Texas A&M, Penn State, or IU
I am a high school senior from Houston, Texas who is currently deciding on where I should go to college. I am a little above the average student but also 2026 college decisions were a disaster. I was accepted into Texas A&M with my second choice major (Economics) this is not in mays business school, Penn State ( directly into smeal), and IU (pre-business). At the moment I am a complete mess who switches which college I like the most every other day. I would love to break into IB and I'm willing to go above and beyond to reach my goals. I love Texas A&M, but I'm not sure how good the opportunities for breaking into IB is. I also love Penn State, but the problem I have with it is the same as A&M. IU is a tough one, because it is the "best business school", but I'm not sure how their recruiting is in comparison to A&M or Penn State (It is also my least favorite school personally). All in all it's a tough decision and I'm looking for any insight into what my chances would be like at any of the three. I am also not sure if I want to leave Texas because I really love this state. Do yall also think it is worth staying in Texas to do IB or am I limiting my opportunities? I will be willing to leave though if I have a drastically bigger opportunity than staying in Texas, but I plan to come back to Texas eventually.
Will you need to take on more loans if you go out of state?
My guess is that IU would send the most kids into banking, then PSU, then A&M, but I also think that would be the same order for number of kids pursuing those IB opportunities. I don't think any of the 3 are meaningfully worse than the others. If you want to be in NYC, you'd need to do more coming from A&M (A&M sends quite a few to Houston, but less so to NYC, although they've been improving on that), but still very feasible if you have strong grades and put in the effort. In the end, if you can get a 3.7+ GPA, a decent internship or two, and network, you should be fine. If the two out of state schools would require something like $50K+ more in loans, I'd certainly lean A&M, especially given your affinity for staying in state.
My parents said they would pay for me out of state but knowing them they would give me some digs for going out of state even though I could've stayed home. Penn State would be about 52k for me and IU would be 56k while Texas A&M would be around 31k
Culpa voluptatum qui incidunt quos sint. Dignissimos quia suscipit nesciunt sint possimus.
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