alt Hacker NewsWhen I was touring colleges as a high school senior I met someone who had gotten into MIT but whose family could only afford to send one kid to an elite college, him or his sister. He decided to go to a state school which was a lot less expensive but whose academics weren't close to the same level. This stuff matters to people.
Replies
When was this? MIT's financial aid was already very generous when I was applying (in 2008); IIRC the no-tuition threshold was 100 k$ back then
I'm the first person in my family to have gone to college, and we never really had any money.
Still, I've always been interested in science growing up. I was programming video games and building little robots before I was 10 and envisioned myself being a robotics engineer when I got older. I got into Johns Hopkins for a double major of physics and astronomy, I couldn't actually afford it, didn't win enough scholarships (they only awarded a very small subset), and my family didn't have the money.
In the end I ended up going to a local college for computer information systems, and while I love my IT job, it's well under six figures, and I'm $60,000 in student loan debt that I'm probably gonna be paying off for the rest of my life.
> I met someone who had gotten into MIT but whose family could only afford to send one kid to an elite college, him or his sister.
So they were rich enough that he didn't get exempt from tuition but still could only send one kid to an elite school?
I wonder if the guy was just pulling your leg.
Most students go into debt to attend college. I fell into a bracket where I didn’t get any financial assistance but my parents didn’t want to/couldn’t pay for tuition. I got personal loans for everything. I think this is a common scenario.