RIT Physics or SUNY Brockport for Financially Savvy College Dropouts?

[MadMike1986]

HI,

I admittedly have trouble making important decisions and would like some experienced input that I could mull over.

I dropped out of a mechanical engineering program in my senior year of college and entered the workforce. I got layed off about a month ago and applied to RIT to finish my mechanical engineering degree which will only take me 1 year to complete. I found out yesterday that RIT accepted me, however the ME program is filled, so they awarded me my second choice: Physics. Now I Love physics, more than I like Mechanical Engineering, but it will likely take me 2 full years to complete the degree requirements, and thereby run up a ton of money in loans. As i am a college dropout and have been working for the past year I know the value of money and how crappy student loans are.

So as an alternative I could attend the close by SUNY College at Brockport, which is mainly a liberal arts college, and not a very reputable one at that. However I could pay the tuition quite easily without the need for any loans. What are your thoughts, Is going to a school like brockport for physics a good idea just to save money? Is RIT worth $28,000 a year?
I don't plan on going to graduate school for Physics. Possibly for Optics though. It seems like a bachelors in physics from a school like brockport wouldn't fetch too many jobs is my only concern... That and I really like the atmosphere at RIT.

 

[damit]

RIT as a school is a very amazing place for learning if that is your goal. I regret my decision to transfer out of my engineering track to pursue a liberal arts education at GWU in international affairs. I can only give a comparison between the two universities and I have to say academics and professors at RIT are very helping, I actually had a better gpa as a engineering student their then as a international relations student here in dc and the courses were harder but the teaching quality was great. So spending 50k a year now, I can say that I believe RIT at 28k was a steal and I can only assume the education got better. Also my friends who graduated from the school ended up with six figure salary jobs in nyc whereas I know people from columbia and cornell engineering who are not doing as well. I do not know why that is but it goes to show that RIT is very serious on becoming a great institution by creating very competitive individuals for the work force. Also I am going to guess that these same kids have a better chance at getting admitted to top graduate schools.

What was interesting is that when I was at RIT I always felt my peers were very intelligent people but very socially awkward. After some of my friends graduated they turned into people with good social skills, some actually have moved down to DC and are doing very well. I was and am so impressed because their is a lack of social life at RIT but because of that one learns his/her subject of interest rather well and has the time to figure themselves out.

 

[MadMike1986]

excellent response. That's the way I feel about RIT too. And yes learning is my main priority.