re: Are out of state colleges worth it?

It's only important for bragging on social media

Top 50 privates, maybe with the right major. Leaving the state to go to Ole Miss and Auburn and UGA, no.

petrolum engineering

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Meh. I can tell you from direct experience that it's still way cheaper to stay in state even in these cases, at least for kids coming from Louisiana or Georgia where you have something like TOPS or HOPE to cover a large portion of in-state tuition.

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In our case the comparable New Mexico and Washington lottery scholarship paid the instate rate at out of state schools that were party to the respective reciprocity agreement. Washington includes a living expense stipend...it was about $300 a month if memory serves...that is sent directly to the student or the parents checking account upon confirmation from the school of satisfactory academic progress. That being said neither state's lottery scholarship was a full ride. Depending on family income in both cases housing and meal plans may or may not be covered, text books may or may not be and a host of fees and other expenses. At the end of the day we wound up paying about $20K a year out of pocket for our son to go to UC BOULDER and he has about $12K in student loan debt. He had to have a dorm room and meal plan (that he did not use) the first year so we paid that and paid the rent on an apartment but after his freshman year we only paid his apartment rent. All in it cost us about $75-80K out of pocket...and cost him probably $30K, not counting the amount covered by the state's lottery scholarship. It is a ridiculous amount of monet. Of course we could have not paid for his rent, which was the lions share of our out of pocket expenses, but we could afford it and did it because it was a better situation for all of us...we had a place to stay close to Denver where my wife and I both were traveling to regularly for work. It is still a ridiculous amount of money.

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Alabama just offered my son 5 year full ride mechanical engineering WITH MBA.

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Cheers to your son.

I was going to say, if your kid is in the top 5-10% of test scores but in a very tough state like Florida, Texas, and Georgia then many other states that are not competitive will often times offer great scholarships like Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, etc.

I’d assume there are schools beyond the SEC that do this also but we never hear about it.

In hindsight I would have enjoyed going to college somewhere like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, etc but I never considered it. Depending on your child’s interests, throwing out some applications may be worth your time just to see what’s out there.

I moved out of state so now the good college is in state. Best decision we ever made for our kids’ futures.

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an engineering degree from GT maybe worth it over LSU if you plan to live in Atlanta

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An engineering degree from GT will be worth it over LSU anywhere in the country. I say this as someone with an engineering degree from LSU who works side by side with a few GT grads. I guess will be worth can be replaced by should be worth. I make the same income as them, but they have a much better chance at getting their foot in the door at a company. If we all got laid off today and applied for the same job somewhere else, I'd 100% feel like I was starting from behind.

There are definitely options where going to the school you want to go to is worth it compared to going to the one that happens to be in the state you live. It silly to think otherwise, but each case is specific to the individual situation.

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It depends on each child if it’s worth it. Look for scholarships and how bad the tuition will be. My daughter goes to Colorado State. They offered good scholarships but still expensive. She has immersed herself in the university and has a job that she loves and will hire her full time after graduation. It was the perfect move for her but it’s not worth it for everyone.
Colorado, like a lot of states, will consider you an out of state student until you have gotten a Colorado permanent address and driver’s license and are employed in the state for a year. Oh…and you must be 22 years old to be considered not a dependent on your parents….even after one year of living in the state. We lived in Louisiana until late last year so my daughter is considered a Louisiana resident.

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I think this brings up an important point, if your kid wants to move away and not stay in Louisiana, it may be worth it to them. They can establish a network of professional and personal friends while in college that will be very valuable when they graduate.

I can't see how it's remotely worth it if your kid wants to stay in Louisiana though.

Nope.40K for Texas Tech is not worth it.

How long has your son been at BAMA in Chem-MBA?