

graycat wrote: post #207
e2e4 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And from the famous Ivy League schools, it's generally easier to get accepted for a Ph.D. than for a Bachelors. Since in many cases PhD is basically free, it is by far more competitive than Bachelors.

Getting into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale as an undergraduate is just super tough . A sufficient condition is to give the university, say, $10 million and be sometimes awake. Having a parent who went can help but not necessarily enough. Being a straight A student with 800s on the SATs is not sufficient. I never got anywhere trying to get into Princeton as an undergraduate, with average SAT scores over 700, but did get…

Out of couriosity, is this true for other majors, too? Because if it is, it sounds like a great "backdoor" to an Ivy League degree.

Kudos for being accepted by all the big names!

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#232

Post by hef19898 »

gems wrote: post #191
munin wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about "cheaper schooling, lower quality". In engineering and computer science there are state schools that compete, IMO, pretty handily with "the best". you might snigger and scoff, but hiring managers at good companies don't. also, if you start your degree at a CC and transfer to a 4 year to finish, what does it says on your diploma? exactly what it would say if you went there for four years. I wouldn't…

yeah, so, I was rushing. I edited the previous post: what matters is all the things that go along with cheaper schooling, not that fact that it's cheap.

Sounds that it is a lot about credentials. Sadly enough it is. My experience with my education in industrial engineering at "university of applied sciences" in germany (whatever that would be in the US...) was rather good even when compared to the big names around here as far as knowldge is concerned. Yet, the fact remained that it wasn't a big name.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#233

Post by bane »

gems wrote: post #217
gems wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About point 2 and point 3: the quality of the undergraduate education is considered in applicants to top schools. Like I said before, there is definitely a standard of rigor that you don't experience at every school. As soon as you decide to optimize for financial cost (picking the cheapest school, doing community college), you've already placed on a burden on yourself.

I reread this branch and thought it sounded awful. What I meant to say is that if you optimize for low cost, you're limiting your choices to schools that lack the reputation. I don't know very many schools that have both (maybe some state schools). And yeah, this results in having a burden to defend yourself. I wish I could delete the rest of this branch.

In the job market, reputation of your undergrad generally doesn't much doesn't matter after the first 5 years. Multiple studies show that students from different schooling backgrounds reach employment parity in most every situation.

Anecdotally, in my own case, I hit employment parity with my Ivy League/Top-10 school peers at 6 years, and have long since surpassed most of them in the job market and standard of living (due to an unbelievably smaller debt load).

The only people I know from my starting peer group who I could comfortably say have a higher standard of living than I do also went to regular 'ol state schools but just worked harder/smarter than I did.

I get fairly regular recruitment pitches from the Google's, Amazon's and Facebook's, and have worked for some of the biggest and best companies in their industries. (I've noticed an uptick in Google courtships over the last couple years as they finally brought their data crunching prowress to analyze hiring success and found that their traditional hiring pools did not necessarily provide the best employees)

All that being said, if I were so inclined, there are positions (high end consulting, finance, high-level politics) that I'm less likely to ever end up in due to fierce protectionism by "old guard". But I'm finding those hard kernels of school fashionistas are rapidly disappearing now as well.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#234

Post by hef19898 »

gems wrote: post #217
gems wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About point 2 and point 3: the quality of the undergraduate education is considered in applicants to top schools. Like I said before, there is definitely a standard of rigor that you don't experience at every school. As soon as you decide to optimize for financial cost (picking the cheapest school, doing community college), you've already placed on a burden on yourself.

I reread this branch and thought it sounded awful. What I meant to say is that if you optimize for low cost, you're limiting your choices to schools that lack the reputation. I don't know very many schools that have both (maybe some state schools). And yeah, this results in having a burden to defend yourself. I wish I could delete the rest of this branch.

Nice discussion, at least for me. So don't worry. Because you're right, having a big name like MIT on your CV opens doors that otherwise keep closed. That doesn't necessarily mean the education is really better, but the fact remains.

On the other hand, if you don't have the money there are not a lot of opportunities left. And I for my part prefer some who showed that kind of ambition over everyone else who hand it "the easy way" (not meaning an MIT degree is easy at all, just saying there are roads with more rocks than others).

