Chief Delphi - Liberal Arts Colleges as viable institutions for Engineers

I gave David a PM I would like to share:
I really really wanted to go to Rose Hulman in 1997. In 1996, tuition was $20K/year. Rose was willing to give me $2K of assistance. I come from a middle class family and in Indiana, that means you are screwed for financial aid. It is a really good school, but the year before I graduated, they bumped their tuition up to $28K. This meant that by the time I graduated, I would likely have over $75K in student loans.

Purdue on the other hand, was $10K for tuition and board. They offered me $1200 my freshmen year. I had saved up $11k going in. For my sophomore year, I made a good enough impression on the ME department that they set me up with $3K to $3.5K in scholarships the 3 years after that. That along with internships and some help from home, I made it out of Purdue debt free.
Since Purdue paid about $11k of the $40K, let's assume I was able to pay $29K. For Rose Hulman, this still would have left me with about $75K of student loans.
At $500/month this would take 150 months or 12.5 years not including interest. With a tiny 3% interest rate, it moves out to almost 16 years with a total outlay of $94K. At 5%, it is almost 20 years with a total outlay of $120K.
While $120K may not sound like a lot of money relative to a salary of $60-90K, it is important to remember that a lot of that $60-90K will already be spoken for. That $120K is basically like leases for nice new cars for the next 20 years.

While I agree that a quality education is nearly priceless, I would caution that the price of an education does not necessarily equate to the quality of an education.

The quality of your education depends mostly on you and your personal motivations, drive, aptitude, and social abilities to get along with other students and professors.

Now I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there are likely differences in opportunities. If you go to a very expensive school, you will typically be hanging out with a more affluent crowd. The affluent crowd often has better connections. Big universities though often have more connections and name recognition worldwide.

Last, but certainly not least, if you want to go clear through to get a PHD, it is good to talk to the Universities that you might want to do that work at to see if they have any "not grown here" policies. The ME department at Purdue often favored outside undergrads for ther Masters and PHD programs in order to provide a richer environment for the students in those programs.