Important question--where your parents going to pay for college?
Aye, there's the rub. Education money. If they were not going to pay, then you have nothing to lose.
If they were going to pay, then it is not such a clear cut choice. Education is expensive. Working to put yourself through college can be done but it takes much, much longer. I have had friends say they learned more when they were working, bla, bla, bla, but the truth of the matter is that GETTING the degree is what is important to your salary. I had a degree at 22 thanks to my parents, my friend got her degree at 31. She didn't need it earlier because she was in the army, but in the work force a degree is often the ticket in.
There are some posters who have faked belief for the education benefits. Personally, I think there is nothing wrong with that.
If you have to play your parents, some missionaries have said that they prayed about it and that they were to get an education first. Add some bull sheet about education will let you rise above and give you a greater audience for spreading the gospel now that it is so hard to find converts.
Quoth the Raven Nevermo Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> Working to put yourself through college can be > done but it takes much, much longer.
"working to put yourself through college," had changed a lot in the last few decades. College costs have increased a LOT faster than wages. Your parent's generation who worked a menial, minimum-wage job 20 hours a week to cover their college expenses wonder why their children can't do the same.
Now if you work 40 hours a week you barely can cover tuition and books. And that's for an "affordable" college. If we're talking one of the better private school's forget it.
For example, suppose you attend the University of Utah and work 40 hours per week at the minimum wage rate of $7.25 per hour. In 52 weeks that adds up to $15,080. Social Security will reduce that to $13,926. Two semester's tuition at the U of U is $7,139. Throw in books and fees, and that easily reaches $8,000.
That means you have $5,926 left to live on for food, rent, clothing, transportation etc. That's $493 per month to live on.
Oh, my yes. The glut of baby boomers were good times for colleges, endless freshman. I am at the end of the boomers, started college in 1978, U of Maryland, full time tuition was $300 as semester, with room and board, the bill was $1200.
In 1983 full time tuition went up to $600 a semester.
I was the cheapest kid to educate. My sister went 4 years out of state. My brother 2 years out, and 3 years in, at a more expensive college than U of Md.
When I was at U of Md, people openly smoked pot on the mall, don't know anyone who was arrested on campus for pot. Professors slept with students (former students if they were careful), I never heard of disciplinary actions for such.