Chance/Match: NoVA Asian male senior [3.86 unweighted GPA/1550 SAT] most likely STEM major and music minor

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Understood on UVA and I love Va Tech. It’s gorgeous and has the highest rated food in the country. Food is underrated and you’d be amazed at how many don’t eat well and get low blood sugar. It’s not in the city but it has EVERYTHING one can need there.

Understand the Va schools from an ROI and I get Pitt. It meets everything but the cost comparison. But family matters.

I think if Rochester comes off like it appeared to, that’s where a CWRU can come in to replace. More merit potential. Even Ohio State, which I mentioned, is only several hours from Pittsburgh, an easy flight or drive from NOVA and will be less expensive with merit and more urban than others mentioned.

It’s interesting about you and your wife. I read a stat - not sure how true but the majority of engineering majors aren’t in engineering jobs. My son’s second summer was in a non engineering job. I asked him why they wanted him for it. He said they want people who think like engineers.

Now he’s in a full time engineering role.

Your son can spend $20k to $90k plus and potentially end up in the same job. My son did - working with kids from the school he turned down. He chose his for housing (own room, shared with one bathroom) - not to save $$ but I just got lucky :). Stroking the big check 2x a year can’t be easy.

So I get - your ROI component isn’t hard and tight but I do think the in or near city is important and I get the Va schools - but Penn State, Purdue - both gorgeous but don’t meet that qualifier. Purdue from an ROI standpoint - outstanding.

U of A outstanding and for you a flight instead of a drive. ASU too. And along with U of SC the top Honors college.

Best of luck whatever you decide. There’s no right answer. Every family is different. I’m full pay but set a hard budget. If an acceptance didn’t deliver on cost, it was gone. So schools like UMD and Pitt that came with no merit - gone.

Ps - engineering admissions isn’t hyper competitive. But you’ve selected a list that is. And when you want merit, you have to go to the right schools. Kids that last in engineering are top notch. It has a high failure rate - one study says 60%- so there’s no dopes. And if he ends up in a different major, that’s great too.
These schools will work.

Your son will do great admission wise. But if you truly have a budget, don’t waffle. The $$ are very real. Best of luck.

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All of this made me think of McGill. It has an excellent music program, and excellent math and engineering programs. Some might claim that it has the best music program in Canada (although some other people from Toronto might argue the point). When my older musically-talented daughter applied (and was accepted), we were told that some of the music professors augment their income by giving music lessons on the side. Apparently taking lessons is relatively common even among students who major in something else. The music library and other music facilities there are excellent. There are multiple concerts of some sort or another every week (or were when we were looking). Given your son’s excellent stats, admissions would be very likely.

I did not mention it in my earlier post because of the “not too cold” request. However, I do not think that it is any colder than Rochester and not much different from CMU. It is also in a very attractive city that has a lot of interesting things to do. While Montreal is majority French speaking, the area around McGill (and Concordia, which is close by) is almost entirely fluently bilingual.

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??? Indian is a subset of Asian, unless you mean Native American.

Joining the ACC does not move Stanford any closer to VA.

Note that PSU, Purdue, VT have secondary admission to engineering majors based on college grades.

UNC Chapel Hill does not have much in the way of engineering.

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Sorry - you are right. Father is Korean, mother is Indian (from Kashmir).

I am currently debating recommending OSU instead of Pitt perhaps, and also CWRU. Might be worth making a trip to see both campuses since they are only 2 hours from each other and about 6-7 hours away by driving.

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Ohio State has competitive secondary admission to engineering majors, while Pittsburgh only requires passing prerequisites.

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I would keep all 3. I would tream reaches.

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NOVA is very competitive for UVA and VT. You or your son needs to ask the counselor what the approximate rank is (or look on the school profile and see if you can figure out an estimate). We are not in Nova but are familiar with some schools there: between 10-30% can get into UVA depending on the school: course rigor plus rank both matter a lot. The counselor should be able to give you a good idea of chances so you can plan OOS backups if it doesn’t work out. On the other hand, he could get the good news that it is a “likely”, in which case his list doesn’t beed to be as long.

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You have 20 Common App spots. Don’t be afraid to use them.

OSU will likely be cheaper than Pitt but you had Pitt on there for “family” reasons. So no reason to remove any - unless you run out of spots. This makes it more difficult - i.e. you drag the decision even later and it gets torturous - but at least you’ll have a chance to go visit (you can wait until after offers) and see if one is better than the other - or worth spending more on.

btw - can’t say it’s true today but two years ago, if you did the Pitt online session, you got an app fee waiver (was Hail2Pitt) - so you might see if that’s still a possibility - save you the $60 or so.

Good luck.

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@Gronk a supplement can really help with selective schools, with the kind of music accomplishments your son has.

Also want to mention that he needs to think about whether or not schools with BM degree programs are a good fit, because in some cases the best teachers and opportunities go to those students.

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Thank you all for your helpful comments. I will respond later with his final choice of college list.

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