Best merit for top students in the East coast

College Search & Selection
21

Regarding the Ivy leagues be aware that only a subset is generous with financial aid. For example, while Princeton is said to be generous, my experience is that Cornell is not.

Princeton is his dream school, but we are very aware it is a very common dream for a lot of brilliant kids.

I am not sure why you are looking at Pennsylvania. Temple charging out-of-state tuition I don’t see how it could get within your budget. Are you aware of special merit offers there? And Pitt is allegedly moving away from pure merit. I don’t know what they will offer two years from now.

I know two local people that got very generous merit proposals from Temple. Financial situation similar to me. This is why he is considering it. At least in this 1st round of visits we want to do for the spring.

If your son wants to go out of New Jersey, then you need to look at merit possibilities in states in the South such as Florida, Alabama, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah… or look up North to Canada.[/quot

South not a chance according to him…Canada haven’t even consider it. Any universities suggestions that would be a step up from our NJ options?

Thank you for taking the time. I am aware things can change and this is just an effort to spread his options to something beyond Princeton. I love his drive and commitment but I do want him to be excited for other opportunities.

22

Look into SUNY Buffalo and Stony Brook. If your son receives some merit and takes the $5500 student loan, those schools may be affordable.

23

This recent thread (very long) might be of interest to you:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2154331-looking-for-advice-in-merit-aid-for-a-top-1-student-p57.html

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@Jennyfr1 If you look at the US News graduate school Mathematics ranking as a proxy for Math college ranking, Princeton is #1 and Rutgers is #22. It is going to be hard to beat that. Temple is #74, Rutgers Newark #74, NJIT is #101.

If you look at the Engineering programs ranking as another proxy, Princeton is #12, Rutgers #49, NJIT #93, Temple #120

I think that not considering the south is a mistake considering your financial constraints. Going back to the graduate school Mathematics ranking, University of Utah is #34, University of Arizona is #47, Arizona State University is #62. If you combine this with the possibility of getting good merit you get a good value.

25

Regarding math courses at NJIT, students can also cross register with Rutgers- Newark (right next door) for the more theoretical courses.

Many students want to major in math - but change their minds once they hit the theoretical courses like analysis. I read somewhere it’s the major with the the largest percentage of students switching out. So, when choosing a university, make sure it has a large enough number of secondary major options.

@Jennyfr1 Has your son participated in competitions like AMC 8 or AMC 10 (American Math competitions) . Even if he has not, he can google past exams to see what type of thinking is involved in doing math. High school math, which is primarily rote memorization, is a poor approximation for the kind of math ability needed to succeed in college as a math major. (I am a math prof at a NJ university.)

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@Jennyfr1

Our target was $25k per child. We found a decent number of possible choices/chances for this level of funding outside of our in state schools. Some are guaranteed $, others competitive. A few public out of state examples:

Purdue: https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/costsandfinaid/freshman.php
COA: $41.8 k, trustees + national Hispanic, 13 to 17 k/year

Miami Ohio: https://miamioh.edu/admission/merit-guarantee/
COA: $50k, $20-36k/year for 1450+ SAT and 3.5 GPA ,

Texas Tech: https://www.depts.ttu.edu/scholarships/incFreshman.php
COA in state $26.7k but if win presidential merit scholarship get in state tuition from out of state + $6 to 8.5 k/year for SAT 1400 – 1500+ range

Oldest ended up national merit scholar, youngest is semifinalist, should be named finalist. This opens up some significant aid (free to $20k /year net cost) at a couple dozen out of state publics: our favorites were U Florida and Texas A&M. We passed on these for fit reasons for the oldest, who is now a freshman at a different out of state flagship with effectively “½ ride”. Our youngest, high school senior, is emphasizing smaller privates in his search for fit reasons, and a couple out of state publics. I will post in spring how it turns out.

Note, New Jersey is one of hardest states to get national merit from, 223 index score in 2019

Privates: hard to estimate chances, but $25k and lower per year is potentially doable:
I listed them before: Lafayette, Richmond, Washington and Lee, Davidson, Wake Forest (only 3% get merit $ at Wake but they seem to be actively seeking more diversity),Emory, Furman. If can expand westward a little, suggest Vanderbilt, Wash U, Denison. Some of these are only a handful of scholarships at the level needed, but they are there and potentially worth a shot. Another is college of Wooster, can get that down to $27 to 28/k per year current on merit aid last I checked (pick up a few smaller outside scholarships and can get to $25k/year)

Couple other thoughts: if your son co-ops, that can help with costs and get him critical job experience.

