Opinions on Texas Colleges (Houston, Dallas: 2014, apartments, credit)
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I am living in the Midwest, but looking to move to Texas in the next year or so. Once I’m there I will be attending college. I have narrowed my list down to University of North Texas, Texas State University and Texas A&M University. I would love to go to UT Austin, but there is no way I could afford the out-of-state tuition there.
I know that it would be best to visit all of these schools before making any concrete plans, but for the foreseeable future I do not have the means to do so, so any information to help me narrow down where I will actually look when it gets closer/I am able to get down there. Here are a few of my questions.
My ultimate goal is to become my Elementary Ed degree, which I have noticed Texas schools have it as an Interdisciplinary Studies degree. I also am planning on adding the ESL certification to me degree. How do you feel that these schools are for this degree? If they don’t have the greatest reputations which schools in Texas do? Also, how are these schools regarding financial aid for out-of-state students?
I am not opposed to living on campus for the first year or so, but probably won’t stay there the whole time since I will be 23-24 before I get down there. Is there off-campus housing within walking/biking distance to these schools? How expensive is off-campus housing near them?
I have grown up in small towns, but have lived in a bigger city for 2 years while taking some college classes and found that I like the big city vs. rural/small towns. Which of these schools, if any, would fit that? Along these lines, are the areas around these schools safe for a single, 20-something, female living on her own? What are the areas like?
I anticipate needing to work while going to school down there. How likely am I to find a place that will work around a school schedule?
Also, I have been contemplating taking some classes at a community college before I start at a 4-year college. I have some college experience already also. Do you have any recommendations on community colleges near these schools? Would it be better to take classes from a community college near my anticipated 4-year college or would any of them do? Would it give me an advantage to get an associate’s degree from a Texas community college before attending a 4-year college?
I believe that that is all for now. I will add more if I think of anything else! Feel free to ask me for additional information if you need it.
Look carefully at the number of semester hours each university will allow you to transfer in as part of your degree, as well as any specific restrictions on the kind (basic required courses for everyone vs courses related to your major) and level (lower vs upper division) of courses that may be transferred and count toward your degree.
At Texas State University you could do community college courses in Austin, just up the road, through Austin Community College (ACC). At UNT, you could do community college courses at Tarrant County Junior College (TCJC), with campuses around Fort Worth and various locations in Tarrant County (one of the counties immediately south of, and contiguous with, Denton County.
You would probably do well to do things like your American history and government requirements at a community college, if you are intent on taking some courses at a community college.
I am not sure why out of state tuition at UT is much different than it would be at Texas A&M.
The rules that control what you must do to eventually achieve resident status are the same for all state universities.
I am not so familiar with UNT. But it is Denton, which I am told is a kinda-cool college town. But it is not a big city. It is not far from Dallas in Texas terms, but you can't get to Dallas on a moment's notice. I don't know much about student living at UNT, on or off campus.
Texas State is in San Marcos, about 45 minutes from Austin. San Marcos is without a doubt a college oriented town. Known for a lively social scene. Also a long history of producing teachers. Lots of student oriented off campus choices.
Texas A&M is much larger, and Bryan/College Station is also very much a college town. There is more to do in BCS than many give credit for. It isn't the same BCS of 20 years ago. But it isn't Austin, or Dallas, or Houston. A&M is superior to the other two academically. Wide variety of off campus housing choices. Apartments, houses, etc.
Out of state tuition at UT is $16-18k. Out of state for A&M was over $20k, so you might want to reconsider A&M.
Denton has a large student population. There are plenty of apartments close to campus and you could ride your bike there easily (maybe not in the summer though). The city of Denton is quite large so you could probably find a job there without having to look in other cities. Most employers are probably willing to work with your schedule. I would also recommend Tarrant County community college to take some prereqs in, unless you have all of those fulfilled. They should transfer to UNT.
Out of state tuition at UT is $16-18k. Out of state for A&M was over $20k, so you might want to reconsider A&M.
Denton has a large student population. There are plenty of apartments close to campus and you could ride your bike there easily (maybe not in the summer though). The city of Denton is quite large so you could probably find a job there without having to look in other cities. Most employers are probably willing to work with your schedule. I would also recommend Tarrant County community college to take some prereqs in, unless you have all of those fulfilled. They should transfer to UNT.
I'm not as familiar with the other 2.
According to the data at collegeboard.com out of state tuition at UT-Austin is about $33K. It says A&M is about $25K.
San Marcos is much closer to Austin than a 45 min drive, unless you are driving in unusually awful traffic conditions. Of course it depends somewhat on where in Audtin you are driving from or to
As to UNT, I recommended TCJC as the community college possibility because I'm familiar with the locations of its campuses. Dallas County would also have a community college with multiple campuses, but I don't know the location of those. It might prove a little easier to commute between Denton and the Fort Worth burbs than to do the same between Denton and Dallas, but again it just depends on specific destinations.
