College education in the US has become a luxury for the select few. Education costs have risen 4 times as fast as the cost of a standard basket of goods. However, there is still good value for money out there if you know what to look for.

My name is Jan, I was born in Slovakia and I just graduated from Rice University in Houston, Texas. The first time I applied to US colleges, I got rejected from all of them. The second time, after I’d spent months getting better at everything from standardized tests to selling myself in essays, I got in. I ended up graduating with a double major in Mathematics and Economics and a $25,000 debt thanks to incredible help from my family and the university. I am now heading to a PhD program in economics in Europe. In the past two years, I advised several students on the college application process and the best affordable education. Here is some of my advice:

Prestige Comes at a Cost

Getting accepted to a prestigious school comes with an incredible feeling of joy and pride for you, your family and friends. It might feel irresponsible to reject the opportunity of a lifetime and let down your loved-ones, but all of you will carry the high cost of education in the years ahead. However, a name on your resume may not be worth the $200,000+ you are paying for it in case you received no financial aid. At the standard interest rate of 4.5% (for loans offered by the federal government), you would have to pay $1265.30 every month for 20 years to repay your loan, effectively paying $303,672 with the added interest. For this to make sense, a famous school costing $200k would have to give you approximately $10,000 more annually than a degree from a less famous school costing half the figure (state schools, school which offer you a scholarship). This truly may be the case for some schools and some majors, but for many, paying more than $15k every year starting right after graduation may be extremely stressful. At half the cost, the repayment drops to about $7,600. I would also like to add that high-cost private schools don’t necessarily give you a better experience than state schools or cheaper ones. A lot of my friends at Rice preferred to watch Khan Academy or MIT OpenCourseWare instead of going to lectures. My friend recently got accepted to MIT but chose to go to Georgia Tech, where he received a large scholarship, a choice I really respect. Although not all of us can get accepted to MIT, we all have choices when it comes to our education.

Get the Name for a Lower Price Tag

Acquiring a master’s degree can be a way to pay $50-60k for a prestigious name instead of the $200k, since employers usually look at your highest level of education. While the acceptance rate to Stanford’s undergraduate program is 4.7%, meaning one in every 21 applicants gets in, the rate is almost 20% for the Stanford graduate school of engineering and 8% for its business school. Acceptance rates for business schools at Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg are 12%, 19% and 26%, all significantly higher than the respective acceptance rates for their undergraduate programs. Many jobs in consulting and investment banking pay for their employees’ tuition in return for several more years of work at the firm (in consulting, it’s quite standard for Bane, BCG, Deloitte and others, I know this is the case).

Learn Online

Online courses such as Coursera.org, Edx.org or Ocw.mit.edu offer the full package of educational materials from some of the best US universities for free or pennies compared to college tuition. You can get a whole “Data Specialization” Certificate on Coursera for $300 by taking a succession of programming and data analysis classes. Rice University has a few classes on Coursera and they are some of the most celebrated courses at the university. The toughest part about getting a course done online is the tremendous discipline it requires – there is nobody there to give you a zero or yell at you if you don’t do your homework. However, if you master this skill, you can literally get MIT education for free (apart from discussing things with smart classmates). I believe the landscape in the US job market is changing quickly as people realize traditional college education is becoming a luxury. While for some extremely competitive professions such as journalism or art, a prestigious degree can differentiate you from others, a skilled programmer or a salesperson can find a job without a well-known, or possibly without any college degree. Moreover, spending a year at a community college or taking courses online may be a much better investment than going straight to a university without a plan. The worst case scenario which is not too uncommon is to end up with a debt and an unfinished college education.

Study abroad

By this, I don’t mean going on a semester-long stay to a foreign location, but to actually finish your degree in another country. Germany offers FREE TUITION for international students from all over the world if they can get in (German skills are required for some majors and scholarships). Students report spending about 600 euros per month living in Germany while being enrolled at a university, which would not even cover the living costs in the US. In this line of thinking, it is exciting US tuition costs are tremendously high, since virtually anywhere you go, you will end up paying less. Other popular destinations include the UK, Canada, Ireland, France and Australia. What I have found applying to economics PhD programs in the US and Europe, the curriculum is virtually the same on both continents for the first two years, many of them using the very same textbooks (Microeconomic Theory nicknamed MWG, for example). The differences between undergraduate curricula between Europe and the US are also relatively small and one could subsidize his European education by an online course from a US university to make sure to cover the differences – it would be a hassle but one worth the tens of thousands of dollars saved. Lastly, you could always get a master’s degree in the US upon return to get the name recognition as per previous paragraph. Not to forget, US employers value international experience which comes with language skills and new ways of thinking.

Choose a major with decent job prospects

This advice might be an unpopular one since it goes against the old saying – go for anything you are passionate about and you will be fine and happy with your life. I am not saying this is not true, but I think it’s almost cruel to tell a Medieval Art, Gender Studies or Archeology major at a mid-ranked university to pursue their dreams, because in all likelihood, they will struggle to find a job where they can use their specialization. Most US universities have these majors or analogous ones, while there are few jobs which apply them, which are mostly professorships which require a PhD. While you may have the time of your life at the university, you might be in for a rough start to the “real life” with negative assets and a hard time finding a well-paying job (let alone one in the industry). On a more positive note, I think every passion can be put to fantastic use – if you love biology, which is by itself a tough specialization to apply, couple it with statistics and data analysis to differentiate your skills. If you love art, double major in business or learn about web and app development, which will be great assets.

In any case, good luck, you can do this!

I apologize for the questionable organization of this text, if the Steem community is interested in more topics or a deeper analysis of any one of them including sources for reference, I would be happy to write.

Source for graph: http://priceonomics.com/the-supersizing-of-american-colleges/