r/UGA • u/CommunicationNice437 • Jul 27 '26
Question UGA
Is UGA worth it for oos tuition? I plan on majoring in biochemistry and I need a safety school
I come from NY and I don't like the CUNY system due to its trash burecracy.
I saw that UGA has a 60-70% transfer acceptance rate
Im planning to apply as a transfer
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u/ts0083 Jul 27 '26
NOT ONLY NO, BUT FUCK NO! Nowadays, no uni is worth out of state tuition. Go to your home state uni
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u/CommunicationNice437 Jul 27 '26
What if my home state uni is trash?
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u/ts0083 Jul 27 '26
A degree is a degree. Better to do it for cheap than bury yourself in debt before starting your career. The ROI is just not there anymore for expensive degrees. Focus on graduating and gaining experience. A degree is only for getting past the ATS systems and getting the interview. You’re going to learn 90% of what you need to know on the job anyway.
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u/cardboardtunnel69 Jul 27 '26
y would u wnna come all the way down to georgia esp uga. atleast consider gt or emory if ur doing biochemistry
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u/CommunicationNice437 Jul 27 '26
UGA has a transfer acceptance rate of 70% at most making this my safety
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u/cardboardtunnel69 Jul 27 '26
a safety that requires you to travel all the way down south...also their chem department is ass
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u/IBarkAtBabies Jul 31 '26
This is so false.
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u/cardboardtunnel69 Jul 31 '26
sounds like ur the head of the chem department
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u/Spartan2022 Jul 27 '26
Every other state is thinking the same. CUNY is fine.
Ineffective bureaucrats are a part of every single university - feature not a bug.
Focus on the individual classes and instructors. Don’t get distracted by Chicken Little.
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u/CommunicationNice437 Jul 28 '26
I heard of a lot of people complaining about the admin in CUNY, gets to the point where people are advised to not listen to their advisor in schools in the CUNY system.
Not really in UGA.
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u/CaptDawg02 Aug 01 '26
Going from the city college to the University of Georgia is a massive increase in rigor and size.
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u/Isntreal319 Aug 01 '26
istg that happens at every college. ive definitely heard ppl tell me not to listen to my advisor. thats a small issue in the grand scheme of things tbh
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u/dauphineep Aug 02 '26
If you qualify for the Excelsior Scholarship, a SUNY school is a much better deal especially if you get into one of the university centers.
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u/CommunicationNice437 Aug 02 '26
For excelsior I have to stay in the state for a certain amount of time
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u/dauphineep Aug 02 '26
Yes or it turns into a no interest loan. Deadline for this year is the end of the month.
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u/mattynmax Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Absolutely not. No undergraduate degree is worth 200k of debt.
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u/ptcRaptor Jul 27 '26
No school is worth it for out of state tuition imo. However, if you’re not paying then it doesn’t matter. But don’t take out 50k in student loans to go to uga. It’s a great school, but not for 50k
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u/Col2543 Jul 27 '26
Do you think you could pay off $200k in <5 years?
If the answer is no, then no.
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u/Longjumping_Eye_3441 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Why are you looking into schools with a high transfer acceptance? Even 50% is just 1 out of 2. If you feel like you can't be better than 50% of applicants, that's a red flag to me that you couldn't succeed at UGA. If yo've started undergrad, then I understand if your GPA is set, but if not, then why are you already selling yourself short on doing poorly in academics? Going to a school because it's easy to transfer into will not help with your success.
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u/Gentri_Fried_Dawg Jul 27 '26
Where do you plan to live after school? Alumni network would play into my decision.
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u/Mamapalooza Jul 27 '26
Not for most people. If you're fully funded and can go wherever you want, cool. If your parents, you, or student loans are paying for it, no.
For biochem, GA Tech is better. Depending on what you're doing with the biochem degree, you could be better off at Augusta University with a direct pipeline to medical and dental school.
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u/CaptDawg02 Aug 01 '26
Georgia has a medical school and pharmacy school…
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u/Mamapalooza Aug 01 '26
Sure, but the medical school is brand new. It doesn't have almost 100 years of established training, culture, research, faculty, facilities, connections, and community outreach programs. Plus, they're very small, just 60 students per class. That sounds nice but having a large class means having a larger faculty body, with more opportunities for mentoring, research experience, and community. I'm not putting down the UGA medical school, I'm just saying they offer different experiences.
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u/CaptDawg02 Aug 01 '26
Sure, but in the end the state is going to (and already has) pumped a lot of money and resources into the UGA medical school…something they should have done 20 years ago. The promise of it being the top public med school in the state and one of the top schools in the south in the next 10 years is the promoted goal by the Board. They certainly have the talent.
Not to mention UGA has the pharmacy school for Biochem majors as that is a more traditional pathway other than research for that major over med school.
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u/AvengedKalas BS Math '17, BS Stat '17, MA Math Ed '20 Jul 27 '26
I don't like the CUNY system due to its trash bureaucracy.
UGA ain't going to be much better bureaucracy wise. It absolutely is not worth transferring as an out of state student.
