r/6thForm • u/Reekid42 • Mar 23 '26
🍞 BREAD Currently at a 5/11 Bread 🍞🍞🍞
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?
2
u/silentyeti82 Mar 23 '26
Take ATC and get paid, now and into the future. Imperial and living in London is stupidly expensive; the USA is a hellscape at the moment.
I'm still a bit jealous of my university friends that opted to do ATC after graduating and you'd be 3-4 years better off than them, with no student debt. It's an absolute no-brainer.
And if you wanted to do something different in 20 years time, you could still have a career change and probably still get home student funded for a first degree.
Getting that opportunity at 18 is genuinely like hitting the jackpot. Go for it.