Driving between Austin and San Marcos is definitely much easier.
Last edited by doctorjef; 05-16-2013 at 04:42 PM..
Texas State is a fine institution for Elementary Education. San Marcos is a great college town that has everything you need within a 5 minute car ride or 10-15 minute bike/walk. If you need to go up to Austin, its also a quick drive (20 minutes to Downtown without traffic).
My sister went to UNT so I am familiar with the school and the town of Denton but there is no way that I would go there over TXST.
1. most people think that you can come to Texas and start at a university or community college, go to school for a year and then become a resident and start paying in state tuition.....this is 100% incorrect......if you move to Texas you need to be a resident of Texas for a full year and gainfully employed for a full year straight in order to become a resident.....if you go to a university or community college during that year period you will be considered an out of state resident for the entire time that you are in school no matter how long it takes you to get the degree.....in other words you need to live and work in Texas for a full 12 months straight without interruptions without going to any community college or university or you will pay out of state tuition until you graduate
pay very close attention to part F....unless you can prove clear and convincing evidence that you moved to Texas for a reason other than to be a full time student you will not be considered a resident.....so if you do not follow Section A part 3 a/b and Section E part 3
so you will not be able to move to Texas and start community college or at a university for a full year and you will need to be gainfully employed for that entire 12 months or you will not be considered a resident of Texas the entire time you are in school unless you can provide clear and convincing evidence that you moved to Texas for some reason other than to go to school
if you have any questions or doubts I would suggest that you contact the THECB and not the universities since most people at the universities will not have a clue and or they will be interested in getting you as a warm tuition paying body and you will have little or no recourse against them if their information is incorrect
2. college board is crap....it is similar to wiki in that it is a good place to find some information and then use the source of that information to find the real accurate info
3. you are correct that most (soon to be all) universities in Texas offer an Interdisciplinary Studies degree with an education certification......in Education the good news is unless you are looking to be an administrator (and getting advanced degrees) it really does not matter what school you go to as far as landing a job and rate of pay....UT Austin has one of the top education colleges in the country, but their undergrad graduates will make the same exact pay in the same districts relative to any other graduate from any other school out there teaching the same subjects...I suppose a district might say "oh a UT grad" or perhaps they have had a good experience hiring graduates from some particular university, but there is every chance they will instead say "I liked how that individual presented themselves VS the other candidates" no matter the various universities......I have not known anyone that went to UT, SFA, Texas State, UTPB, TAMU or any other education program in Texas that had any difficulty getting hired because of their particular university choice (that was of course long before teaching became an over crowded field of study though) but the fact remains that an education degree is pretty much an education degree and you are going to get the job based on the personal interview, GPA, student teaching performance, your particular certifications (like ESL which is a smart choice to obtain), and something like math or science as well VS what university you went to
so when you student reach choose the school you try and student teach in wisely if at all possible and go out of your way to make yourself known (in a positive fashion of course haha)
4. avoid north Texas state at all cost.....the university itself is just a mess, Denton is an extremely boring college town, and their degree plans are a bigger mess than the university and they make you take an inordinate amount of garbage courses taught by completely and totally incompetent morons that runs the required amount of credit hours to graduate well beyond what other universities require for the same degree
just a complete and total time waste and money waste
above is a degree plan for an ESL Generalist K-6 from Texas State....see how it is all laid out in a nice easy to follow format that gives you the break down of what you need to take with each prereq listed for each course and a total number of hours needed to graduate (127)
take your choice of either one of those (I believe that is what is referred to as a hot ghetto mess)
only one of them gives a clue about the needed credit hours (99+42 = 141) which is 20 more credit hours than UTA and 14 more than Texas state and the rest is just a list of crap.....no prereqs, no actual time line or ability to really know exactly what you need.....just a big long list of courses with take some of these or take all of these or here are some more courses to do something with and of course the north texas favored caveat of "consult your adviser" except their advisers are total idiots and their degree plans are so screwed even the advisers can't follow them.....and it pretty much makes clear you are going to take 16-20 hours more than other universities that are as good or better especially in education
again see the difference....formats that one can actually try and make some sense of and follow VS just a long list of crap...125 semester hours spelled out clearly right at the top.....AVOID at all cost the school that is incapable of putting something like that together and instead list out crap and says contact an adviser....and of course you should contact an adviser regularly at all schools, but you should not need to do that to even get an idea of what your 4 year degree plan will look like.....and you really should not need to take 141 credit hours for a degree that can be obtained elsewhere for many fewer credit hours
5. financial aid.....with a few university specific programs that might exist as an out of state student financial aid will consist of what you qualify for in the way of pell grants and student loans and that is probably about it....once you are a resident that could change somewhat, but again that will really depend on the university and what type of endowment or program dollars they have available and generally at a place like TAMU (or UT) it will be pretty competitive for those dollars and even at Texas State or anywhere else it will be competitive as well
