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Hi San Antonio, I live in Connecticut. I was accepted to two Texas colleges, The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M along with other schools. One big worry I have is that I will not get enough financial aid or merit scholarships. I applied to my instate school UCONN, but I live very close to it and I am ready for change. I have until March 1st to apply to UTSA, but I cannot get any merit scholarships. With that said, UTSA is already cheap enough and UT Austin costs double before aid. I am going to visit Texas in a few weeks to see UT Austin and Texas A&M, but maybe I will stop at UTSA also. I have some questions about UTSA though...
1. What is the future like for UTSA? I see it as a college with great potential. What do you see UTSA's future as? Do you see UTSA and/or UT Dallas eventually rising to a top 50 or 100 public college over a few years that serves as complement to UT Austin?
2. Is UTSA a commuter school? How is campus life and school spirit? Any signs of improvement?
3. How is the surrounding area? According to Google Maps, I do not see much nearby the campus.
4. Are there good housing apartments nearby UTSA? I am thinking I could attend UTSA for a year and live off campus and work for my 12 months at McDonalds or somewhere off campus, and apply for UT Austin as a Texas resident. I saw on Reddit people done that in the past.
I am unsure of whether or not I should apply in case A&M or UT gives me nothing. I would rather be in Texas than my in state school. I am thinking if I don't get any scholarships from A&M or UT, I could go to UTSA and worst comes to worst, I could transfer to UT Austin. Another idea I had was in #4 where I transfer after living off campus. Thanks!
Also, recognize the board of regents is not going to grant you in-state resident status for tuition purposes unless you work and physically live in the state for 12 months PRIOR to the census date for the semester you're intending to ENTER school. IOW, being a student concurrently, disqualifies your "working" in the state as counting towards residency for tuition purposes. They consider that work presence in the state as "incidental to your student status" and thus not legitimate. Trust me, out of state tuition is the biggest money grab for US colleges, and they know what you're doing.
Consider the opportunity cost of what foregoing a year of studies does to your entrance into the workforce. Also recognize, if your parents play hardball with ya and refuse to stop claiming you on their taxes as a dependent (highly likely considering the suffocating-expensive nature of Connecticut living) while they still reside in CT, you're screwed as well. You will not be able to claim resident status in Texas even if you're just slumming it in San Antonio working retail or fast food and not in school. You'll have to get your parents to emancipate you, or take them to court to get them to stop putting you on their taxes as dependent. Good luck with that, especially if you have a good relationship with your family.
The fact remains, you have decent educational outlets available to you in CT. If your parents did not intend to provide you assistance in order to attend college away from the state they decided to raise you in, then UCONN is your implied choice. I have a 3 year old and I very much appreciate my TX residency in regards to the myriad of decent public institutions he will have available to choose from as an in-state student when he becomes of age. Your parents may not see eye to eye with you regarding the value you place on attending college in Texas. Furthermore, I severely doubt you'll have the ability to borrow the amount required to attend UT Austin per year, especially when the FAFSA comes back and shows your parents are rich for "flyover Country America" standards (even if yes, they may not have an affluent standard in CT due to the crushing cost of living).
A quick google search shows an academic year (not counting summer) tabs UTSA at 23K/yr tuition and fees, before housing(room), books and non-housing cost of living (aka board). UT Austin clocks in at 35.9K on tuition and fees alone, before the aforementioned items. OTOH, instate full time tuition and fees clock in around the same, circa 11K.
You think a state is going to let their out of state cash cow dry up because people are strategically working at McDonalds while in school in order to apply as residents their sophomore year? I went to college in 1998 and the cost disparity was already big enough to make these loophole shenanigans a major concern for the universities. Today they have that filter on like it's on rails. They're not new to this.
