My son will be a senior this fall. 28 act/4.0 gpa and wants to major in computer science. One university is 3 hours away so that adds dorm fees to the price. One university is local so no dorm fees. Do we apply to both and see what he’s offered? I think the most affordable option will be community college then transferring but that depends on scholarships correct? We make too much money to qualify for any grants.
Are you sure he’ll get into both? That’s the first hurdle. What does the Common Data Set say about the test scores and GPAs of accepted students? If he falls in the upper end of the range he’s more likely to be accepted. What do the colleges’ Net Price Calculators tell you? Is the net cost affordable? Freshmen generally get the best grants, so before you send him to a cc run the numbers to see if it’s cheaper. If both the 4-year school and cc are within commuting distance, why have him start at a cc instead of jumping right in at the university?
I think it also depends on the programs offered in your state and the community college specifically. In my state, all public community colleges are aligned with the public state universities, so you are guaranteed that your credits will transfer. If you maintain a high GPA in some of the community colleges, they guarantee admission to the program at the state flagship (which is highly, highly competitive). For outstanding CC students, there are special scholarships offered that can be better than the freshman scholarships.
Yes, the cost comparison depends on whether he earns scholarships at the four year schools.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21089443/#Comment_21089443 can give you an idea of other scholarships that may be available. A higher SAT or ACT score may earn larger scholarships.
Also, check how well the community college offers the courses needed for a student to prepare for transfer to the four year schools as a computer science major. The four year schools may have transfer credit articulation listings on their web sites that can show you if they accept the community college’s courses to cover lower level requirements for the computer science major.
Depends on scholarships
As a transfer, he likely will not be offered anything…so expect to be full pay for those two years.
So, it could be cheaper in long run to go to 4 year if merit is generous.
Have him retest AND take SAT
Have him apply where schools are very generous with his stats.
If affordable, avoid CC
Don’t forget to chack the community college for scholarships as well.
If the CC program is perfectly articulated with the 4-year university so that all credits transfer and only the junior and senior year courses need to be completed after arriving there, the CC to 4-year plan will save you a bundle. If your kid can get a scholarship that lowers the costs of the two years at the CC, well that is even better.
You have to calculate (cc at current costs + full pay at the flagship) v. (4-year university on scholarship). For a student with good stats, the latter is often cheaper.
Furthermore, not all CCs offer the pre reqs for a CS major. Just yesterday I was checking out an Ohio cc that only had one calculus course and one intro to programming class: a kid with calculus AB and AP comp sci A would have had no major-related to take and would have had to transfer after a semester after having forfeited major merit scholarships at tOSU, OU, Miami-OH…
^^^^ this!!!
A close friend of mine has 5 smart kids. She thought it would be more economical for them to do cc first, then university. Wrong, because those kids had high stats. She learned the hard way when her older two transferred to university with top grades and got no merit at all…so full pay for the last two years. Ugh!
Her third smart child applied to several universities and received very large awards from most of them. She went away on a free tuition scholarship, leaving only room, board, books, etc, to pay…which was covered by summer work, part-time work in college, parents contribution, and small fed loans.
The remaining 2 kids followed suit.
Unless you have a tight financial situation where you can’t contribute anything, I wouldn’t necessarily go with absolute cheapest situation. If choosing a better school/fit means paying a bit yourself, and you can afford it, choose that.
Attending the local state university with merit for 4 years may be your cheapest overall choice, but if the sleep-away version is an affordable bit more, and it’s better for your child, choose that.
“We make too much money to qualify for any grants.” Be careful about assuming that is the case. Even if you are a millionaire you should be filing the fafsa, because there are outside scholarship organizations that award merit that require a filed fafsa to be eligible. You don’t have to have need, but they want to be sure you are pursuing every avenue for funding. Some states use the fafsa to distribute their aid and some of their awards are merit only as well. You’ll also need to file to access student loans and some schools require filing for their institutional awards.
The automatic merit aid for an oos student at University of Toledo for your son’s stats is $14k/year plus they allow stacking of outside scholarships and offer other competitive merit aid as well. With an oos cost of attendance (tuition, room, board, books) sticker of approx $29k/year the net before other aid is $15,000/year for your son’s stats which beats many in state options. http://www.utoledo.edu/admission/freshman/scholarships/2018/out-of-state.html
I think it’s too early to reduce the application list to two schools and hope for the best. He’s got a good academic record, if he could bump his score to 30 ACT he’d have a full tuition scholarship from UAH https://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships
And that’s just two schools with rolling admissions that make their awards easy to find. You really won’t know the net cost until after admission and the award letters arrive to compare.
@mom2collegekids is totally right. Apply to all and see what happens with the money. Also please investigate how full the local CC is. If it takes 3 years to do 2 years of coursework because the CC is crowded and he can’t get the classes he needs, that is a hidden opportunity cost. I see very few students finishing the two year transfer curriculum in two years.