Thanks for the response eternalkiwi, but I'm afraid I accepted the offer from University of Auckland yesterday. I don't plan to get any further qualifications for a long while as I'll be drowning in debt after this degree, my student loan payments will be around NZ$400-500/month assuming the NZ dollar remains strong, if it collapses I'll have to leave because my loan payments are in US dollars. After talking with a couple teachers in the US they agreed an AUT degree would be near worthless in the US, because no one has heard of it. I hope to stay in NZ awhile but who knows what the future holds.