Does choice of college matter much for STEM degrees in the US...

why don't you stop shit talking your school then when you haven't even attempted to take higher courses? it's not your school. it's you.

I already graduated. It was entirely my school, without a doubt.

I didn't do pure math, and I assumed we didn't have a Rudin class. You probably go to a top 50. Fuck off.

Is SLO that good?

>I didn't do pure math
then fuck off and stop badmouthing their math program, you faggot loser.

I am in a no-name school and took full advantage of their graduate course offering while I was an undergrad, same as collaboration in research with the faculty. opportunities are plenty for dedicated students. if the school is small, that's even better because you can stand out. clearly you didn't stand out, you just did the bare minimum to get a decent GPA and are mad the school didn't give you success on a silver platter.

Absolutely. It's not as valued if you're looking into higher education, but if your GPA is > 2.8, you will get an internship, no matter what.

Is UW Madison a good school for mathematics? Pretty much the best one I can afford, out of state would be too expensive

definitely! It has a top tier graduate program as well

yes user, its one of the top research universities in the country.

How about Ohio State's engineering program?

I need to get an internship soon and I just got accepted into the Electrical Engineering Major (took 3 semesters because the requirements to apply were painfully long)

One thing that I sometimes hear is that while University of Wisconsin is a good graduate/research school, this makes it lacking for undergraduates. Is this kind of thinking correct, or is it misguided?

not for engineering but yes for math and physics. also you can your bachelor's in your state uni and than go to some ivy league

depends on the prestige gap
if you're giving up a top 20 for a school with a sub 1200 average SAT score you're denying yourself a lot of resources, ESPECIALLY if you want to go to grad school
if you want a better answer you should be more specific

Not him but I have a choice between rutgers and Columbia in engineering

Doesn't matter for engineering (any ABET program is fine) but maybe for other STEM majors. It doesn't matter if you go to Hodunk University if you move on to a top school for MS/PhD. Just be a big fish in a small pond and then move onto the big pond

I've heard several rumors about things like this in several high ranking graduate programs.

Here's the deal: if you excel in your undergrad, however good or bad it is, you get access to the graduate classes and the attention of the faculty.

Now, undergrad programs are fairly standarized. They're easy to implement, so I don't see why the program would be lacking. You'll surely be okay.

My no-name school has undergraduate courses in all of these things

Go to the cheapest option once you know what your financial aid is like. Both are probably ABET accredited so employers will know your degree is reputable. If you were speaking of graduate school choice, then yes maybe going to the higher ranked school like Columbia would be worth it, but for undergrad it is honestly best to just choose from the best cheap ABET options, which is typically a large public instate university. Rutgers is a pretty large school so they probably have plenty of opportunity to get into internships or research experience if you look for it. If you have no financial aid/scholarships in the first place (I assume you do), then 2 years at community college for prereqs is honestly the best choice for a quick, easy, and cheap ride through undergrad. Beware though because typically you will not be eligible for university scholarships if you transfer from CC so I only advise it to those who may not receive any scholarships in the first place.

Yes. If you, or anyone else reading this thread, wants to know if certainly worth it for undergrad just look up R1 universities and a list should popup of great schools around the US. Any school on that is reputable enough to not worry about employers or grad schools thinking your university is shit tier.

that's a first step - anything not in R1 is trash. but being in R1 is only a necessary lower bound, and not the goal

How do you guys pay for a decent school, let alone grad school? It's so expensive- 26k a year is what I found when I googled just the best public school I can go to, and that's in state. 10k for tuition, 10k for room and board, not to mention all of the other costs...

Especially shitty that my parents make too much for me to qualify for financial aid, but aren't going to pay shit towards my education and never bothered saving money. How do most people graduate from such universities with less than 30k in loans?

go to a shit school or be close to a good school and live at home (assuming you get accepted)

>Especially shitty that my parents make too much for me to qualify for financial aid, but aren't going to pay shit towards my education and never bothered saving money.

jesus fucking christ. ask for financial aid separate from your parents, make it completely clear that they have abandoned their responsabilities and you're on your own, etc. don't take this advice directly: ask for assistance and information from many institutions who help students.

you don't pay from gradschool unless you're in a pay-for-degree major

I'm not saying all R1 universities are equally good, just saying that if you attend any R1 university fro undergrad and put in enough work you can get into a top 5 MS/PhD in your field. R1s will have have enough resources for you to succeed, some just have more resources or better resources.

