MIT vs UF

[night fox]

Schools: MIT vs. UF
Intended major: Double in math and CS or MechE
Similarities: Questionable food in dining halls

MIT Pros:
-Dream School
-Math majors have a median starting salary of 120k
-Cold weather and having actual seasons
-Innovative school atmosphere that will push me to my potentials
-Hacking culture
-Near Boston
-Cross-registration with Harvard
-No one else from my school got in so fresh start
-Easy to get into research
-Smaller class size, easier to interact with professors
-Tight-knit dorm communities
-Nerdy FSILGS (Greek life)
-Inspiring upperclassmen and professors
-Competitive high-pay summer internships
-MIT opens a lot of doors
-Perfect fit for me
-Study abroad is paid for by the school
-Architecture
-Mascot + Motto

MIT Cons:
-No financial aid (even after appeal) so 50k annually in loans
-No grad school

UF Pros:
-Acceptance to Honors program + Research Program
-Full ride through National Merit + Presidential Gold Scholarship (8k a year)
-Less academic stress/non-workaholic culture
-More time to explore non-academic interests
-Possibility of grad school

UF Cons:
-My scholarship dictates that I cannot drop any classes (after the first few weeks) or else I'll lose my full ride, so I can't explore classes at all so I hate this requirement
-Housing waiting list (I didn't pay $225 for my housing contract on time and probably will have to live off campus freshmen year)
-Hot weather
-Gainesville (nothing to do)
-School colors (Blue+Orange)
-Math majors have a median starting salary of 40k
-Large student population of 33k
-A lot of people from my school will be attending, including my bullies
-I feel like I might burn out in UF or laze around
-Difficulty making friends due to large student body
-Regret in not attending MIT

Preliminary thank you to anyone who takes their time to read this

[fresh notch]

UF has 33k people. I bet u, u wont see them

also MIT is near boston. not in it

[supple notch]

@night fox I think you know that MIT is a better fit for you despite UF being cheaper and being less stressful. I think the debt could be a problem, but with the stark difference in starting salary, I think MIT might be better? The fact that the weather and your bullies could make life worse for you at UF troubles me a little and might trouble you if you go there. How is your financial situation right now?

[fresh notch]

also- u dont need to go to grad school in ur ungrad school. its prob better not to bc then u can change where u live and meet new ppl

make new connections

[chilly ether]

$50k annually in loans is a lot, even assuming a higher starting salary

[mint flower]

mit starting salary for math is 120k vs the 45k at uf tho

[mint flower]

i would personally pick mit bc of the better area for you and the higher salary sort of out weighing and being = to the debt plus more opportunities from mit

[chilly ether]

right, but i suspect a lot of that is selection bias

[mint flower]

??

[supple notch]

perhaps but then we could assume that the starting salary for uf could be much lower

[mint flower]

its also the median

[chilly ether]

well the idea is that someone admitted to mit would probably have a relatively high salary wherever they go because they’re somewhat qualified, right

it’s hard to say how much of that is the school and how much of it is the person

[supple notch]

100% that's what makes this decision harder

[chilly ether]

$200k in loans is a giant financial burden

[mint flower]

its probs the school and opportunity's the school gives

[mint flower]

depending on what happens after mit it might not matter

[chilly ether]

200k is a lot and it’s only going to compound

even assuming you pay off some of it with internships and work study

if i were op i would seriously consider whether that’s a burden worth taking on

i’d understand going for either option but i dont think its obviously in favor of mit

[night fox]

yeah, that's what I'm hoping. only issue is they're kinda obsessed with me (always talking about me + trying to convince others to hate me, trying to steal my friends, removing my name from events, etc even after i avoided them this entire senior year), so it's ..., hopefully it changes in college and LMAO thank u for the correction, i've been saying boston-bound instead of cambridge-bound

[fresh notch]

ah yeah

that makes sense. i honestly think u should do MIT

youll easily pay off ur loans after

[chilly ether]

i'm really sorry you had to deal with that

[night fox]

thank uuu, i just trying to hold it together until hs ends and hopefully i will never have to deal with them again, also it's super cool ur also an adMIT! did u go to cpw?

[chilly ether]

yeah! wait dm

[night fox]

Yeah, I fell in love with MIT when I applied, but the major issue holding me back from committing is the debt. I'm really hesitant on UF because of them as I'm worried they won't stop in college. I've been looking into ways of lowering the cost, though, so I think I could probably hash it down to 40k a year? Honestly speaking, my financial situation is not the best (my family would qualify for Pell Grant, but my grandma's house in NY is under my parents' name) which is why I can only resort to taking out loans to pay for MIT. I plan on working the entire summer though. One of my friends offered me a job over the summer at his uncle's restaurant, it's pretty high-end so fingers crossed.

[supple notch]

If the debt is really that crushing, I think UF is the better decision? But at the same time, I don't want you to face the unattractive environment of UF with the bullies, the weather, and you "slacking off" as you've described

This is a really tough one

Have you tried asking on A2C reddit maybe?

Maybe some better advice?

