<p>Hi everyone:</p>
<p>I'm a newbie here on the forum. D is a very driven sophomore ( We are spending spring break looking at colleges), whose choice of major means an out of state college. Are there any special scholarships out there for out of state tuition - or will we have to suck it up and pay the fee?</p>
<p>Before you leave home, can you afford 50K/year for her to go OOS or a private?
If not, then focus on in-state public schools.</p>
<p>^ aye aye to that!</p>
<p>Some out of state schools are significantly less than $50,000 per year (e.g. Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Cal Poly and other CSUs, Stony Brook, Massachusetts, etc.).</p>
<p>Some out of state schools offer large merit scholarships for high stat out of state students (e.g. Alabama, UAB).</p>
<p>Since major choice appears to be ruling out the in-state publics, what major is it, and what state are you a resident of? Others can better help you by suggesting schools if they knew what major it is.</p>
<p>D wants to major in physics - possibly astro physics - with a minor in mathematics. Unfortunately, our in state schools (Oregon) are not strong in either of these fields.</p>
<p>Suggestions (about $30,000 per year list price):</p>
<p>Stony Brook
Minnesota
Massachusetts
Iowa State
Hawaii (Western Undergraduate Exchange rate)
Arizona (Western Undergraduate Exchange rate)</p>
<p>There is NO physics major at any public university in Oregon?</p>
<p>Depending on how your child does in the SAT/ACT and GPA, there are some schools that do offer merit aid to high achieving students from OOS. Examples…the McNair Scholarship at U of South Carolina is a full ride scholarship…everything. The U of Alabama offers guaranteed merit aid to OOS students dependent on their stats. I believe there are a number of schools that offer varying merit aid options to National Merit Scholarship Finalists…University of Southern California, for example, offers 1/2 tuition scholarships. One of the public universities in Oklahoma offers a decent award to NMSF.</p>
<p>If you are asking for awards based SOLELY on OOS status…I don’t know of any.</p>
<p>huh, Stoney Brook at 30K – does that include room and board</p>
<p>You might also explore whether your surrounding states offer in-state tuition to,students from you state. That is fairly common in some regions.</p>
<p>Most of the SUNY schools are under $30k for oos.</p>
<p>What does “strong” mean? Do you mean that the departments are overall weak, or that they simply aren’t the best of the best?</p>
<p>I think sometimes the focus on major is too narrow here at CC. College is ultimately about breadth, not depth, and most large public universities have good enough offerings in the classic fields (English, history, math, physics, biology, etc.) that a driven student would do well there. Looking at the University of Oregon page, the physics department offers coursework in both astronomy and physics, which would allow your daughter to focus on astrophysics. Univ. Oregon also operates the Pine Mountain Observatory, which is used for research and advanced instruction in astronomy. They say research goes on there every clear or partially clear night.</p>
<p>A quick glance through the CVs and web pages of the faculty members reveals that they have healthy research groups, are getting NSF-funded grants and are publishing recently, including articles that are in-press or have been submitted or are under review. I’m not in physics so I’m not aware of whether there’s anyone famous there, but I would say 90% of universities don’t have anyone famous anyway, and even if they did the undergrads rarely get to work with them directly.</p>
<p>Flipping through the mathematics department reveals the same stuff - professors that are actively conducting research and publishing; a wide range of courses in different areas offered to undergraduates; and the American Mathematical Society has ranked the Oregon math department in the top group of U.S. research departments in mathematics. They also boast that they are the smallest math department from a public school with that designation, which may be a plus if your daughter wants individual attention and smaller classes.</p>
<p>Oregon State may be a little less accomplished, but opening the physics department page I am greeted with congratulations for six different professors in the last two months for publishing a book (and in one professor’s case, an article in Nature, which is one of the premier journals in science). The professors are publishing and conducting research. Portland State is a little less distinguished in research - but most of the professors have published recently. Both schools have a range of good foundational courses in physics (it’s not my field, but I do know some about it).</p>
<p>Picking a school based on the strength of a specific department is more for graduate school, IMO. Of course, you wouldn’t want to pick a school that had no physics department or only a very few course offerings in physics and mathematics. But Univ. Oregon seems to have a reasonably strong offering in both fields, and I don’t think you have to go OOS or pay through the nose for her to get a decent physics/mathematics education given what seems to be available there.</p>
<p>both uab and uah have physics/astrophysics… both have automatic merit based on stats (leaving as little as 5k per year out of pocket for oos), and full rides for nat merit scholars.</p>
<p>different vibe to these schools vs the larger UA and auburn that are talked about more on cc</p>
<p>[UAB</a> Astrophysics Laboratory](<a href=“Error 404 | Not Found”>Error 404 | Not Found)</p>
<p>[Physics</a> - Research](<a href=“http://physics.uah.edu/research.htm]Physics”>http://physics.uah.edu/research.htm)</p>
<p>D has a high W and UW GPA and has yet to take the official ACT or SAT but tested high on the Explore. I figured there wasn’t any special OOS scholarship, but thought I’d ask. We have time to weigh options. I know this sounds so naive but H and I really had no clear understanding of just how much college tuitions have risen since we were in school. </p>
<p>OSU has a physics department as does U of O. They’re just not considered as strong as UW or Berkeley. And none of them have astrophysics as an undergrad - few colleges do. There are no OOS tuition breaks for UW or Cal.</p>
<p>While we are hoping (praying) for a scholarship, we’ve explained to D that she may have to settle for in-state school for undergrad work and then weigh options for highly selective school for grad work. </p>
<p>We’re looking at Harvey Mudd, CalTech, UCSB and Stanford next month.</p>
<p>Oregon and Oregon State do offer physics and math majors. They are not bad or anything like that. The less expensive out of state schools in post 6 may have somewhat higher reputations specific to those fields, even if their overall reputations are not that high.</p>
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<p>Can you afford to pay for these schools? You are not going to get merit aid from any of them…OOS in CA makes merit aid almost impossible at the public universities. Mudd and Stanford don’t give need based aid only I believe.</p>
<p>I don’t think your daughter would be “settling” for an instate university. Studying physics at the college level…as a major…is going to be challenging no matter where she goes.</p>
<p>Juillet: Yes, that is what I meant. They have programs but are not considered the best of the best.</p>
<p>What’s your EFC? Would she qualify for admission to a school that meets 100% of need?</p>
<p>It would be a stretch for us to pay for any of the private schools, plus we have a younger child who thinks he’s going to MIT. LOL. We’ll be talking to HM and Stanford to see if they offer merit based aid. She understands that we won’t be going into massive debt nor will we allow her to do so.
Another option we’re looking at is U British Columbia at Vancouver. It’s about the same price as U of O.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4: Can you clarify what you mean by 100% of need?</p>
<p>Parent56: Thanks for the links.</p>
<p>you’re welcome agent99…if you would like any info on uab feel free to pm…S2 attends there for forensic chem and molecular biology.</p>