There's an argument to be made regarding the purported reasons to even attempt to attend a flagship state campus as an out of state student. I can tell you it's not worth the cost. Paying for the experience of what movies depict as college life is frankly an anachronism. 1994 depictions of flagship college life are long invalid. The cost is simply too high these days to justify entering the workforce with a small mortgage for what will amount to sub 60K employment. The name of the degree for most liberal arts and even most engineering disciplines these days, is not worth the flagship campus premium. That slants the value added toward places like UTSA. But again, from an in-state vs out of state discussion, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of CT in-state when comparing it with places like UTEP/UTSA/UTA/UT-Dallas/TAMU-Corpus et al. Out of state tuition is seldom worth it these days.
Good luck to ya. You have the rest of your life to live and work in Texas. Don't start off your life in economic slavery just because you have a little bit of island fever because you don't want to go to college near your childhood home. Be smart about this. Your parents may or may not be unsupportive a-holes, but you need to set yourself up for success. The economy is not great for college graduates these days. The degrees are largely HS diplomas now regardless of the name in the piece of paper. As such, goal #1 should be cost control. My sister is learning that lesson the hard way, after many years of getting degrees easily attainable at cheaper institutions, due to her insistence in living the "flagship experience". UMD-College Park, George Washington University for Masters, Columbia for pHD (and she's toying with not completing it after 3 years of wanting to do what she really wanted out of the deal: live in manhattan as a 20-something/early-30s).
Good luck to ya. If living in Texas is that damn important to ya, then move down here, waste one year of your life, then roll the dice and hope you get accepted on subsequent academic year. The opportunity cost will certainly be lower than going here out-of-state, but still much higher than going in-state in CT.
Also, recognize the board of regents is not going to grant you in-state resident status for tuition purposes unless you work and physically live in the state for 12 months PRIOR to the census date for the semester you're intending to ENTER school. IOW, being a student concurrently, disqualifies your "working" in the state as counting towards residency for tuition purposes. They consider that work presence in the state as "incidental to your student status" and thus not legitimate. Trust me, out of state tuition is the biggest money grab for US colleges, and they know what you're doing.
Consider the opportunity cost of what foregoing a year of studies does to your entrance into the workforce. Also recognize, if your parents play hardball with ya and refuse to stop claiming you on their taxes as a dependent (highly likely considering the suffocating-expensive nature of Connecticut living) while they still reside in CT, you're screwed as well. You will not be able to claim resident status in Texas even if you're just slumming it in San Antonio working retail or fast food and not in school. You'll have to get your parents to emancipate you, or take them to court to get them to stop putting you on their taxes as dependent. Good luck with that, especially if you have a good relationship with your family.
The fact remains, you have decent educational outlets available to you in CT. If your parents did not intend to provide you assistance in order to attend college away from the state they decided to raise you in, then UCONN is your implied choice. I have a 3 year old and I very much appreciate my TX residency in regards to the myriad of decent public institutions he will have available to choose from as an in-state student when he becomes of age. Your parents may not see eye to eye with you regarding the value you place on attending college in Texas. Furthermore, I severely doubt you'll have the ability to borrow the amount required to attend UT Austin per year, especially when the FAFSA comes back and shows your parents are rich for "flyover Country America" standards (even if yes, they may not have an affluent standard in CT due to the crushing cost of living).
A quick google search shows an academic year (not counting summer) tabs UTSA at 23K/yr tuition and fees, before housing(room), books and non-housing cost of living (aka board). UT Austin clocks in at 35.9K on tuition and fees alone, before the aforementioned items. OTOH, instate full time tuition and fees clock in around the same, circa 11K.
You think a state is going to let their out of state cash cow dry up because people are strategically working at McDonalds while in school in order to apply as residents their sophomore year? I went to college in 1998 and the cost disparity was already big enough to make these loophole shenanigans a major concern for the universities. Today they have that filter on like it's on rails. They're not new to this.
There's an argument to be made regarding the purported reasons to even attempt to attend a flagship state campus as an out of state student. I can tell you it's not worth the cost. Paying for the experience of what movies depict as college life is frankly an anachronism. 1994 depictions of flagship college life are long invalid. The cost is simply too high these days to justify entering the workforce with a small mortgage for what will amount to sub 60K employment. The name of the degree for most liberal arts and even most engineering disciplines these days, is not worth the flagship campus premium. That slants the value added toward places like UTSA. But again, from an in-state vs out of state discussion, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of CT in-state when comparing it with places like UTEP/UTSA/UTA/UT-Dallas/TAMU-Corpus et al. Out of state tuition is seldom worth it these days.
