A Good Problem to Have...

[HornsRuleU]

HornsRuleU,

That is sound thinking and one of the reasons I pushed him to apply to Notre Dame and Rice. He had strictly been focused on tech schools but I have always seen in him, a real passion for history, like his father. If he goes to Georgia Tech, (he is already admitted to their Aerospace Engineering Program) and decides it isn't for him, there is no real backup in history. Notre Dame and Rice both have exceptional history departments. Of course Aerospace is marketable, history, except for a very few, is not going to pay off the student loans in a hurry...

That could be the deciding factor for him. And congrats to him and his parents & teachers for that!

At Georgia Tech, he could minor in history, or get a B.S. in History, Technology & Society minor.

Options to consider:

• summer courses elsewhere and transfer them in
• undergrad for broad / rounding education, and graduate school for specific interests

 

[freeper]

That could be the deciding factor for him. And congrats to him and his parents & teachers for that!

At Georgia Tech, he could minor in history, or get a B.S. in History, Technology & Society minor.

Options to consider:

• summer courses elsewhere and transfer them in
• undergrad for broad / rounding education, and graduate school for specific interests

@HornsRuleU Yeah it is all about options right now. We are waiting to hear from Notre Dame and Rice about possible financial aid. We can help the boy some and so he won't have to take on all the debt by himself if he chooses to go out of state. One option we haven't really discussed is transfer. Maybe doing a year or two here at Nevada to get the core courses out of the way and expose him to college life and then transfer to either Rice or Georgia Tech. That would really reduce the debt load and still gets him a degree from a much more prestigious school in his chosen field. My question is, how hard is it to transfer in? Does prior admitted status work for or against you? The other problem with this scenario is keeping him focused as he is still around the pizza and Xbox crowd. I think he'll be ok there but damn, anymore you just don't know.

 

[speedstrength]

Can't speak for Rice or Ga Tech specifically but at our institution you have to get special permission to transfer in major course work. Our math classes are allowed to transfer in if they were completed before you set foot on campus. We are starting to get more dual credit kids out of high school. Lots took gen bio 1 with lab and then had to turn around and take it again their first semester in college.

 

[easttx903]

hav him apply to west point. best engineering school in the world.

 

[wadster]

I didn't read all the replies, but my son graduated from UT in computer science. Got a job at Workday out of school and interesting UT was the only school within 800 miles of Texas that the interview. It was ranked higher than Rice in comp sci, and he got just as good an education for the hours I had socked away in the Texas Tomorrow fund. His entire tuition for 4 years cost me 16K and he just graduated 4 years ago. But if money were no option, Georgia Tech would be hard to beat after Stanford. But a kid with great grades from any of these schools is going to have their pick of jobs so it's not as important as you think. I got my masters from UT Arlington in comp sci after a bachelors from UT 35 years ago. And no one gives a crap where I went to school or even that I got a masters. What they want to know is how effective I am in talking to CIOs at major corporations and how I can speak both business and IT to all levels of a 100 billion dollar business. I've had a ton of success over that span working for IBM in their heyday and now Salesforce and cloud computing in theirs. It's been a great ride and hard work has meant more than where I went to school or anything else. What I learned in Fortran in 1984 is so irrelevant today. No way would I spend 200-300K on an education. Save the money and take the free $$$ at Nevada and let him try and start his own business when he gets out. He'll learn more failing at his first business than he will in college anyway. My 3rd is at A&M now because he got a free ride there. UT doesn't give national merits so I encouraged him to take A&Ms money and his EE major would count just as much. He's got a 3.9 in EE interning at TI this summer and he'll be just fine. I think as parents we over think these decisions and act like they are all life changing. The big news our kids need to hear is that they just aren't. I ended up with 200 hours and 3 degrees. I was 27 before I got my 1st full time job in computer science because it took that long to figure it out. But I was smart, worked my ass off, took risks, and had a vision for where the industry was going. Those qualities have taken me farther than 98% of people in this major, not a high priced education.

