I do qualify for the Comet Promise, yes
Sorry for my lack of knowledge in this, but what do you mean by this? Do you have to maintain a certain GPA to stay in a major or else they boot you off or do you need a certain GPA freshman year to become an official major?
However, there is the possibility of having no affordable choices otherwise.
It is also a rather odd assumption that the OP has not been around Black people before and would have difficulty being around Black people.
Also, it seems like this is never brought up when big scholarships are mentioned at some forum favorite HWCUs.
You are unlikely to get into the A&M CS program even if you are accepted to the university. If you need to save $$ you wonât have the option of commuting at A&M.
Iâve been away from CC for a while but recognize many of the posters to your thread as very knowledgeable and experienced college advisors and the over whelming consensus seems to be your best bet is UTD.
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TAMU engineering students start as undeclared general engineering. After taking some first year courses, students apply for their majors in a process called ETAM. 3.75 college GPA automatically admits to major, but others are evaluated competitively and holistically (must list at least three majors they will accept and write essays). CS is unlikely to have any space after admitting the automatic admits with 3.75+ college GPA.
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Of course. Iâm just weighing out my possible options and reasoning behind each on pros and cons, mainly so I can understand and my parents when say why I didnât go to ______
I appreciate everyoneâs advice on here, very knowledgeable information and posters on here for sure
@ucbalumnus I agree with you that PVAM would be a good based on their scholarship especially if something went south with UTD but up thread op was concerned the UTDâs CS program wasnât as highly ranked as UT Austin so I donât think it would be high on his list regardless of it being a HBCU.
I NEVER said or assumed that! I specifically mentioned OP was coming from a very large, urban diverse community- which would include students & neighbors of ALL colors/nationalities. OP is used to friends with many languages, a variety of places to eat & shop, a true âmelting potâ.
The town of Prairie View, and neighboring âbiggerâ town of Hempstead, TX are considered âruralâ. College Station (home of Texas A&M) is 45 minutes one direction, downtown Houston 45 min - an hour a different direction. It would be culture shock to MANY to go from urban Dallas/FW to Prairie View, TX. No chain grocery store, local tractor supply store is about the only store for most items, very limited places to eat, Buc-eeâs is most likely the largest employer.
There is no major airport anywhere near, no mall, no hospital. And OP would be among a handful of Asian males on campus, and in the community.
If you had listed a scholarship link for HBCU Texas Southern, that would be completely different. TSU is located minutes from downtown Houston, next door to UH, very urban and diverse.
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If you need to justify your decision to your parents you can tell them that overall UTD is the best, most affordable choice for your major. If they want to see stats/rankings you can share this article with them UT Dallas Soars into Top 100 of Forbesâ Top U.S. College Rankings - News Center | The University of Texas at Dallas
UTD is a very young school in the grand scheme of things, it was started as a graduate research institution and only started admitting freshmen in 1990 (and then only a class of 100!). UTD has consistently risen in the various college ranking over the years and I believe it will continue to do so. For reference Texas A&M opened in 1876 and UT Austin in 1883 so theyâve both had over century to build up their schools.
If that doesnât work just be blunt and say you very likely wonât get into the cs program at either UT Austin or Texas AM.
For what itâs worth both my boys were auto admits for UT Austin and very high stat kids but chose to go to UTD. They liked the the campus culture and that the CS was more a collaborative vs. competitive program. They didnât want to deal with weed out classes like at A&M designed to cull the number of students from the program. As Iâve mentioned my youngest already has a job in place even 8 month prior to graduation. My older son accepted a very generous fellowship to continue on at UTD for his PhD. Both will leave UTD with a great education and debit free.
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The obvious possible reasons to tell your parents why you are not going to _____:
- Too expensive. If the parents will not pay (much), that puts lots of colleges into this category.
- Did not get admitted to the school.
- Did not get admitted to the CS major.
- Secondary admission to CS too risky (Texas A&M being the obvious example here).
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Just so you set your expectation accordingly, Comet Promise says âEligible students will have their tuition and fees covered through scholarships, grants and tuition exemptions from federal, state and institutional funds with any remaining tuition costs covered by Comet Promise fundingâ This means youâll not get any additional institutional (AES), state or federal funds past tuition and required fees so youâll need to come up with room and board on your own if you opt to live on campus.
Iâm not sure theyâd even let keep any small private outside scholarships since scholarships are always paid directly to the school. I know UTD allows stacking of merit money but I donât believe that is the case when you are dealing with need based aid. If you are certain youâll qualify for the Comet Promise Iâd check with UTDâs financial aid office to makes sure youâll actually get any benefit from outside scholarship. Chasing scholarships is a lot of work and Iâd hate for you to put your time and energy in scholarship writing for nothing.
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The UTD outside scholarships page says nothing about how need-based aid may be changed when a student gets outside scholarships: https://finaid.utdallas.edu/scholarships/scholarship-services/
Yes, the page doesnât say but I do know antidotally that you canât stack PELL, AES, department scholarship, etc. with the Comet Promise.
On the Comet Promise page it states that Eligible students will have their tuition and fees covered through scholarships, grants and tuition exemptions from federal, state and institutional funds with any remaining tuition costs covered by Comet Promise funding.
Itâs unclear to me if they are including third party scholarships in this as well, thatâs why itâs best to double check with the FA office before chasing scholarships. I do know that other schools that offer need based aid will reduce their institutional aid by the amount of out side scholarships.
Some do replace expected student loan and work earnings before reducing grants from the college, although that practice is not universal.
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Because I was genuinely curious, and Iâm clearly procrastinating what I should be doing, I called UTDâs office of Financial Aid and asked about how private 3rd party scholarships would be handled in conjunction with their Comet Promise program.
I was told that as long as the 3rd party scholarship didnât stipulate that it was for tuition and required fees it would be applied to the students bursarâs account and used against any charges of room and board. If there are no charges on the bursarâs account the funds would be refunded to the student. She also mentioned if there was any question as to how the scholarship could be used they would contact the sponsor of the scholarship for clarification.
So when you are looking for 3 party scholarship make sure they arenât restricted to tuition and fees only.
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Would applying for AES only cover more?
If (big if) OP were admitted to a meet-need college theyâd cover tuition, fees, plus room&board and incidentals, generally with no loans.
@compscy: would you be okay going away from TX to a top college thatâd provide a full ride, even if you donât know the collegeâs name (therr are about 75 of them so itâs normal you wouldnât know them all, keeping in mind itâd be a topnotch college: only highly selective colleges have enough endowment to offer full rides based on financial need for families making up to 75k)?
Can you run the NPC on each of these (reach) colleges
Macalester
ST Olaf
Lafayette
Grinnell
Bates
Whatâs your net price?
Note that all of the above require both divorced parentsâ financials. Be sure to include both of their financials when using their net price calculators.
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No, AES can not be combined with the Comet Promise program, AES becomes a part of the package that makes up the Comet promise as does PELL and all other government and institutional aid.
@MYOS1634 do you know if any of those schools are test optional? OP has a 1260 on his last SAT. I know thatâs well below the 25 percentile at Grinnell.
And Iâm still hoping to see, for the sake of comparison, the NPC results from representative schools that do not require non-custodial parent info: Trinity-TX, College of Wooster, Vanderbilt, and UChicago. The latter two are unlikely admits but they are peers of Rice, so good points of comparison in terms of the strangely high result you got for Rice.