Can someone tell me what's wrong with ASU or Arizona State colleges in general like said? My dad said he won't pay for me to go to a good school even though I got the grades for it because he says it's too expensive yet makes over 250k a year. He wants me to go to ASU and they take anyone. He's condemning me to a life of mediocrity and he's my dad so if you got some dirt against ASU please post it in this thread so I can slap some sense into him.

t. High school senior

your dad sounds like a total asshole
make a deal with him: part time job, and you help pay for it

I went to a community college and then transferred to a university I could drive to. I do security full-time allowing me to study throughout my entire shift. Unless you have a way to fund your first two years community college is really your only option. Avoid dorms- I know plenty of students sharing an efficiency with a roommate, they pay about $300 a month for rent and utilities. It's very possible to get a degree without accumulating unholy amounts of debt, you just need to plan for it.

I'm not sure if I can just ask for financial aid separate from my parents. They're paying for a tiny bit, but not enough for me to not get crippling amount of loans or an amount of loans that might not even be possible to take out. Plus, if students could just file for aid separate from parents, why wouldn't everyone be doing that and getting help?

i'm gonna give you the shitty ass answer of "you have to be ok with the choice you make."
there's a bit of pride you'd have to swallow to pass up an ivy, and if you do so you'd probably constantly have doubts about if you made the right choice, but i'd say the prestige gap isn't likely worth the wallet gap.
obviously do more research than just asking some loser user like me on an online vietnamese square dancing seminar
i knew more than one person in your situation, almost all of them ended up attending the ivy. make of that what you will.

i would be a just bit wary of this guy's suggestions.
transferring from a CC is a bit weird and you aren't guaranteed a spot.
most importantly, the fact that you passed up an ivy for a low tier or a community college will actually mindbreak you over time.

what school does he not want you to go to and for what field of study?

as I said, find help. there are institutions who help students with many things like this. go and talk to people to find out which ones are available in your area. ask your high school teachers for starters, use google, and go from there.

ASU and University of Arizona are fine schools, university of Phoenix is a for profit meme university like ITT Tech and DeVry. If you go to ASU or UA and become mediocre that is your fault and not your father's. There will be plenty of opportunities to do great things if you put the work in

Or you know you could just start a revolution and change the system, but getting fucked in the ass is nice too.

Community college is not a weird choice and is the best choice if you want to pursue a 4 year degree but have no scholarships to 4 year unis and want to avoid 2 extra years of loans. Chances are if you do get into an ivy league or similar top school you qualify for great scholarships to instate public unis and that would probably be better than the CC route. If you get financial aid to make a top private uni cheap? Great, go for it. But some people just go into insane $250k (friend at MIT) of debt just to get a bachelors and I dont see that as worth it if you got a near fullride at perfectly fine public instate unis. For a masters I think going a top tier expensive route is worth it because you should be able to qualify for TA and RA positions after a while to mitigate that debt and it is only 2 years vs 4 years of debt.

Those schools are fine. I went to UA, and am now at a top 10 graduate program in physics.

What you get out of your undergraduate education is exactly what you put into it. Although you won't have the advantage of having as many extremely intelligent, ambitious people around you, you can still master the coursework and distinguish yourself.

Just a warning, though. You wrote there your father is condemning you to a life of mediocrity - you had better stop this loser attitude now. If you go to a state school, your education is completely your responsibility, and you'll have to push yourself. Blaming anything on anyone but yourself is a mistake, and life won't reward you for it.

Almost could not matter less.

I'm not trying to imply that I'm exactly content with the principle of the situation- I was just handing out advice.

It matters a lot if you are a student posting on Veeky Forums that is in massive debt praying that their gamble will pay off . If you are actually working it makes no difference. I don't know, much less care, where most of my colleagues went to school or what they majored in, and if I do know it's typically because it came up in a conversation about a geographical location or personal history, not because it has a single thing to do with their relevance to the task at hand.

He has Asperger's syndrome
He doesn't want me to go to the state schools in Cali. I told him the mathematics program is reputedly garbage at ASU but he says that it's not a good return on investment to attend expensive schools. He wants me to be in tech like he is.
I did not work hard in high school only to attend an average uni with dubious employment options for undergrad. The train toward exciting employment opportunities is here I see no reason why I shouldn't board it now. I want to be challenged and I think ASU can't provide that as well as other schools can. Pushing myself in the future won't help HR prefer my 4.0 GPA from a rank 60 University to a 3.0 GPA from UCLA. If I want the most exciting jobs, the best prospects, the most income, then Arizona schools shouldn't be my first choice.

