Scholarship or Self-financing? Iowa or Missouri Columbia University?  

Here's the case lying ahead of my girlfriend.she is setting aboard for study and she's got two idea universityies' offers in Journalism major.It would have been a much easier poop to make if both of these two universities give her scholarship. If she goes for Iowa University,she could sve most of the expenses,coz the scholarship covers almost everything, while inside her mind she is very unwilling to lose this one-time-in-a-life chance to study in a prestigous institute, but in that case, more than 300,000RMB could be consumed during her study time. Her finanical background is ok, not very powerful though, yet 300 thousand is hell lot of money. However decision it would be,her plan is to come back working in China in the future. Now she is very confused whether it is worthy to consume that amount of money to earn a degree in Columbia over Iowa university. It's easy to think out this way, where can you get that 300 thousand back in a years' time under the current market,the caculation is not that hard.but how do you perceive this issue anyway?