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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
Good, be careful using too much debt to renovate properties. Do as much of the labor as you can by yourself on your first properties. Spend the money you save on better finishes, it will pay off.
I graduated from Loyola University Chicago. Don't go there unless you can get a lot of scholarship. I had about 2/3 scholarship and still ended up with $40k in debt. How old are you now? You should look at schools in an around Chicago simply because you will have the best networking opportunities there (business school is more about networking than learning). Look at UIC (virtually free for Illinois residents) and IIT (can be pricey). See if you can get scholarships at Loyola and DePaul, but don't got there unless you do. Another excellent alternative is to look at University of Wisconsin - Madison. The only problem is that their business program is extremely hard to get into. Same goes for University of Illinois...
Going to school in NYC will be expensive, but have slightly better networking opportunities than Chicago. Then again, Chicago is a much more affordable market to start in.
Again, the entire time you are in school you should be thinking "are you going to be a useful contact in the future" every time you meet someone. This includes professors, family friends, friends, and random people at parties. When you meet someone who impresses you, befriend them and it will pay dividends.
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IIT was a great engineering background for me...got my undergrad in Architectural Engineering (basically Civil/Structural) and my masters there in Const. Mgmt...As far as CM, they are a bit lacking in practical applications of what they teach. Very strong on theory, but by the time I finished my masters, taken part time while working, I felt like I was teaching my profs more about the practical side of the business of construction than what they were teaching me. I felt this was a good thing, though. Meaning that I did the right thing by working before starting the masters program. Most of what I was taught would have been useless to me had I gone straight through and then started working as it would have been very difficult to recognize how to practically apply some of the advanced stuff being taught.
The engineering side of things was fantastic all around, but tough sledding though. I knew a LOT of pretty smart people that couldn't hack it there so if you're wavering on your work ethic, IIT is not the place for you. If you have what it takes, though, it's definitely worth the $20K+ a year it's running now. Preferably you'd get scholarships and grants to cover a bunch of that.