Is it worth going to a high level school such as UC Berkeley and going tens of thousands of dollars into debt?

I have a BS and MS in EE, and PhD CompE (Illinois).  I'll be blunt: if you are committed to doing EE, and you are a strong student, graduate from Berkeley or another top school.  No question. Details: Notice I said "graduate," not "go to."  Consider going to a academically weaker school for your core math, science, and general education requirements, and transferring to Berkeley at a later date.  That will mitigate your costs and give you a chance to line up a scholarship at Berkeley.  Some friends did that at Illinois (community college and weak state school), as well as my wife (San Jose State for the first year, then accepted to Berkeley and Illinois).  It didn't hurt them at all in long term reputation, but their in-school networks were weaker.  You will need a near-perfect GPA to do it. The brand discussion is not very relevant here.  Berkeley EECS is a tough program, period, and that's what gives employers and graduate schools confidence.  When a resume comes in with a GPA of 3.5 at Berkeley, it gets my attention. The two schools you mentioned in the details are not comparable to Berkeley in EE.  You will learn significantly less at a weaker school and never get the same opportunities as you would at Berkeley, unless you did dismally at Berkeley and phenomenally at those schools.  You will likely not attend a top-5 graduate program if you go to those schools; even if you do get in, you will be disadvantaged to the students that did go to the demanding programs.  If you're interested in startup companies, many won't even look at your resume: they've got so many coming in from the top schools, it's not worth their time. Berkeley is indeed expensive.  But if you perform well, your salary out of school will approach or reach six figures.  You will pay your debt off quickly. Unless you're going professional with track (effectively impossible, as I'm sure you already know), its value in this discussion is solely as a money source.  EE companies won't care.  If you want to use the EE degree in a less restrictive area, e.g. management consulting or finance, it might help, but it's still secondary. Caveats: As mentioned by others, you probably can't get in-state tuition unless your parent/guardian moves into the state.  A friend's mother moved to California and sat around for a year to ensure in-state tuition for my friend's sister.  They bought a house (good luck doing that in the California market now) and the school checked immigration to confirm that the mother was in the country for the required amount of time. My recommendation is predicated on you being a strong student at Berkeley (above average at the least).  If you barely squeeze by at Berkeley, you won't have the same opportunities.  Going to a weaker school and transferring once you've settled would reduce the risk. The majority of people change their majors in school, and if you get out of engineering, Berkeley may not be anywhere near the value it would be with engineering.  So you'll need to be sure of your major.  Doing one year somewhere else and then transferring can again mitigate that risk. I'll add more if anything comes to mind.

You are considering colleges to pick to become an electrical engineer. The factors that you are using to make a decision are, in your words, Is it worth going to this school? will it pay off? strong in engineering scholarship/debt Here's what I learned about decision-making in my life (some call it cost-benefit analysis), and let me show you how to apply it. The first thing is to realize how important each of them is to you. This will require you to do some introspection - nobody else can do that for you. If I were you, I would do the same thing, but the difference is that what is important to me wouldn't be the same as what is important to you. Nevertheless, the process is the same. When you ask, "Is it worth going to this school?", you probably want to know whether you will get a job later so that you can pay off your debt. This is more often about monthly premiums and payback periods, than about whether you will get a job or not, which nobody can predict, not even you. Of course, that's true for any college, so it doesn't affect your decision. How important are these to you? You will have to find the typical salaries and job types from their career services websites, through your network, etc. When you say "strong in engineering", you probably mean the quality of courses, professors, labs, etc. How important are these to you? Once you assign relative importance to each factor (even new ones you can think of during the process), you will have to do some research to see how well each college you are considering meets these requirements. When you fill in the gaps after your research, you will be able to make a more informed decision. The difference between this method and the others is that even though you end up doing the same research, this method helps you clarify what you want and what you don't want, even if it makes you go, "Forget it, I will just flip a coin or throw a dart at them."

