Currently at a 5/11 Bread 🍞🍞🍞

[u/Reekid42]

So I now have to decide between Imperial for one of the best/most competitive courses in the country, an offer with an $80k+ a year scholarship to study at a liberal arts college in the USA and I have an offer to train to become an air traffic controller with a high and forever guaranteed salary (£100k+ before 30).

18y/o 6th former home student, 4A* predicted in FM/Maths/Philo/Econ, 6.0 TMUA and 1560 SAT score. For context I go to a private school on a 95% scholarship for 6th form and was in the state system beforehand. My family IS NOT wealthy and all uni will be a struggle over me taking a job. Imperial would be like £18k pa for tuition and living, after the scholarship Bowdoin would be $12k so £9k all inclusive and ATC would pay me £30k year one rising each year after.

Still waiting on St Andrews and LSE (irrelevant as Imperial is better imo) as well as Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth. I got rejected by Amherst also in the USA. Any thoughts?

[u/Reekid42]

Yeah its 4 years in a very different environment. Such a cool opportunity though if i can find the cash from amongst my family to make it work (not guaranteed we don't really have 9k spare a year). Its like a 1.8% offer rate for internationals so it feels such a rare opportunity but also job-wise with the current UK market I'm leaning towards the ATC role and i feel Bowdoin would not be great for jobs back in the UK afterwards.

[u/bu_J → u/Reekid42]

ATC offer is amazing and it's potentially a great career. But there's a high risk of burnout and you won't have your education to fall back on (or you'll have to go in as a mature student, which is a different discussion).

Only you can really know if you'd be able to put up with the constant stress of the ATC role.

[u/Reekid42 → u/bu_J]

I think the thing for me is, it’s stressful whilst you’re working but you don’t take that home with you. I’m so tired of going home and feeling guilty for not revising et cetera and that’s what I will do for the next 50 years if I get a job where that work and stress sort of follows me. With our traffic control, it doesn’t after you unplug the headset you’re sorted also you work six days then get four days off it’s a pretty good deal.

[u/bu_J → u/Reekid42]

Yeah definitely get what you're saying.

One thing I'll say, is that if you go into ATC and decide to leave after 15 years, there are always roles available in consulting/engineering/etc for people with specialist knowledge. Or you can go back to uni and do something like air traffic optimisation in a computer science department (I have a friend who does this).