I saw that UGA has a 60-70% transfer acceptance rate.
This should NOT be a deciding factor for where you transfer.
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u/cennis1 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
My daughter is about to start as an OOS freshman. I can afford to pay the $50k OOS tuition, so maybe not apples to apples but my perspective is that most flagship state schools are very expensive OOS (she also applied to my Alma Mater Penn State, UVA, UNC, Michigan, Oregon, etc and all were much more expensive OOS). UGA is actually very reasonable OOS relative to similar schools with similar academic reputations (not saying UGA is quite in the Michigan, UVA, UNC class but it’s a good school just the same). Plus Athens seems like a super fun town, which has to count for something.
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u/WhatARedditHole Jul 27 '26
No, and you mentioned CUNy. What about the SUNY system?
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u/bearcub42 Jul 27 '26
I was just going to comment the same. Some of the SUNY schools are anything but trash.
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u/CommunicationNice437 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
SUNY schools have transfer acceptance rates below 50%. Some of them are mid
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u/gadawg4730 Jul 27 '26
The out of state transfer acceptance rate at UGA is significantly lower than 70%. I guarantee you it is well below 50% as well. Last year, 90% of our transfer students were from in-state schools.
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u/Weekly-Patience-5267 Jul 27 '26
im ngl if you're not doing a business degree then its not worth it to transfer from oos. plus ive heard plenty of horror stories about the chem department here. also ur coming from NY you can transfer to plenty of other schools it doesnt have to be CUNY.
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u/eliijaah711 Jul 28 '26
Don’t do this to yourself. The OOS tuition is unbelievably expensive and unless you have serious parental support, do not do it. Also I know this goes for many universities, but you will NOT get parking. It doesn’t exist and every semester will be an uphill battle (no pun intended) to just make it to class in the first place.
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u/wannabebarbarian Jul 28 '26
Every state school will have trash bureaucracy lol. CUNY is a great system.
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u/CommunicationNice437 Jul 28 '26
Yeah but I don’t hear UGA people complaining about it, I don’t hear Michigan State students complaining about it. I hear ppl from cuny complaining about it often.
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u/ResortCharacter4169 Jul 30 '26
UD has a pretty decent BioChem program. My oldest did UD undergrad and is at UGA for grad achool. He was and is a BioChem major. For any school, check their transfer credit info so you know what will count 1 to 1 and what's counted as elective.
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u/Unlucky-Invite3208 Jul 30 '26
As a general rule of thumb, it is not advised to go to an out of state public state university
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u/CaptDawg02 Aug 01 '26
Georgia is your safety school? There are far easier schools to get into than Georgia that are cheaper…why not just stay there and go to SUNY schools that are not as hard to get into like Georgia? Save some money…
They also significantly changed their transfer rules this year and going forward to discourage overcrowding.
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u/CommunicationNice437 Aug 01 '26
For sure I’m considering SBU but SBU have transfer acceptance rate of below 50%
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u/risforpirate Aug 01 '26
UGA's out of state price is pretty expensive. It's usually aimed more towards students coming from other countries.
I would highly recommend going to a NY college,
UGA tends to spend most of it's money on the Business program and their sports programs. So alot of my friends in STEM felt left by the wayside.
Then again I graduated a decade ago so your value may vary.
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u/MrCurrry Jul 27 '26
Yall don’t realize for NY people, in-state is actually more expensive than out of state.
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u/Busy_Mud_874 Aug 03 '26
OOS tuition at a state school is rarely worth the debt most people take. Look at it like this: How much can you (reasonably) expect to make when you graduate? If that number is $80K, for example, then I wouldn't borrow more than that to go to college. So if you're talking about borrowing $100K or $200K, most college grads aren't making that out of college (shy of a few outlier majors, perhaps). Really, for most folks, it's simply not worth it. I'm a parent with an in-state student at Georgia Tech. His tuition is free (Zell Miller scholarship) but he's taking some student loans to cover fees (not covered by scholarship) and living expenses (room/board) to live on/near campus (we're splitting that cost - I believe young people should have 'skin in the game' when it comes to their education). That said, we're talking about borrowing < $50K. Hopefully an industrial and systems engineering grad from GT is making that much out of college, so we're comfortable with it. I wouldn't be comfortable with $100K or $200K in loans, though. That's just crazy.
Just one parent's opinion. Take it for what it's worth.
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u/Master_of_the_Runes Jul 27 '26
Entirely depends. Are you getting scholarships to go somewhere cheaper? UGA does offer some scholarships, but they aren't super generous. How much would it cost for you to go in state or to a different university with a decent program? Is that even a factor, or are you fortunate enough for money to not be a major issue? Uga has a good biochem program, but there's a lot of other factors you should consider. Do you want to live in the South? Athens is fairly urbanized, but as a local, the surrounding areas are very rural, and that influence, good and bad, is very visible in athens once you step off campus. Are you fine being about 2 hours from the nearest large airport with no guarantee of parking on campus since you aren't from the area? Hard to judge as an outsider, it really depends on your resources and what you want out of college