6. working while in school....Austin would have the most available jobs, but their cost of living will be much higher especially closer to campus.....next would be TAMU because College station has a very low unemployment index even with all the students and TAMU is actually still growing slightly as far as students and especially as far as the university as a whole with faculty and construction and the like....so even with a ton of students the jobs are still there (they might not be the greatest jobs), but they are there and the mass of students is large enough that it creates jobs VS some places where it makes the job scene very competitive....and TAMU does have enough students of means and graduate students (that generally do not work outside of school) that even with a large number of students there are plenty that are not competing for the available student jobs and the cost of living in College Station is still relatively reasonable
next Texas State and Denton would really be about a tie.....Denton is larger, but it is also closer to the metromess and it has more permanent residents that are looking for "jobs" because they live there as a far north suburban resident of "dallas" and their spouse is the main money maker and they just need a "job" that is maybe flexible as well or that is just a pay check.....because of this Denton employers do not have to be as flexible as far as school goes and those that are flexible are competitive because all the students want those jobs....."industry" in Denton mostly consist of service sector or jobs that are not looking for students because they don't need to deal with that....and commuting down past Lewisville anymore for a job is all but impossible especially when work on I-35 starts so give up on that idea and that factor is making jobs in Denton more competitive now as well
San Marcos on the other hand is smaller, but they have fewer permanent residents that are needing a job for a pay check to live, still mostly service sector jobs as well and they are competitive because of the number of students, but San Marcos more and more has a number of students that are also not looking to work while in school and there are a few that still go to Austin to work (more and more rare) or even live (even less common now) but the jobs that are available pretty much have to be flexible for students if they are going to hire for the service sector and even some of the non-service sector jobs because they have a smaller pool of full time residents to draw from
7. community college before full time university
A. again you you need to talk to the THECB and confirm what it takes to be a full time resident and how long you need to live and work in Texas before going to ANY school....I am pretty positive it is 12 months for both so it would be a major mistake to go to community college to "save money" and find out that by doing that before establishing residency you have cost yourself the ability to establish residency for the entire time you are in school
B. always work with the university you are looking to transfer to and look at the common course number grids to make sure everything transfers.....transferring is much easier now, but you will want to avoid taking classes that are generally outside of the common core courses because those become trickier to transfer especially if you have not decided on a 4 year school while the common core courses pretty much transfer easily to most any state school
C. College Station, Denton, and San Marcos will not have as many choices as Austin or the DFW metromess.....NCTC for Denton is a drive down I-35 and with gas what it is and with traffic what it is the drive looks short, but it will be a grind in time and cost to make consistently.....San Marcos now has an ACC campus, but you will need to see what their offerings are sometimes community colleges in "real college towns" have a poor habit of not actually offering many core courses and instead they offer vocational courses (nothing wrong with vocational courses), but they are more geared to those not going to a university VS those that are trying to take university classes in the off hours or for a lower cost.....same with College Station....so really somewhere in the actual DFW metro area (Denton is really outside of the metro area) and Austin then San Marcos and then College station or Denton would be the order of ease of going to a community college unless the San Marcos ACC campus has strong core course offerings
8. if you like the bigger cities you need to look at UTA instead of Denton they are both schools that need to work on student life, UTA probably has as good or better of a reputation lately and UTA is working harder on student life and is an overall much better run university
my advice overall is to see what you need to do to establish residency and if it is as I am 99% sure that you need to live in Texas for a year and work that entire year without going to any college or university my advice would be move to the Arlington area, establish residency and while there visit Denton, San Marcos and College Station and make a choice.....you will have a much better chance of getting a decent job in the DFW metromess proper, the cost of living is below Austin by a decent % (especially considering that Austin is very competitive for I am in school or wanting to go to school jobs) and in the metromess you will be established to start at a number of community colleges or right at UTA once you have established residency while in College Station, Denton, or San Marcos you will have fewer community college choices fewer job choices while establishing residency, and a longer haul to move away if you decide the 4 year school in that area is not for you and with the fewer community college options available you will pretty much have to hit the road sooner VS in the metromess you will most likely have the ability to take more semesters of meaningful transfer hours that will go to many universities while you look to where you want to move to for a 4 year school
as an example of what I was saying about community colleges in "college towns"
those are the Fall 2013 listings for ACC at the two locations listed for San Marcos (at least that is all I could find since community colleges always have the crappiest websites)
as you can see that offers about 2 semesters of courses that would be usable at a 4 year school which is really not much VS what would be available at ACC in Austin or in the various community college districts in the DFW metromess where you could easily get a full 60 hours of courses out of the way that would all transfer to a 4 year school pretty much with easy....so keep that in mind when considering the community college options as well
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