“Penn” is Penn State, I assume? Penn (a.k.a. UPenn) does not have an EA option.
These ROI calculations all suffer from the exact same set of issues as every single one of the “ROI” calculations for higher-ed:
A. they overestimate earning for colleges where the vast majority of students already come from wealthy families and have far better opportunities.
B. The numbers of CS majors from many of the colleges with the wealthiest students were pretty small until 2010. Places like Brown or Dartmouth had fewer that 40 CS students graduating a year.
So the ROIs for Harvard, Yale, or Brown, are the amount of money that a very small number of students, from the wealthiest families in the USA, made.
Not useful.
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As this thread unspools, the college list keeps evolving. I count 14 schools your student applied or plans to apply to. “Penn” just appeared in a new comment, added to Rutgers, UFL, UMD, UNC, SUNY (campus unspecified), Vassar, CMU, UMich, Cornell, Columbia, BC, Duke, and WashU.
I’m not comprehending this combination of schools, but I don’t have to. Students are unique and, like their fingerprints, their college lists can be too.
Still, I would encourage your student to inventory her list and hold to a strategy based on fit criteria and a well-informed chancing hierarchy. A list that is in constant formation this late in the process is a recipe for extra stress.
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You indicated that the degrees weren’t worth the cost of attendance but are dismissing the ROI data based on cohort size and socio economic status.
At a bare minimum it was worth it to those students who constituted smaller cohorts and had high ROIs. You can’t just dismiss it because it doesn’t fit a narrative.
Additionally rich kids can often afford to take lower paying jobs so particularly in a small sample pool you can’t imply bias based on presumed factors. Companies certainly seem willing to recruit across socio economic class particularly in CS. We also don’t know if these students were wealthy or are part of the 50+% of students at Ivies that are given significant FA. You are jumping to conclusions not in evidence.
Rather than opinion (and dismissing my data as not useful) what data do you have that shows Ivy degrees not to be worth it per your statement.
Reality is you can’t simply dismiss the worthiness of Ivy degrees in spite of data to the contrary, nor is it right to do so when OP has applied ED to one of them. Otherwise we can respectfully disagree.
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Since Columbia University is your daughter’s first choice, she might want to consider also applying to their Barnard College. This way, your daughter has two independent possibilities to be accepted into Columbia University, reviewed by different admission officers using different admission criteria!
And, if Engineering does remain her passion after the first year or two, she can enter Barnard’s 4+1 Engineering program to finish her Masters at SEAS:
https://barnard.edu/4plus1-pathway-engineering
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The CS major at Columbia is open to students from any of the 4 undergrad institutions: Fu Foundation, Columbia College, Barnard and GS. The CS curriculum is identical, the only difference is the core. I agree with @DigitalDad that Barnard RD application makes a lot of sense. She could also consider RD to Columbia College.
Have you thought about engineering colleges outside the US? Especially U Waterloo? Also consider the UK schools like Imperial (only 3 years long).
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Waterloo is a great option if you know that CS is exactly what you want to do. However, their software engineering program admits 5%of applicants so extremely competitive. Also the program is essentially 100% software engineering so would be a very different experience from Columbia which has a core (the core differs between SEAS vs. Columbia College but in all of them you take writing courses etc.) Columbia is trying to educate your mind while Waterloo computer science programs are specifically trying to train engineers in that specific area.
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Thanks this must be a secret, was not aware.
Daughter may not like it, though I think this is a great option to apply to Barnard.
Prep’ing for MIT interview now. They sent interview request right away.
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Congrats and best of luck to her! MIT works very hard to keep gender balance. Her odds will be better than the males she’s competing against. If she hasn’t read the article linked below, she might find it helpful.
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Just checked in on this thread, add MIT.
Thanks, that’s what I say, nothing is impossible… at this age !
What an odd thing to say about yourself!
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Could you explain ? Why is it odd, are you familiar with Asian community or just here to educate others.
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It would not be an odd statement from a student about their parents. But for a parent to be self-aware enough to realize how wrong it is to limit fully funding their child’s education only for top 20 and yet insist on doing so is very odd.
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Oh you are assuming bad intent.
Wouldn’t a college below top 30, say Tufts, Boston college and lower be happy to provide some kind of scholarship/ grant for good students ?
I know it depends on parents income, I have seen Net price calculation does show some grants.
But for top 20 we wouldn’t worry too much about cost of attendance
My understanding — and I very easily could be wrong — is that most schools in the top … say … 75(?) of USNWR or similar rankings have enough students applying that they focus on need-based aid, rather than merit-based aid. So if a family is in a position where they have the ability to pay, they won’t get much financial assistance. That is, “if you can afford a T20, you can afford a school lower on the list” … though a family might decide that it isn’t worth it to them to spend that money for that school. I’m sure others know more than I do here, and I’m eager to learn, so I’m happy to be corrected if I’m off-base.
No, not necessarily. There are plenty of very strong, unhooked applicants to these colleges as well.
Yes, the “top 30” are all excellent schools, but there are plenty of others lower down USNWR’s ranking that are very strong in their own areas. So (for example) a #40 school isn’t necessarily one that needs to entice high stat students with monetary incentives. It all depends on which students they’re looking for to meet their own institutional priorities.
Pretty sure Tufts gives need aid only.
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Tufts does not give merit aid.
I find rankings completely specious, so that’s why I find it odd to link funding to them.
We set a hard budget, $200K or less (in 2014) with whatever merit he was going to get. For mechanical engineering we didn’t feel that paying more was justified. Had he had his heart set on some place like MIT or Caltech, we could have stretched, but he specifically didn’t want to attend a pure tech school.
He ended up applying to schools that were known to focus on the undergraduate experience and paid no mind to rankings. Looking at the rankings most use, he didn’t apply to a single T20. Most of the schools that interested him aren’t ranked in that cohort.
It seems to have worked out. He was the first new grad hired at a startup right out of school and 3ish years later has been recruited for multiple FAANG positions, and will be transitioning shortly.
I would pay the most attention to desired experience and budget. Schools have different approaches. Rank tells nothing about fit.
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