Good luck to ya. You have the rest of your life to live and work in Texas. Don't start off your life in economic slavery just because you have a little bit of island fever because you don't want to go to college near your childhood home. Be smart about this. Your parents may or may not be unsupportive a-holes, but you need to set yourself up for success. The economy is not great for college graduates these days. The degrees are largely HS diplomas now regardless of the name in the piece of paper. As such, goal #1 should be cost control. My sister is learning that lesson the hard way, after many years of getting degrees easily attainable at cheaper institutions, due to her insistence in living the "flagship experience". UMD-College Park, George Washington University for Masters, Columbia for pHD (and she's toying with not completing it after 3 years of wanting to do what she really wanted out of the deal: live in manhattan as a 20-something/early-30s).
Good luck to ya. If living in Texas is that damn important to ya, then move down here, waste one year of your life, then roll the dice and hope you get accepted on subsequent academic year. The opportunity cost will certainly be lower than going here out-of-state, but still much higher than going in-state in CT.
Thank you for your very thoughtful response. That was why I still applied to UCONN, as a financial backup. I know if you receive a scholarship for $1K? or over from the University itself is that you get the OOS waiver. The main reasons I want to go to A&M and UT is because of that Aggie ring. People on Reddit said that the Aggie ring is the best thing you could have. Fellow Aggies hire fellow Aggies.
As for the in state tuition in Texas, I read that you have to live off campus for 12 consecutive months and work for 1000 hours in a year to be able to apply for Texas residency. That was at A&M, users said they were able to get in state tuition at A&M and those were the requirements. I f'ed up by not applying to UTSA or UH earlier and maybe have gotten a full ride.
I know Liberals Arts degrees mean nothing anywhere. Anywhere you go with a liberal arts major, and it won't matter. But what about for the science degrees? Does the college hold more weight with a chemistry or biology major than a history major? The chemistry major is more flexible also.
One more thing, would it be worth it to maybe go to UCONN for undergrad, but if I do grad school then go to UT or A&M for the 2 years? Thanks!
Thank you for your very thoughtful response. That was why I still applied to UCONN, as a financial backup. I know if you receive a scholarship for $1K? or over from the University itself is that you get the OOS waiver. The main reasons I want to go to A&M and UT is because of that Aggie ring. People on Reddit said that the Aggie ring is the best thing you could have. Fellow Aggies hire fellow Aggies.
As for the in state tuition in Texas, I read that you have to live off campus for 12 consecutive months and work for 1000 hours in a year to be able to apply for Texas residency. That was at A&M, users said they were able to get in state tuition at A&M and those were the requirements. I f'ed up by not applying to UTSA or UH earlier and maybe have gotten a full ride.
I know Liberals Arts degrees mean nothing anywhere. Anywhere you go with a liberal arts major, and it won't matter. But what about for the science degrees? Does the college hold more weight with a chemistry or biology major than a history major? The chemistry major is more flexible also.
One more thing, would it be worth it to maybe go to UCONN for undergrad, but if I do grad school then go to UT or A&M for the 2 years? Thanks!
No I do not think that being a graduate of UT Austin or Texas A&M College Station (flagships) will give you a significant leg up in attaining industry employment in STEM. You'll just suffer through grade deflation for 4-5 years and pay more for the privilege. I know what I'm talking about here. I am an alumni of Georgia Tech, a graduate of University of Alabama Tuscaloosa (BS in Aerospace Engineering). I also hold an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering (fancy term for the same, MS in Aerospace engineering) from Purdue University in W. Lafayette IN. Yes, the same Department Neil Armstrong went to prior to his tenure in the military and eventually the moon.
