Yep. If you have the option to go to college without paying, you should do it unless there are strong mitigating factors. And you haven't got a free ride to Idaho State University here: You have Tufts, in Boston, for free. Swallow your pride and grab that!
There is nothing better for your career as an entrepreneur than to spend four years in Boston, among students, and then emerge debt-free. Save that money you would spend going to Cornell so that you can spend it on your startup later.
The dirty little secret of undergraduate education is: It's much the same wherever you go. You are taught by grad students and by professors who have not got enough seniority to get out of teaching undergraduates. The textbooks are the same everywhere. The engineering schools with better reputations usually get those reputations by having lots of great, well-funded researchers... none of whom have anything to do with undergraduate teaching if they can help it. And if you're smart, curious, have a good library and two or three mentors you're going to learn as much as you want, no matter the surroundings.
Sometimes the smaller schools with poorer research reputations actually have better undergraduate teaching.
Until you get to much lower-ranked schools than any on your list, the major difference from school to school is your fellow students. But Tufts is in Boston. If the Tufts scene just isn't for you, ride the train to MIT. I've been impersonating an MIT alum off and on for years, and I'm sure impersonating a student is even easier if you're the right age. Just go to their club meetings, study in their libraries, hang out at Mary Chung's. Get summer jobs in their labs or their startups. You can probably even take their classes if you want.
Now, here's a hypothesis for you [1]: I'm guessing that your otherwise inexplicable rejection from all those top schools is because they took one look at your application, said "hey, this one will be getting an admission and a free ride from Tufts," and decided to expend their precious slots elsewhere.
[EDITORIAL UPDATE: I've removed my interesting sidelight about the old Ivy League admissions collusion scandal, partly because it wasn't important to my wacky hypothesis, but mostly because I misremembered it. See below for correction and link.]
I'm sorry if that rankles. Nobody likes to feel like they're being railroaded. But you are being railroaded into freaking Tufts. Count your blessings! Ride the legacy-student rails! Pick another time of life to be crazy and rebellious! And if you get too depressed, go talk to someone who just got out of school and is $50k in debt.
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[1] Obviously, this hypothesis hinges on your application containing information about who your mother is and where she works. I'm assuming it does -- financial aid applications have that and more, right? Although for all I know the colleges have a strict separation of financial-aid apps and admissions apps, and they also don't cheat. In which case, on to the next hypothesis! ;)
So the schools would collude: They would quietly agree that Student X would be admitted to Harvard but nowhere else, Student Y would be admitted to Cornell, and so forth.
I'm pretty sure this is mistaken information. The quoted statement is about admission rather than financial aid. The colleges used to confer about financial aid offers. Then, yes, they were told based on antitrust law that they couldn't do that anymore.
Now, with permission from Congress, they STILL confer to discuss general principles of how they administer financial aid, but I'm sure that the admission decisions are not made in collusion, and I'm even more sure that the college lawyers now don't let the financial aid offices talk about specific applicants before financial aid offers are made.
well-said. an opportunity to study for free at a top-tier university in boston is an incredible one. i went to tufts undergrad and just finished an MS in Computer Science there as well. i was definitely in a similar situation as you when i initially applied to colleges (strong application, but didn't get into the ivies), so i wasn't sure how appropriate tufts would be for me. my concern was ill-founded, as there are plenty of students there just as academically intense. OP, feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions i could answer. email is in my profile.
There is nothing better for your career as an entrepreneur than to spend four years in Boston, among students, and then emerge debt-free. Save that money you would spend going to Cornell so that you can spend it on your startup later.
The dirty little secret of undergraduate education is: It's much the same wherever you go. You are taught by grad students and by professors who have not got enough seniority to get out of teaching undergraduates. The textbooks are the same everywhere. The engineering schools with better reputations usually get those reputations by having lots of great, well-funded researchers... none of whom have anything to do with undergraduate teaching if they can help it. And if you're smart, curious, have a good library and two or three mentors you're going to learn as much as you want, no matter the surroundings.
Sometimes the smaller schools with poorer research reputations actually have better undergraduate teaching.
Until you get to much lower-ranked schools than any on your list, the major difference from school to school is your fellow students. But Tufts is in Boston. If the Tufts scene just isn't for you, ride the train to MIT. I've been impersonating an MIT alum off and on for years, and I'm sure impersonating a student is even easier if you're the right age. Just go to their club meetings, study in their libraries, hang out at Mary Chung's. Get summer jobs in their labs or their startups. You can probably even take their classes if you want.
Now, here's a hypothesis for you [1]: I'm guessing that your otherwise inexplicable rejection from all those top schools is because they took one look at your application, said "hey, this one will be getting an admission and a free ride from Tufts," and decided to expend their precious slots elsewhere.
[EDITORIAL UPDATE: I've removed my interesting sidelight about the old Ivy League admissions collusion scandal, partly because it wasn't important to my wacky hypothesis, but mostly because I misremembered it. See below for correction and link.]
I'm sorry if that rankles. Nobody likes to feel like they're being railroaded. But you are being railroaded into freaking Tufts. Count your blessings! Ride the legacy-student rails! Pick another time of life to be crazy and rebellious! And if you get too depressed, go talk to someone who just got out of school and is $50k in debt.
---
[1] Obviously, this hypothesis hinges on your application containing information about who your mother is and where she works. I'm assuming it does -- financial aid applications have that and more, right? Although for all I know the colleges have a strict separation of financial-aid apps and admissions apps, and they also don't cheat. In which case, on to the next hypothesis! ;)