Is CMU Undergrad worth the debt?
So... yesterday I was officially accepted into Carnegie Mellon. Now I'm wondering - is it worth the money?
It costs 55k a year - assuming parents provide 15k a year, I provide 5k a year, and CMU gives me a grant of 10k a year, that leaves 25k a year, or 100k worth of debt.
Short and sweet: is it worth the debt over a public university (specifically, University of Maryland)?
I've crunched some numbers and assumed I get an S&T job out of undergrad in NYC. The numbers would look somewhat like this:
Apartment: 1500
Utilities: 200
Other: 50
Total Rent: 1750
Food 300
Metro 100
Cable 100
Cell 100
Misc 150
Total Misc: 750
Total Monthly Cost: 2500
Total Yearly Expense Cost: 30000
Total College Loan Monthly Cost: 1075
Total Yearly Debt Cost : 13000
Total Yearly Important Incidentals: 2000
Total Yearly Cost: 45000
How Much I Will Be Making: 65000 +25000 Bonus = 90000
Net Income = Earnings/2 = 45000
So net balance = 0... so it should be doable (if these numbers look off, please correct me!)
All opinions would be welcome!
Pretty sure you will be
Pretty sure you will be paying more than $300 a month on food.
only if you got into the cs
only if you got into the cs program
no its not worth it--esp in
no its not worth it--esp in the context of you determining "worth" through whether you get a FT S&T job out of undergrad (assume you mean BB?). Contingent on you achieving top academic status, networking your face off, interning every summer, and preparing to kick ass in a soph/jr summer analyst role, it is likely that you could get a FT offer from a desk coming out of U of Maryland.
I got into the CS program at
I got into the CS program at CMU- even got some financial aid- weighed it against $17K/year Illinois and figured it was not worth the extra $100K (at the time) to go to the #1 ranked CS school instead of the #5 ranked CS school. Best decision I ever made- saved $100K and wound up in roughly the same spot I would have had I spent the extra money on CMU.
Maryland College Park is an excellent CS program- roughly in line with Illinois. If you are a Maryland resident and get to pay in-state tuition, I'd take Maryland over CMU.
CMU is a great program- arguably the best in the country, but it's hard to sell it- or any other private school- over a top ten state school for engineering if you're paying in-state tuition.
As for landing in S&T, it's hard to land as a sales guy or trader straight out of undergrad with a CS background. The banks will probably want to take advantage of your programming skills for the first few years and have you work as an analytics developer pricing these products first before they move you into trading. It's just as cool of a job and the comp/selectivity situation is similar or perhaps a little better, but the work is different. You'll be sitting up with research and management rather than on the trading floor and it will be much quieter.
Keep your options open and don't write off Google or IBM so fast.
Work hard, play hard.
It wasn't for me. Took full
It wasn't for me. Took full tuition scholarship to a state school instead of paying 40k per year at CMU. You can always transfer out of UMD in 2 years if you are still worried about getting into S&T and get the target/semi-target diploma at half-cost.
Just for the record, people
Just for the record, people will say it's tough to get into a BB out of state school. But if you can get into CMU for CS, H/Y/P/W for something generic like math, econ, or finance would have been a slam dunk. You're going to learn pretty much the same material at College Park and once you land the interview- which you will, you're going to be smarter than the kids you're up against. The one thing is how confident you'll be interviewing against a bunch of target school kids.
The good news in the land of programming is that the interviews are 95% technical. Can you get the algorithm to run in O(n^2*logn) time? Can you spot the opportunity to do a radix sort rather than a divide-and-conquer sort? The guy interviewing you might be from Harvard, he might hate your guts for being from a state school, but if you can solve the problem and the Harvard CS major you're interviewing against can't, they really have no choice, do they? The last thing Goldman wants is to lose a brilliant programmer to Morgan Stanley or Citadel.
Work hard, play hard.
I didn't apply SCS for CMU...
I didn't apply SCS for CMU... just MCS Math and Tepper :S
Although wherever I'll go I'll likely have at least a CS Minor.
If you go to CMU Happy will
If you go to CMU Happy will buy you a beer so there is that to consider too...
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
IlliniProgrammer wrote: Just
Just for the record, people will say it's tough to get into a BB out of state school. But if you can get into CMU for CS, H/Y/P/W for something generic like math, econ, or finance would have been a slam dunk. You're going to learn pretty much the same material at College Park and once you land the interview- which you will, you're going to be smarter than the kids you're up against. The one thing is how confident you'll be interviewing against a bunch of target school kids.
The good news in the land of programming is that the interviews are 95% technical. Can you get the algorithm to run in O(n^2logn) time? The guy interviewing you might be from Harvard, he might hate your guts for being from a state school, but if you can solve the problem and the Harvard CS major you're interviewing against can't, they really have no choice, do they? The last thing Goldman wants is to lose a brilliant programmer to Morgan Stanley or Citadel.
Your answers are generally very good - however seems the OP is aiming for an S&T -- CS may be a strong option, esp in a structuring role or a quant product desk, but you can take pretty high maths doing a quant fin/econometrics/bs in econ type degree and waste less time w info that is non core to your actual job. If he's just going for a flow desk then undergrad biz or econ will likely be fine... I think if he's evaluating success on the basis of getting an S&T job (seems so) then spending so much money on CMU (which isn't H/Y/P/W/S in the eyes of S&T recruiting) doesn't seem to make sense. If he measured success in any other way (aside from his ultimate goal of getting a generic entry level S&T job) my answer might be diff
Hey, you can't live in New
Hey, you can't live in New York City on $30 K a year. My car costs alone are approx. $15 K per year. 2 bedroom apartment is $4 K per month. Plus you need to provide for emergency medical expenses, entertainment, etc.