No, it does not. If you are truly intelligent you'll be able to find financial success with any kind of degree because normally you would be defined by your out-of-school experiences rather than your shitty diploma.

Also, if you are going to college to study CS, you are a fucking brainlet.

I was told a CS degree was great for finding jobs. Are there other majors that might be similarly lucrative? Perhaps chemical engineering or some kind of mathematics?

Math is really interesting and probably my favorite subject so far but I have been told that it is relatively useless when it comes to finding good paying work post college.

most people here are kids in undergrad, horrible place to ask.
I'll just say that, if you're only going for a bachelor's, it matters a good bit for your first job but after that literally no one cares.

why don't you fuck off and stop replying to every thread, dumbass?

Did you ever stop being mad you didn't get into the school you wanted?
Thinking about leaving the friends I made at meme school to transfer to the one that rejected me when I was 18 sucks

Do people actually work a ton in college? Do they get high paying summer jobs? Do their parents usually shell over a ton of money?

I'm trying to figure out how graduates of a university that costs 25k a year come out with an average of 27k in loans. If I could do that, I'd go- but the math just isn't adding up for how that's possible.

If they're enrolled in classes they probably get a lot of need-based aid. Those who don't receive as much aid work part-time. The ones who can't afford to go at all don't go.

A course based on Pinter is different than one on Artin.

>Does choice of college matter much for STEM degrees in the US?
Not tremendously. I think the biggest advantage is that some schools give students exposure to PhD students and research programs that other schools do not. A smaller, relatively unknown state school may not have the opportunities that a flagship public university would. That said, there have been plenty of students who came from smaller, state schools went on to careers in research. I think the key is doing REUs as undergrad -- these are, essentially, summer internships at big research universities, such as flagship state schools or big-name private schools.

>If I could attend a significantly cheaper state school that isn't nationally known, would it be limiting compared to a state school that's like top 20 for mathematics?
I think it could be limiting in that you may not be able to get experience as an undergrad in some of the research groups at the top-20 school. But, it's not a huge impediment. Do an REU at the top-20 school (or, any big-name school for that matter), then do your PhD where ever.

IMO, that thinking is misguided. I disagree that a good graduate/research school is, by extension, lacking in undergraduate training, as if there is a zero-sum game. To the contrary, I think that good graduate schools are better for undergraduates because students are exposed to PhD students and graduate-level training.

Plus, as has been mentioned, UW-Madison is easily one of the best schools for research in the country.

Honestly, you're incredibly naive and need to pull the massive stick out of your ass.

Naive for wanting a better education? Ok buddy

Thank you. If you go to a no-name school and be a no-name for the whole duration of your undergrad what do you expect other than to be treated like some fucking no-name?

Naive for thinking "omg if I don't go to a top X school then I'm doomed forever to be stupid!" You can get a perfectly fucking fine education at AU.

I was in a similar situation as , and you can't just "get" aid as if you're completely independant. I lived on my own and paid all my own bills except cell phone, and I used my parents' insurance, and it just doesn't cut it. I think if you aren't even on their insurance you can apply to FAFSA as an independant but it really doesn't help you much. Begging the school does nothing because in all probability, there are 1000 students with the same exact qualifications as you, who don't need the help. My school told me to eat shit

>ASU
>fine
Umm what exactly about ASU is fine?
It's ranked 139 nationally colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/arizona-state-university-1081
But whatever you get what you pay for.

>you get what you pay for

fucking brainlet

Those rankings don't fucking matter. I get that you think they do, as I felt the same at your age. Nobody in life will give two shits where you went to school. You will be able to get any job or go to any grad school if you work hard and learn a lot. Hell, if you're so great then it should be easy to stand out amongst the morons you expect to be in class with.

>tfw going to ucr

Y-you're just memeing right a-user?

Really though, you're an EE major right? Sure it might not be because the lack of jobs in the field right now? I know ucla is simply better but competition must be hard too which is why students from better schools make it. I know a guy who will have a guaranteed 80k job after graduating from ucr for CS. I know ucr isn't that great but I think the major also matters. Well I hope so anyways otherwise I'll regret not going to Pomona. Which isnt even that great either.

If you can't do well there then you are the problem not the university. Sounds like you will turn out mediocre on your own accord no matter where you go.