Also, perfect to near perfect test scores and grades not enough to get merit aid in many cases. Need strong leadership and extracurriculars as well to differentiate.

For math, some extracurricular activities to look at (already suggested by others here):
See below competitions and resources, all focused on math prior to calculus. Excelling in those will put you in position for primes, etc. AMC, AIME, USAMO, USAMTS, USACO, etc

https://www.maa.org/math-competitions
https://www.usamts.org/
http://www.usaco.org/
https://artofproblemsolving.com/
https://www.awesomemath.org/

Also check out the small, select summer math camps, SMaRT camp Texas A&M https://www.math.tamu.edu/outreach/Camp/ (free)
And Williams college math camp https://sites.williams.edu/mathcamp/ (reduced cost). The AMS website for others
http://www.ams.org/programs/students/emp-mathcamps

These and a few others are highly selective and limited to about 20 participants, they seem to be viewed highly for college admissions (more so than pay, for profit camps) but more importantly a great chance to see how much your child likes math, and give him a chance to meet other math focused students.

Good luck!

27

Oops, just saw post where he is not interested in schools in south. That leaves Lafayette, Lehigh, Villanova, BC for a shot at some full tuition scholarships. Not many of them available but perhaps worth short. Maybe some smaller places like Ursinus worth a look as well ($52k range COA and $35 to 40 k/yr merit possible). Maybe expand to midwest?

28

“Canada haven’t even consider it. Any universities suggestions that would be a step up from our NJ options?”

I just took a quick look at the top schools in Canada for mathematics (I was a math major, and originally came from Canada). One ranking is here:

https://www.macleans.ca/education/best-mathematics-universities-in-canada-2019-ranking/

Of these, the top ones (UBC, Toronto, Waterloo, McGill, McMaster) are going to be significantly more than $30,000 per year for an international student even in US dollars (I am assuming you are not a citizen of Canada or France). I was a bit surprised by how much the cost has gone up for international students at McGill. Alberta is far away, quite cold, and probably just over $30,000 per year. The U of Montreal teaches classes in French. This takes you down to Victoria and SFU (8 and 9 on the list). These are very good schools and probably close to Rutgers in both academic quality and cost for you. However, they are a long way away from New Jersey (both are in British Columbia).

Rutgers is a very good university. This makes it hard to beat (assuming your son can get accepted). I don’t think that there are any in Canada that are going to match it on price while beating it on academics. There are some (such as Victoria and SFU) that will be close on both counts.

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@STEMFocus thank you so much for all those links.
We are not banking on NMF just because we know how hard it is in NJ but we do think we can make the National Hispanic one.
He is working hard on his EC. He likes to be involved so it comes naturally to him.
Definitely checking out those math competitions.

@momprof9904 no to those especific competitions. His high school does math Olympiad but he won’t get the chance until junior year.

I do want him to explore what else can he do with math so he doesn’t take the pure theoretical road. None of the engineers so far. He does like statistics but he feels working in the financial world is using his skills for “evil” …joking but he does care about his future job been useful and to do good for humanity. …probably enough to make another separate post here in CC for suggestions !

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While finance is an obvious destination for many statistics majors, statistics is useful in a lot of other places as well (e.g. any kind of data analytics, like in politics, economics, any other social science, medicine, sports, quality control, marketing, …). Other places where math can be applied include operations research (making scheduling and business processes more efficient), computing (e.g. cryptography, theory), and teaching math.

31

WVU, maybe Pitt.

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U of South Carolina has merit scholarships for top students even for out of state. It has a highly ranked Honors college and any major you want.

33

Rutgers has a fantastic reputation among corporate employers-- especially for math. That’s a great starting point for your son. It saddens me to think that he’d rather shoot for a school with a MUCH weaker reputation (some of the other posters have cited specific rankings from various organizations) if Rutgers could be affordable for you. I know it’s not a shiny “admit” for local kids- but companies across the country know the program very well.

Re: using his skills for good- Rutgers also has a very highly regarded department of political science, and some really fabulous institutes for various policy and public affairs initiative. Whether the subject is gerrymandering, voter suppression, cyber security issues with online voting, income inequality, participation in the workforce by various demographic groups, etc. you could do a LOT worse than a math/poli sci combo at Rutgers.

