Can you see yourself minoring in computer science and majoring in biology? Bioinformatics is likely to get huge with personal genomics just having started its very own Moore's Law curve, and it's likely that many interesting jobs will become available that won't involve as much academic competition as traditional biology research positions. Less intense academic competition means less damage from having graduated from a no-name university.

Why do you believe you will receive full-need financial aid in the US? Specifically, are you a US national currently living in Hungary and do you have some way to establish residence in the US?

Governments do not give financial aid because students need it. Governments view financial aid as an investment in the future; students pay back the government by paying higher taxes and having more economic activity once the student graduates. A foreign student never pays taxes, as they return home after they graduate, so a government has no incentive to help them.

Financial aid for non-nationals is exceedingly rare. Super, super rare. With the recession going on, financial aid of all types is harder to get and foreign financial aid was already hard to get. For most foreign students, ability to pay the complete cost of tuition without any aid is a significant factor to admissions. While foreign college attendance in the US has been going up, that's because we've been using the higher cost that foreign students pay to help pay for domestic students.

What specific factors make you believe that you will receive US financial aid and not UK financial aid?

I had a very long post before Firefox crashed and ate it. Long story short: Find out exactly how much debt is 'negligible' before doing anything else.

1) How much can your parents pay per year? I've never known a single foreign student who wasn't able to show ability-to-pay prior to acceptance.

2) Foreign students rarely get financial aid and never get loans without a cosigner. Do you have a US/UK cosigner? Does this mean your parents will be taking out a personal loan (at higher APR) in Hungary to pay for your tuition?

3) What sort of debt burden can they handle if you drop out? What sort of debt burden are you comfortable with if you graduate?

4) What is your contingency if something goes wrong (eg father laid off) for each schooling location?

Example, you mention Bowdoin university as a university you are considering. Bowdoin's total cost in 2009-2010 was $50,485 to out-of-state students. Assuming $2000 in travel expenses a year, and ~$2500 incidentals you end up with 55k a year. Lets say you get a 11% APR[1], because you likely won't be getting US Govt subsidized loans[2] and would require your parents to cosign in Hungary. You're ~8% likely to drop out[3] and it will cost you on average $58k. You're ~92% likely to graduate, and it will cost you on average $261k. That's approximately 201,000 Euros, minus whatever your parents can pay.

If $260k in debt for a US school is 'negligible' I shudder to consider UK costs. (Though, upon research it seems they're actually cheaper than US schools and I'm left wondering how much research you've given to this topic.) Further, the idea that you'd just 'squat' somewhere is simply insane. Such an action would drastically increase your chance of dropping out, which is a ridiculous option versus a comparatively sure thing at home in Hungary, and as noted above, dropping out is expensive too.

In summary: Double check to see if going abroad is feasible and actually calculate the cost before going any further.

[1] I don't know the Hungary rates, but I assume they're similar to US rates.
[2] Subsidized loans are currently 6.8% and would subtract about 15k from the total cost. Plus they have other benefits compared to personal loans (tax deductions, grace periods, etc) that measure in the tens of thousands. [3] Bowdoin has particularly good graduation rates; some colleges don't (eg, at Purdue only 40% of students graduate within 4 years). Even a small change in graduation rates can drastically increase costs.

I've been long time thinking about asking whether we could have something like a "Ask the LWers" thread where you could post personal questions in hope to get some helpful rational outside view.

The precise schools' names are irrelevant, for they're all on par academically, whether they're in England or the USA.

No, they are the most important thing. If you want to ask for advice, you should not cripple peoples' ability to give you advice by withholding vital information. The best thing that you could hope to get out of this thread is some surprising information (good or bad) about one of the schools, which makes it a clear winner or loser.

Point 1: If you have specific schools you're choosing from you should just say them, but as is your statements about cost and quality of education in britain and america don't make any sense.

Point 2: If you care about learning the college you go to is a lot less important than your own effort and energy. Lectures are inefficient at teaching, and you can learn almost any field through diligent reading. The most important difference between colleges is prestige.

You've already been accepted to particular schools, I assume? I think that matters at least as much as which countries they're in.

This is my favorite explanation of the theorem so far:

http://oscarbonilla.com/2009/05/visualizing-bayes-theorem/

But I doubt you can explain it to middle school students in only 3 min. If I were you, I wouldn't discuss the theorem itself, just the cancer patient problem. Have the students try to figure out the answer for themselves, and then surprise them with the real answer (and justify it by talking about a population of 1 million people or whatever; your explanation doesn't have to use probabilities, although the problem statement could).