Anyway, if you stay focused on your game, the $100 K debt will seem like pocket change after a few years. If you lose your focus, the $100 K debt will make your life miserable for many years. The collection agencies are unscrupulous monsters when they know that you cannot file for bankruptcy.
If you are planning to terminate your education with a Bachelor degree, then I would take the $100 K debt and get the CMU brand on my resume.
Otherwise, go to Maryland, and then after working for three years, target a Top 5 MBA. That will give you the brand name and alumni network and also the $180 K debt.
Dang I thought you got in the
Dang I thought you got in the CS program. CMU to CS is like Johns Hopkins to Medicine.
Just keep in mind that if you go to your state school, the whole time you may be wondering "what if..."
CMU is a very well respected school and if you get in their Computational Finance program then you are gold.
if you wanna do sales and
if you wanna do sales and trading, go to michigan, get into ross, get a bba in finance with a math minor
The only undergrad
The only undergrad institutions I would consider going into 100K+ debt for are...
None.
Go to a state school and you'll do okay.
Sidenote: Man am I glad I finished undergrad a couple of years back. You new guys are getting railroaded by these institutions. It's really sad.
"Cut the burger into thirds, place it on the fries, roll one up homey..." - Epic Meal Time
TraderJoe1976 wrote: Hey, you
Hey, you can't live in New York City on $30 K a year. My car costs alone are approx. $15 K per year. 2 bedroom apartment is $4 K per month. Plus you need to provide for emergency medical expenses, entertainment, etc.
Anyway, if you stay focused on your game, the $100 K debt will seem like pocket change after a few years. If you lose your focus, the $100 K debt will make your life miserable for many years. The collection agencies are unscrupulous monsters when they know that you cannot file for bankruptcy.
If you are planning to terminate your education with a Bachelor degree, then I would take the $100 K debt and get the CMU brand on my resume.
Otherwise, go to Maryland, and then after working for three years, target a Top 5 MBA. That will give you the brand name and alumni network and also the $180 K debt.
You need a car/two bedroom apartment? Why, exactly... those are definitely uneccessary costs.
Dang I thought you got in the CS program. CMU to CS is like Johns Hopkins to Medicine.
Just keep in mind that if you go to your state school, the whole time you may be wondering "what if..."
CMU is a very well respected school and if you get in their Computational Finance program then you are gold.
That's exactly what I'm aiming for and why I applied to math/business. If I do Comp Sci I won't have time to do computational finance (unless I remove any semblance of a social life....)
Also, I'm not measuring success by an achievment of an S&T job. I was just pulling numbers to see that I could actually pull it off financially... my end goal is (for now) HF. Also, I like the atmosphere of CMU more - the people, the city, everything. If only it wasn't so expensive....
Quote: Just keep in mind that
Just keep in mind that if you go to your state school, the whole time you may be wondering "what if..."
What do you mean, what if? I spent state school thinking "Oh thank god I didn't spend that money!" My first two years in school were during the bottom of the tech bust- 2003 and 2004- and we were constantly hearing stories from kids who went to good CS private schools that they graduated $120K in debt with a $20K/year job. #1 vs. #4 or #6 is not a huge difference in the programming world, and you will have roughly the same opportunities as a programmer- from Google to IBM to Goldman (quant development) to Citadel.
CMU is a very well respected school and if you get in their Computational Finance program then you are gold.
Absolutely, but that's a grad program and once you hit a quant analytics group, you'll be a bigger shoo-in there than James Franco for a PhD in acting. This is coming from my experience with three coworkers applying there (full-time) and all getting in. It's a great program, but you can get in with a CS degree from College Park and a year or two of work experience somewhere in finance.
Work hard, play hard.
IlliniProgrammer
Bumping for more opinions.
What kind of HF are you
DurbanDiMangus wrote: What
debt is never worth it
Just saying...
turtles wrote: debt is never
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
Quote: If you graduate in the
I picked a decent state
You see the reality euroazn,
"Cut the burger into thirds, place it on the fries, roll one up homey..." - Epic Meal Time
Quote: I rarely hear of a
euroazn wrote: Quote: If you
Work hard, play hard.
Well you just answered your
IlliniProgrammer
TraderJoe1976 wrote: Well you
euroazn wrote: Quote: I
"Cut the burger into thirds, place it on the fries, roll one up homey..." - Epic Meal Time
I have to get into a top grad
vadremc wrote: You see the
Work hard, play hard.
euroazn wrote: I have to get
Work hard, play hard.
IlliniProgrammer wrote: So
euroazn
DurbanDiMangus
euroazn wrote: Whoa... do you
Work hard, play hard.
IlliniProgrammer
euroazn wrote: But here's the
Work hard, play hard.
euroazn wrote: [16 out of 200
Work hard, play hard.
IlliniProgrammer
euroazn wrote: Those firms
Work hard, play hard.
Quote: At least that was
euroazn wrote: Quote: At
Work hard, play hard.
I love a high school kid
MSF Website
MACC Website
MSF Twitter
picked an ivy over free ride
although cmu is kind of lame,
arden wrote: how much is that
"Cut the burger into thirds, place it on the fries, roll one up homey..." - Epic Meal Time
vadremc wrote: arden
Work hard, play hard.
Just got my Financial Aid...