[chilly ether]

okie i just ran some numbers on this: assuming you take out 200,000 in loans at the average student loan rate of 5.8% per year compounded monthly, this is how many years it would take you to pay it off depending on different yearly payments (also paid monthly):

$36000 per year- 8.41 years
$30000 per year- 11.4 years
$24000 per year- 13.25 years
$21600 per year- 20.16 years
$16800 per year- 56.58 years

you might have already done this calculation and you should definitely run it for different loan/interest numbers but that's roughly what you're looking at

[supple notch]

Wait really? It's that bad

HOLY CRAP

[night fox]

WHOA thank you so much, i've been trying to do that for some time now

[supple notch]

@chilly ether Thank you for the data!

[chilly ether]

i have the code pulled up rn so if you wanna check a couple other numbers i can do that rq

[supple notch]

WOW incredible

is it on github

[chilly ether]

i dont understand how github works ngl so no 😭 but the program is super straightforward, i wrote it just now in a couple of minutes

[supple notch]

yeah the code seems straightforward but I was just wondering if there's like a tool for this out there

[chilly ether]

probably? someone must have made a student loan calculator

[supple notch]

https://smartasset.com/student-loans/student-loan-calculator

forgot the internet existed for a second

whoops

[supple notch]

where are you leaning more towards now?

[night fox]

Honestly, axolotl's numbers really put things into perspective. I'm running the numbers right now if the job ends up being in Cali (:( taxes), and how much I could put forth to my debts. I plan on living frugally until I can pay off my debts so. So I'm leaning a bit more to UF now

I'm more introverted imo, so it's a lot harder for me to make friends with strangers. I've heard at UF, you don't see anyone more than once unless you put in the effort, so I'm worried about that esp since I'll prob be living off-campus. Honestly though, I like to be by myself the majority of the time, I just don't like being ostracized so idk if the friend issue is that big of a deal bc quality > quantity.

that's true, i was really worried about the gen classes being really big

oh wait shoot i forgot to mention a key issue about my scholarship

i can't drop classes at UF. at all. or else my scholarship gets taken away.

yeah that's prob the truth

[fresh notch]

joining clubs will help u find friends

[night fox]

after

-Earned credit for all hours enrolled by the end of the regular drop/add period each term.
-Earned a minimum cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.

that's true. if it was drop at all it would be worse

[chilly ether]

for the record, if you really really want to go to mit i think you would be able to make it work. but that’s not a decision you should make lightly gotta decide what’s important to you

student loans are typically frozen in grad school, i think? so if they were to get a phd they wouldnt have to do the monthly payments during (i think, don’t quote me on this, i am not an expert on personal finance)

but going to med school or somewhere expensive would be 😣 difficult

no at this rate its going to take until may 1st sob

i did not apply to yale

[night fox]

nope, but if i went to uf i would consider grad school primarily to indulge in research

[night fox]

yeah i figured :(,

most likely it'll be them taking out a direct plus, but i'll pay it myself

debt buddies

[night fox]

honestly mit. the biggest concerns in mind for me are the stark difference in salary, the cost, and my own mental health. the debt is absolutely disgusting still in my opinion, but i know i cannot handle dealing with my bullies anymore. it's naive to think they'll change in one summer when they haven't changed since freshmen year. rn my current mindset is i just need to endure these last few weeks, but if i have to deal with them still at uf, i will definitely burn out and possibly lose my full ride. after college, i think i'll aim for a job in nyc and live with my grandparents for a while until my debts are paid off.

[torn gust]

dude 200k in debt is not worth

it

[chilly ether]

that makes sense and i’m sure you’ll be amazing wherever you end up

idk if you’ve done this already, but you could contact sfs about working options and stuff? there have to have been students in similar situations and they might have advice

[civic solstice]

I think if you have grad school interest at MIT, going to MIT is a better choice. MIT undergrads have a much better chance of getting admitted to their grad program compared to other applicants

50k worth of loans is a lot though, so I would consider discussing with your parents about that

[night fox]

yup, i told them it was my grandma’s house that was under our name (and completely skewing my efc) but they went “well u can still take out loans using that so appeal denied”

a ig could be final update: my dad and i just had a discussion, and we worked things out that i’ll mainly be only taking out the subsidized and unsubsidized Direct loans for MIT (so 33k debt when i graduate which is honestly a lot better than 200k LOL). i’ll probably schedule a call with the financial aid office to make sure we’re doing the calculations all right, but thank you everyone for your inputs, it really helped put things into perspective on what i truly wanted out of college, and i appreciate all the time and effort you guys spent on talking with me!

[night fox]

yup, i already talked to sfs during cpw and current students over discord and at cpw, they helped me hash costs where i could (dorms vs FSILGs, meal plans, etc).

[chilly ether]

ah very cool maybe i’ll see you there

[night fox]

yeah i was pretty dumbfounded when they told me that

def cuz ive heard ppl who got offered nothing from mit yet half coa for an ivy

and mit doesn’t match so

[chilly ether]

ikr

they were somehow slightly cheaper than stanford for me, though

[night fox]

stanford’s greedier nice LMAO

[mint flower]

same and harvard claims most of there students graduate with little to no debt

and that for 96% of people attending harvard is cheaper then there state school

[round jolt]

https://smartasset.com/student-loans/student-loan-calculator#U8MSV6e65q