I'm a first year and have been having a great experience so far. The faculty are very enthusiastic and extremely available. The campus is great, everything is very high tech, especially for such a rural area. The school is expensive, however for me it was similar to my other top choices, if you get into a good state program it will obviously be much cheaper.
I will say that the school does sink a lot of money into resources so the high tuition doesn't got straight into the pockets of the higher ups. Its certainly not a for-profit school.
Tuition was not at the top of my criteria list for choosing schools, but financially speaking cost of living is MUCH lower here (compared to many cities etc...) so I ended up borrowing less than I anticipated. I'm spending about $12,000 a year less on rent compared to where I used to live (for a comparable sized place). Really depends on what your tuition vs. location options are. I know very little about TN but if you live in CA and went to UCSF your instate tuition would be about 20k but you'd probably spend another 20k trying to find an apartment anywhere near the school. I'm probably exaggerating a little but just trying to point out a lot factors into your debt besides face value of tuition. That said if you can get instate tuition AND an affordable area you can stand to save a lot of money!
Hope that helps. Send me a message if you have more detailed questions?