End result? Those credentials and a buck twenty get me a cup of coffee at McDonalds, without the corresponding direct years of experience that is. From a newhire perspective, all that it counts is your coop/intern experience and your GPA to a lesser degree. Let me be more pointed even: had I remained at Georgia Tech, an incredibly high ranked tech school with a horrible track record of grade deflation, I would have graduated my undergrad with less than 3.0 GPA. Average graduating GPA in some engineering majors there was 2.75. That's not gonna do you any favors when applying to industry, meanwhile your buddys from UF-Gainesville or even craptastic Univ of Central Florida have the same engineering degree as you but with 3.8s.
I had enough foresight as a undergrad to realize this scam early enough to save myself and seek a transfer to Alabama under the same major. Joke. Of course there I racked the GPA sky high (graduating *** laude) and no kidding getting head hunted by Purdue to pursue an MS with a full Fellowship. Had I remained at GaTech chances are I wouldn't have got accepted outright in the first place. Did my intellect or work ethic changed somehow? Of course not, it's all smoke and mirrors my young friend. I ended up not becoming an engineer and in my chosen career field (US Air Force pilot) the only thing that mattered was GPA and checking the undergrad degree box, so all my peers have much lesser "name brand" education than I and they all have the same job as I do. The Masters was completely unnecessary for me, though now they're requiring one for promotion to (O-4)Major and above, so by happenstance that's already taken care of for me.
As to your last question: Absolutely, you should leave the "name brand" excursions for graduate school. A graduate degree is much cheaper to attain than an undergrad, and it will carry more name recognition than your undergrad, in your CV. Much more probable chance to get tuition remittance even as an out of state student. That's how I did it when I went to Purdue. Ironically enough, your GPA from an easier school will make it more probable you get accepted to a rigorous graduate program, versus those who were punished by grade deflation when pursuing undergrad work at the schools they wanted to also do grad work in. You'd think they'd show preference to native undergrads? Nope.
Similar dynamics exist in undergrad when pursuing basic coursework in-house versus clubbing baby seals at the local junior college, then transferring into the flagship campus and knocking out the major coursework in two years and getting the same degree at a discount in total cost. Dirty little secret is that the big faceless flagship colleges are a puppy mill of starving Indian/Asian graduate students and post-docs teaching classes of 100+ with mediocre command of the English language. Meanwhile the big name professors are seldom in campus, instead spending their time traveling and securing research funding for the university, which is how said universities gain rankings in that useless rag called US NEWS and WORLD REPORT COLLEGE RANKINGS. Which means, your actual undergrad education quality is really not that great compared to the actual teaching being offered across the street with the supposed "basket of deplorable" demographic of community/junior college demographic, for less money to boot. I digress.
If I was in your shoes, with parents unable or unwilling to front me out of state tuition, I'd go full militant and knock out undergrad on the cheap on my home state, and apply to grad school out of state. I had the benefit of parents who fronted me the difference while going out of state; I'm from PR, so my local options did not offer the engineering education I was seeking, so I had no choice but to emigrate and consider out of state tuition the "price of entry" into the mainland in a way. I'd be doing backflips if I had the sheer privilege of having in-state tuition in a school as decent as UCONN. Absolutely fine institution. As I said in my prior post. You have the rest of your life to live wherever the hell you want. But do it from a position of financial freedom, not indentured servitude with an albatross of student debt hanging from your neck like the rest of the idiots that think paying 30K/yr to go to hook 'em horn rallies is the end all be all as if to suggest having a UT bumper sticker carries any sort of catchet in this economy.
No I do not think that being a graduate of UT Austin or Texas A&M College Station (flagships) will give you a significant leg up in attaining industry employment in STEM. You'll just suffer through grade deflation for 4-5 years and pay more for the privilege. I know what I'm talking about here. I am an alumni of Georgia Tech, a graduate of University of Alabama Tuscaloosa (BS in Aerospace Engineering). I also hold an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering (fancy term for the same, MS in Aerospace engineering) from Purdue University in W. Lafayette IN. Yes, the same Department Neil Armstrong went to prior to his tenure in the military and eventually the moon.
