OT: Michigan or Ivy?
Greetings MGoFamily:
Apologies for a substantially off-topic post (and if this has been asked by others), but I value your opinion. My wife and I are both Michigan alums (LSA '92 for me), and (Med School '93 for her), and we're fortunate enough to have raised a kiddo who will be afforded some school choices. We live in the Detroit area and are thus "in-state" to Michigan.
My daughter is a prospective Engineering student, and while UM Engineering is the obvious choice for all kinds of reasons, her campus visit to Princeton pretty much blew her away. We knew her chances of getting in were small (she checks no diversity, financial hardship, legacy, pipeline school, or other compelling boxes), and so when she was admitted early action to Michigan Engineering and deferred on her early decision to Princeton, we assumed that was that. And we were happy.
But this past week, we were notified by Princeton that her deferment was actually a positive sign for their general admission process in April, and that she's legitimately on their radar, or she would've been outright denied admission. So she shouldn't lose hope. That was hard to hear since she hoped to either be accepted, or to simply move on.
So now, with Michigan accepting her, it's very difficult to wait another four months. My wife and I have sat down with her, and we believe the Michigan Engineering degree is strong enough that she could create any career path she chose with that background, and that Princeton would only provide a marginal name recognition advantage at the cost of waiting on pins/needles another four months, and then paying $70K/year, compared to Michigan in-state $30K.
So my question to you is simple:
If you got into Princeton and Michigan Engineering, and you lived in-state, which would you choose?
Thanks for your valuable insight.
December 27th, 2018 at 12:45 AM ^
Congratulations!! My daughter is in 11th so we may be going through something like this next year.
I am going to assume that with you and your wife's income, you will be paying full boat or close to it for tuition to both UM and Princeton.
If that's the case, then I think there is no question UM is the better choice financially.
The question really becomes, how much more do you / your daughter prefer Princeton. If it's not by much, IMHO, you should just go to UM except that the value in waiting would be to see if getting into Princeton reduces your tuition for UM (and possibly if Princeton is willing to come down substantially in price). Even if UM drops their tuition by just a couple of thousand dollars a year, if seems like it might be worth it.
Good luck in whatever you chose!
December 27th, 2018 at 3:32 AM ^
Positives for Princeton:
-- It is more prestigious.
Positive for Michigan:
-- It is a vastly better value.
-- It has a larger alumni network.
-- It has far more engineering alumni.
-- It has a larger variety of subjects available (both overall and in engineering).
-- Although not as highly ranked as Princeton, is still one of the world's top-ranked universities (#20 in Times Higher Education World University Rankings).
For my kids under the same circumstances, I would prefer Michigan.
December 27th, 2018 at 3:02 PM ^
Princeton, being an Ivy League school, is always going to carry a bit more prestige, just on the name alone. That said, it doesn't seem like the engineering programs are so far about that it would make any big difference in terms of the education she would be getting. I know it has been said on here that Michigan is the higher rated of the two programs anyway. I think the bigger factors are cost and distance. That is a lot of money you could save by having her go in-state at Michigan. Not to mention the costs of her traveling back home than back to Princeton. Also there is having to worry about a car, getting the car to her, etc. Overall, it would seem like you could save close to or more than $100,000 while having your daughter receive the same calibur, if not better, of education than she would have had at Princeton. That is also without saying that being able to attend the same school that both your parents did would be a pretty cool thing to forever share. Of course, if your daughter is one of those highly independent kids who wants to make her own path in life, she could do a hell of a lot worse than going to Princeton haha. Good luck.
December 28th, 2018 at 5:57 AM ^
I think I would pick for myself Michigan engineering plus an extra $50k-$100k over Princeton engineering.
My background is BSE Michigan, 1985, and MS and Ph.D. from Caltech. I was valedictorian of my high school, and perhaps could have gotten into other places, but I applied to only one school for undergrad: Michigan. If I were to do it all again, I think I would still pick Michigan engineering.
I have classmates, friends, and coworkers who went to Princeton, Harvard, Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, etc. Michigan has a very big and strong alumni network in engineering and tech, even compared to those. Now that I have decades of business experience, I value that a lot in addition to the education and the college experience.