I haven't seen this in a while. Well, I apologize to whoever reads this for not writing in such a long time.
I've been having the most challenging time trying to decide between three colleges in the price range of my parents: University of Southern California, Virginia Tech, and University of Virginia. A private school that's across the country, but actually in my home state, and two public schools that are about 2-3 hours away from my home.
As I sent in my college applications, I organized them into a list that was sorted by preference:
1. MIT
2. Georgia Tech
3. USC
4. UPenn
5. John Hopkins University
6. UVA
7. VT
I got wait listed from JHU and rejected from MIT and UPenn, so those got taken off. Georgia Tech was first on my list at that point, so I went and visited it and found the campus to be great. Unfortunately, it was going to cost over $100,000 to attend that college for all 4 years. USC was next on my list and I was incredibly excited to hear from this college initially because they were the first to accept me. After researching this school online, I found that the school was pretty awesome overall as well. My parents and I calculated the cost of attendance for per year and it turned out to be about $14,000. Not too bad. After visiting UVA and going on the engineering tour as well as the Anh-led tour, I found that it was an amazing school. The campus life seemed great and the distance from home was very manageable for my parents. After calculating the cost of attendance per year was about $5,000, which is very attractive. VT was last on my list as I just didn't want to attend that school. After loans and grants, VT ended up costing $16,000. Not the greatest deal.
I also looked at opportunities for internships, as many people said that work experience was as important as education. Georgia tech had incredible coop and internship programs, so I knew that if I went there, I would definitely have a good chance at getting a job. USC seemed to have great programs as well, at least according to websites. UVA just didn't seem incredibly promising in terms of internships or coops. And I didn't even bother checking for VT.
After looking at everything, I've come to a decision about my college. Although it's a bit more expensive than UVA, I believe that the best choice for me is going to have to be USC. I am going to be a Trojan because it's better than UVA in engineering rankings, it seems to be pretty good overall on internship and work experience programs, and it still seems to be a good value overall because private schools are likely to give more scholarships in future.
-Sam Rho