The best statistician I ever hired came from Rutgers. We initially targeted a PhD, but ended up hiring a guy who had just completed a Masters in applied math at Rutgers and we quickly realized he was better than many of the doctorate candidates we’d met. Undergrad and Masters from Rutgers, New Jersey kid- he was fantastic.

There are lots of other ways to use math for good- biostatistics, epidemiology if he’s interested in disease transmission and prevention; genetics, agronomy (some fantastic gains in yields of various crops around the world by using sophisticated algorithms taking into account weather, soil conditions, bacteria, etc.) urban planning, sustainability, oceanography (suddenly a cool field after decades of it being considered slow and boring), meteorology, transportation planning.

But for now- just knowing that he’s a happy camper using numbers is really enough. If he ends up at a large research university there are going to be dozens of courses every semester he’ll want to take and just not enough time!

34

I don’t think anybody in this thread think that Rutgers is not a great school, but the OP @Jennyfr1 has stated they are trying to keep things under 25K per year when schools expect them to contribute up to 40K. Going to Rutgers for less than 25K is not easy as large merit scholarships are only given to the top students. It therefore make sense to explore other good but potentially cheaper options as backup…

35

Regarding affording the cost of Rutgers (about $35k in state on campus, $29k of which is billed costs), it depends on whether $25k is the maximum parent contribution, or the maximum net price.

If $25k is the maximum parent contribution, the student could take a federal direct loan of $5.5k and find the other $4.5k from summer and part time work earnings, or living more frugally than the assumed budget for non-billed costs. That is kind of a stretch budget, but doable (and often what students from low income families must do). Of course, any merit scholarship (the larger the better) will make it more financially comfortable.

If $25k is the maximum net price (based on a maximum parent contribution of $15k or so), then Rutgers is unaffordable without sufficient merit scholarship money (at least $10k, preferably more).

36

I assumed 25K was the maximum net price per year. You are right that this needs to be clarified.

The cost of attendance for Rutgers is now indeed about 35K per year, and will be even higher two years from now. Based on the non-scientific survey I made last spring of my son’s high school classmates, my take is that getting the 10K merit scholarship now requires admission to the Honors College, and to get admitted to it via the SAS you need about a 1530 single-sitting SAT score. It is even higher for SOE where I suspect you might need a 1570 single-sitting score. I don’t know anybody that got more than 10K this school year (I know some kids who did just a couple of years ago). I know that a 1550 single sitting or a 1580 superscore is not enough anymore to get more than 10K even at SAS (or some unknown other factors play a role).

On the other hand, an excellent student can fairly easily get a full tuition scholarship plus free room at the NJIT Albert Dorman Honors College, which would leave a net price of about 10K per year. Over four years that is a 100K difference compared to full price Rutgers. It is not small money!

And a student that gets NHRP status will find some good options outside of the Northeast with a net price around 20K per year, even factoring travel costs. Over four years, that is a 60K difference compared to Rutgers full price.

To be fair, such good student even if he or she does not quite make it to Rutgers Honors is likely to get some merit anyway. Potentially 8K per year. So the difference listed are the worst-case scenario.

Still to me it makes sense for the OP to prepare to apply to Rutgers with the hope that merit is forthcoming, to apply to NJIT as a safety, to apply to out-of-state schools that offer big merit to NHRP or based on GPA + SAT scores (with the assumption that NHRP is a solid possibility)… and to Princeton just in case.

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@DadTwoGirls thay saves me a lot of time!! I guess Canada is out. The cost of airplane tickets alone would worry me! Thank you fpr your insight.

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@blossom yes the more and more we read the more we realize the reputation of Rutgers. But as other said it would have to be in the budget. If accepted to the honors college it will definitely be a possibility for him.
I read all those options you gave and it was so good for him to hear because most people he has talked to, always want to direct him to the engineering fields or wall street! We are trying to look for some internship opportunities so he can see people working in alternative fields where math is an asset.

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@ucbalumnus @NJEngineerDad we are open for him to take the $5k loan for opportunities like that. an honors college at Rutgers would be amazing. The $25k is What we have allowed thinking brother #2 will be a freshman when he is a senior and I am assuming no changes on financial aid possibilities? Or does having 2 kids at the same time in college give is a break during first/last year of college?
Thanks again for taking the time

40

@Jennyfr1 So can you clarify if 25K is your maximum net price, or if it is your maximum parent contribution and if your son could borrow money and/or work to supplement that contribution?

At this point, what colleges made it to your list?