So many questions come up instead of absolute answers, I'm afraid. Are you going to major in a lucrative field?  It might -- in a few fields, I've seen starting salaries as much as $10-20K above the mean for the top students from the top schools.  If you're not, the lack of student loans will give you much more flexibility if you need to take a relatively poorly paid job to get a start in your field of choice.  Debt can make you choose the best pay over the best opportunity -- what if your field of choice usually requires a masters?  Can you see adding to that debt if necessary?  [Many fields offer substantially better opportunities if you have an advanced degree -- consider going to a top school for a masters after you've figured out what you're interested in as the best school may not be the one with the best overall rating.  And don't forget to consider geography -- if you want to end up in Wisconsin, you'll get the best connections and opportunities at University of Wisconsin (Madison) or Marquette.  I'm sure the same is true in other states. Will you be able to keep up with the academic side of your education if you have an athletic scholarship?  I think this is mandatory, especially in a technical field. Many employers will view your athletic scholarship as a significant plus -- I've worked for several managers who view team sports as almost mandatory for success (sadly, not something I did...), and I have never met a hiring manager who would be unimpressed by a student who worked 20 hours per week or more to keep an athletic scholarship and still did well in his or her classes -- you will have ample proof that you can work hard and still be effective. The need to pay back student loans will limit your choices much more than your choice of college in my opinion. The only two reasons I can think of (and I was definitely not an athlete in school, or now...) for not taking the scholarship: Will I have enough time for academics, and Can I study something that I'm interested in?

It's difficult to add something a lot more substantial to previous excellent answers. I mostly agree with them. Just to reiterate expressed points (and add a few of mine): 1) there are many variables (factors), which you need to limit to most essential; 2) you may try to apply cost-benefit analysis by assigning weights to the factors; 3) cost-benefit analysis is not a silver bullet, as assigning weights is subjective; 4) your weights (or just consideration) should include probabilities of getting scholarships in subsequent years and financial aid (or risks of not getting them); 5) your post-academic goals is of ultimate importance in making this decision - if you plan on going the research and/or teaching route in your field, than, IMHO, Berkeley should rank much higher on this factor (that's not to say that other schools are not good, but Berkeley "brand" is unbeatable, especially for the above-mentioned route); 6) consider your current (and future) family's resources and obligations; 7) consider TA and RA opportunities; 8) consider your plans/goals in terms of desired location of residence; 9) consider level of interest in your narrow fields of interest across schools; 10) trust you gut feeling (well, at least, seriously consider it). In other words, it's a tough decision and only you can make it. Good luck!

If it was me, I would go for the scholarship. However this depends a lot on family wealth and academic skill to determine what the risks and opportunities are.

It depends. UC Berkeley is a great school. I don't know what you're measuring it against though. Are the alternatives almost as good? Also: How many years can you keep your sports scholarship to the other schools? If you blow out your ACL and get cut from the team, will you still be able to afford the tuition?

1.  How important is it to you to run NCAA track while in college.  If it is realize that most walk-ons don't make the team, although I don't know the specifics of track at Cal.  Unless Coach Sandoval has given you explicit reasons to think you'll be the rare walk-on who makes the team consider that you likely won't be running track at Cal.  Cal does have a running club, the equivalent of club team track. 2.  While the EE program at the other schools may not be as strong as Cal, they may be good enough for a quality education. 3. Keep in mind that with the right record you can always go to Cal for graduate school and that the major Universities pay YOU to get certain PhDs from them. Both of my sons played baseball for U.C. schools, the youngest coming as a walk-on and was a starting pitcher as a freshman.  One is at Stanford getting a PhD in physics and the pother is at Duke Law School.  It is not easy to meet the demands of D1 athletics and be a successful student, but if you do, graduate schools look on that as something special. I wanted to give you a response from the athletic and well as academic perspective.  Good luck.

If I am sure of the in-state fee after the first year and scholarship opportunity in junior year, then I would actually plan of going to UC Berkeley. But if I am not sure about that, then I would definitely go to the universities where I would study for free.

1. Berkeley has a stronger career center. If you do EE, you will probably have the means to apply to a fairly respectable EE firm. This means you can pay off your student debt, and start making money for yourself. 2. However, keep in mind Berkeley is highly competitive, overcrowded, and every job post comes with a hundred other students hoping to beat you out. If you're not the type to be competitive (unlikely due to your athlete history), know that it won't be an easy road. 3. People in college change. If you don't want to do EE, then you can possibly change to do something else. However, this is different when you have student loans and debt. If you want to change at Berkeley, I recommend changing into a lucrative field, like Finance. Otherwise, if you want to change into something obtuse, then going to another school would be better. 4. Debt matters. Debt changes your life. Debt makes you take the job you don't want to take but you have to in order to pay off your loans. Keep that in mind.