 

[freeper]

Can't speak for Rice or Ga Tech specifically but at our institution you have to get special permission to transfer in major course work. Our math classes are allowed to transfer in if they were completed before you set foot on campus. We are starting to get more dual credit kids out of high school. Lots took gen bio 1 with lab and then had to turn around and take it again their first semester in college.

@speedstrength, I think it would be easier to transfer core courses from Nevada to Rice, rather than to Georgia Tech. When we met with the Aerospace Engineering people at G-Tech they really encouraged the students in attendance to forget about transferring their AP Calculus and Physics courses from high school. According to them, too many freshmen struggled with the advanced courses at Georgia Tech as Freshmen because they didn't have a proper foundation taught in high school, even if it was AP. According to the reps at the presentation, there is a "Georgia Tech way" in advanced math and they want you to know it before you move on...

 

[speedstrength]

I would check with Rice. We are a little liberal arts institution. Most of our transfer credits are coming from the community colleges. I Texas there are a ton of kids doing dual credit out in high school which means they are taking things like English, math, history etc at a community college and they get high school and college credit. If a student is a math, science or history major those courses usually transfer in as elective credit. Rice would probably take things like freshman comp, speech, for full credit. Things like math, physics or engineering might only be taken for elective credit.

 

[RoboCocks21]

@wadster interesting you bring up computer science cause at the moment I am going back to school for my second degree in cybersecurity. I know the money is out there it's just how am I going to be successful with my skills.

 

[clob94]

@freeper was Hogwarts off the table?

 

[wadster]

@RoboCocks21 My oldest son in in Austin and is on the security team for now Oracle, but was part of Netsuite when he moved back to Austin. I'm sure he'd be willing to talk to another UT grad. He's responsible for code level security and teaching their developers security best practices. PM me on linkedin if you are interested. https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregwadley/

 

[HornsRuleU]

Many options, many great replies. And hopefully a few more.

Really good topic. Thanks to Freeper for starting it.

 

[RoboCocks21]

@LonghornMM can you send me wadster link to my email so his business isn't out there?

 

[LonghornMM]

@LonghornMM can you send me wadster link to my email so his business isn't out there?

Check your mail/messages.

 

[freeper]

@freeper was Hogwarts off the table?

@clob94 funny thing you mention that. On our tour we hit Ga Tech, Penn, Notre Dame and Rice. At each school (with the exception of Penn) we were shown dining halls that looked strikingly similar to the Harry Potter "Great Hall". Especially at Georgia Tech, Notre Dame and Rice and the student guides at each stop made sure to point out the "Pottereseque" eating facilities. At Penn, the student guide made sure to inform us that the dining hall did look like something out of Harry Potter, though we never got to see it. I've got to say, the food in the student dining facilities at Rice was freaking phenomenal. We were told that each residential college has a world class chef assigned to it. Nothing I sampled indicated different....a salmon cake that would have done any restaurant in Seattle proud and a taco with tortillas the chef was cooking right in front of me....just like mama used to make....if it came down to food, Rice would be the choice hands down...

One more thing my son is considering is speech and debate. At Georgia Tech they have a club with no formal coach and they've done pretty well in a really laid back atmosphere. Rice on the other hand is ranked 11th in the country and works hard at their craft. I could see my boy enjoying either environment. My son just started doing speech and debate this year. He'd always been too busy with football and track and academic teams before but this year he decided to try it and drop track. Seems he has a natural penchant for it. In his first tournament he boarded, finishing 4th overall in a field of over 50 competitors. Then he decided to do policy debate and partnered with one of his good friends. At district finals they made first alternate for nationals from Nevada, not bad in field of over 40 teams. Better still, my son decided to try extemporaneous speech (foreign affairs) at district. He'd never competed in that format. He finished second at district and qualified for a trip to nationals in June. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of the boy, even if he does somehow like Michigan State more than the Longhorns.

 

[RoboCocks21]

Check your mail/messages.

I just wanted his linkin