End result? Those credentials and a buck twenty get me a cup of coffee at McDonalds, without the corresponding direct years of experience that is. From a newhire perspective, all that it counts is your coop/intern experience and your GPA to a lesser degree. Let me be more pointed even: had I remained at Georgia Tech, an incredibly high ranked tech school with a horrible track record of grade deflation, I would have graduated my undergrad with less than 3.0 GPA. Average graduating GPA in some engineering majors there was 2.75. That's not gonna do you any favors when applying to industry, meanwhile your buddys from UF-Gainesville or even craptastic Univ of Central Florida have the same engineering degree as you but with 3.8s.
I had enough foresight as a undergrad to realize this scam early enough to save myself and seek a transfer to Alabama under the same major. Joke. Of course there I racked the GPA sky high (graduating *** laude) and no kidding getting head hunted by Purdue to pursue an MS with a full Fellowship. Had I remained at GaTech chances are I wouldn't have got accepted outright in the first place. Did my intellect or work ethic changed somehow? Of course not, it's all smoke and mirrors my young friend. I ended up not becoming an engineer and in my chosen career field (US Air Force pilot) the only thing that mattered was GPA and checking the undergrad degree box, so all my peers have much lesser "name brand" education than I and they all have the same job as I do. The Masters was completely unnecessary for me, though now they're requiring one for promotion to (O-4)Major and above, so by happenstance that's already taken care of for me.
As to your last question: Absolutely, you should leave the "name brand" excursions for graduate school. A graduate degree is much cheaper to attain than an undergrad, and it will carry more name recognition than your undergrad, in your CV. Much more probable chance to get tuition remittance even as an out of state student. That's how I did it when I went to Purdue. Ironically enough, your GPA from an easier school will make it more probable you get accepted to a rigorous graduate program, versus those who were punished by grade deflation when pursuing undergrad work at the schools they wanted to also do grad work in. You'd think they'd show preference to native undergrads? Nope.
Similar dynamics exist in undergrad when pursuing basic coursework in-house versus clubbing baby seals at the local junior college, then transferring into the flagship campus and knocking out the major coursework in two years and getting the same degree at a discount in total cost. Dirty little secret is that the big faceless flagship colleges are a puppy mill of starving Indian/Asian graduate students and post-docs teaching classes of 100+ with mediocre command of the English language. Meanwhile the big name professors are seldom in campus, instead spending their time traveling and securing research funding for the university, which is how said universities gain rankings in that useless rag called US NEWS and WORLD REPORT COLLEGE RANKINGS. Which means, your actual undergrad education quality is really not that great compared to the actual teaching being offered across the street with the supposed "basket of deplorable" demographic of community/junior college demographic, for less money to boot. I digress.
If I was in your shoes, with parents unable or unwilling to front me out of state tuition, I'd go full militant and knock out undergrad on the cheap on my home state, and apply to grad school out of state. I had the benefit of parents who fronted me the difference while going out of state; I'm from PR, so my local options did not offer the engineering education I was seeking, so I had no choice but to emigrate and consider out of state tuition the "price of entry" into the mainland in a way. I'd be doing backflips if I had the sheer privilege of having in-state tuition in a school as decent as UCONN. Absolutely fine institution. As I said in my prior post. You have the rest of your life to live wherever the hell you want. But do it from a position of financial freedom, not indentured servitude with an albatross of student debt hanging from your neck like the rest of the idiots that think paying 30K/yr to go to hook 'em horn rallies is the end all be all as if to suggest having a UT bumper sticker carries any sort of catchet in this economy.
Yeah, I'm island born and raised 1st generation. Finished HS and moved CONUS for college and a better and brighter economic life. My folks are still down there, retired for a while now. My sister is doing her own thing as well, first in Washington DC for college and work, and now NYC for the last 3 or so years. We're just another American story. As I have to sometimes remind the Mexican-majority Hispanics down here in West and Central Texas: Puerto Ricans don't "emigrate", we just moved. Sad state of affairs when that still has to be explained to people in 2017. I blame Common Core LOL.
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Sad state of affairs when that still has to be explained to people in 2017. I blame Common Core LOL.