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#236

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #218
hga wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to me, yes, they totally rejected cosigning a private loan. My school had its own independent program for this, and their credit was not exactly a problem (that year their main band issued them an unsecured note for more than 4 years of the total costs; ironically to set up a computer system, the brand of which I researched and specified as about the last thing I did before going to the university…

> The system assumes good will on the part of parents, and pretty much has to, to avoid free riders. That's the second time I have read this lie in this thread. Firstly, state governments are bound by the equal protection clause to ignore the assets of relatives (and all similar irrelevancies). They do just fine not soaking people for their ancestors wealth. Secondly, university costs are in a financial bubble, for t…

The equal protection clause is of no use to nineteen year-olds whose assets measure in the hundreds of dollars. What's your suggestion to the student who is wronged by the Fin Aid office? Hire a lawyer and sue? Ridiculous.

>Secondly, ... Thirdly, ... Fourthly, ...

What are you even responding to? None of your retorts are responsive to hga's or any of the other parent comments.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#237

Post by hef19898 »

vacri wrote: post #150
NamTaf wrote: post #101

The US university loan system is fucked. We have a government-run loan scheme called HECS. You defer your university fees throughout the duration of your studies, apparently no matter how long they last. The programme is not means tested at all, so it is available for every single domestic student studying uni here, no matter what. That loan is then paid back only once you start earning more than a threshold amount o…

There was even a golden period, '84 - '88, where it was entirely free to get a degree in Australia. Australia needs something like HECS to encourage skills. Even with the loss of those going overseas, to support a service-based economy, it's still necessary to maintain domestic skills. The US is less in need - it is where the brain-drain of the world goes - which may be why their government feels less of the pinch.

In germany most degrees are free, besides somtimes a 500,- € or so fee per semester. Excetions are MBAs and certain part-time studies.

I'll start a Master of Business Administration and Engineering in Octobre that costs a neat 104,- Euro per year.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#238

Post by sidww2 »

graycat wrote: post #207
e2e4 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And from the famous Ivy League schools, it's generally easier to get accepted for a Ph.D. than for a Bachelors. Since in many cases PhD is basically free, it is by far more competitive than Bachelors.

Getting into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale as an undergraduate is just super tough . A sufficient condition is to give the university, say, $10 million and be sometimes awake. Having a parent who went can help but not necessarily enough. Being a straight A student with 800s on the SATs is not sufficient. I never got anywhere trying to get into Princeton as an undergraduate, with average SAT scores over 700, but did get…

Maybe you were just a more distinguished candidate during graduate admissions? Also, if you're international, PhD admissions are a lot less biased against internationals compared to undergrad admissions (most top universities have 8-10% internationals for undergrads vs. ~50% for PhDs)

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#239

Post by superuser2 »

gaadd33 wrote: post #185
superuser2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most scholarship programs with significant awards have a single-digit number of winners. This strategy works for a few of the most shining individuals in the country in any given year who dedicate the time required and get extremely lucky. I tip my hat to your friend, but the nature of scholarship programs is that for every kid like your brother, hundreds more worked just as hard, had just as much hust…

I think he means his friend hustled for the ones that on their own were not significant. Like I think my credit union gives out 5 $500 scholarships a semester. It wouldn't surprise me if the only people who apply are those who's parents work there. If you found a ton of programs like that it can make a pretty sizable dent.

Still, the availability of scholarship money doesn't scale up with the demand for it. They're designed to reward the extraordinarily gifted (or whatever minority status their endowment specifies), not fund education in general.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#240

Post by aestra »

susi22 wrote: post #114

I consider myself very lucky. I did my undergrad and never struggled with money. My parent never supported me with a dime since they didn't have much. I didn't have any scholarships. I saved up some money from high school and used that for the first year of college, then started working as an co-op. How did I do it? I went to school in Germany. That's also where I'm from. Back then there was no tuition and I only pai…

Higher education in Germany is socialized. Socialism is EVIL, it will kill Grandma while she sleeps. Do I really need a sarcasm tag here?

We will all still pay for it, just with higher taxes for everyone all the time, not just students while they are in school. That kind of reform will never happen in the US, because we are afraid of it. We are afraid of the dreaded socialism, even though our primary education is free and socialized, also incredible uneven because it is funded by local property taxes.

Votes to reform health care resulted in death threats to law makers and bricks thrown in their windows. http://www.pressherald.com/news/nationworld/vote-unleashes-t...

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