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Comment by RegEx | Hacker News Reader

I was part of a poor family growing up. I received many letters and packages from upper tier schools after my PSAT. I got top 5% in the nation for math, so that may be why. I didn't take them seriously, though. Now I'm at University of Texas (at Tyler), where the idea of computer science education is a series of publisher-distributed PowerPoint slides.

I want to move to a different school with passionate teachers and students, but now I have financial obligations(unemployed mom can't find work so I'm taking over her bills while she goes to school). I'm currently looking for a python remote job or job near Dallas. Until I can find something, I have to stay at this job so I can support my mom, thus UT Tyler is my only option.

I wish I would have done more research on scholarship opportunities back in high school. Maybe I'd be somewhere great right now. Oh well.

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It's never too late to transfer - and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!

I went to a major public university my freshman year and transferred to an Ivy League school once I decided I wasn't satisfied with my experience at the public university. It ended up actually being significantly cheaper for me to go to the Ivy League, and opened up a world of opportunity and support I would have never found at my original school.

Since then, my sister has also attended the same Ivy League (you see a lot of families/siblings at such schools) almost free of charge. I could also go on about how the resources and individual support from a private school (effective tuition of 50-60k) far exceed that of a public school - even a top UC.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to chat.

I'm at a community college (because I have no money, not because I'm stupid) and am presently trying to transfer to two "elite" schools. One says pretty explicitly that they don't guarantee that they meet full need for transfers, even though they brag about it for their 18 year old freshman applicants. The other seems more welcoming, but I'm still nervous. I don't know if I've gotten into them or not, either. I can barely afford $3500/year tuition for a community college, much less something way above that while also paying to move and live in another state. (Luckily I got 2 science scholarships to cover my CC tuition for the 2012-2013 year, but I still have to worry about food and rent. The maximum amount of stafford loan I can take out is barely enough to live on, even as an independent student.)

Is it all right to ask what Ivy you went to? Is it the same as the school associated e-mail in your profile?

> and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!

That isn't necessarily the case. A close friend of mine attended a school (Bradley University, admittedly not ivy league) that gave a full ride to national merit scholars and finalists, but only if they had never enrolled anywhere else. She was a finalist, but she attended a state school for her freshman year. Bradley gave her nothing, but she still enrolled because money wasn't her biggest concern. She got her degree, but has said on numerous occasions that she'll never give a dime to any of their alumni fund-raisers since she paid the full load up front.

With the way most schools treat their students as cattle they need to get through the mill as quickly as possible, it amazes me that anyone donates to alumni organizations.

> It's never too late to transfer - and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!

This is definitely the case. I went to a state school that was cheap. Transfering to a top school that usually costs 10x but with financial aid ended up being cheaper still.

You're already in the UT system so, unless you're just terrible, you can move to any other school that's part of UT. If you're looking for north Texas, go for UT Arlington; they're more technology-focused than UT Dallas. Also, for a reasonably well-paying job, look at datacenter operations stuff. People who are skilled at Unix and scripting and who might want to work odd hours--great for a student--are in demand. SoftLayer and companies in the Infomart are always looking for folks.

I'm curious as to why you'd rate UT Arlington ahead of UT Dallas on technology, since I'd put them the other way around.

This is really good information, thank you very much.

If you can, transfer to UT Austin they have one of the best CS programs in the country.

Arguably up there with Stanford.

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