Question regarding the trade offs of merit aid versus college rank, specifically for ABET accredited engineering programs. DS20 falls into what I have seen on CC as the “average excellent” category. 35 ACT, 4.0 UW (well, it is possible he will get a B in AP Calc BC this semester, it is teetering on the edge), fairly rigorous schedule of AP classes, Eagle Scout. However no compelling hooks or tippy top accomplishments/ honors. He will not be qualified for financial aid.
We have organized schools into three buckets: (1) the local state school, NC State, which has a great engineering program and we can pay full price using savings set aside for that purpose (2) top rated engineering schools that have a low probability of admission success that he can only attend if he receives an ROTC scholarship and (3) engineering schools that aren’t as highly ranked, but offer great automatic merit aid based on his stats (example of UA- Huntsville, or Ole Miss). This final bucket are all public universities in other states that offer great merit aid even to OOS students.
He will apply for other scholarships, but won’t count on them. And, he is sincerely interested in serving in the military, so we aren’t pushing him into the ROTC option in any way purely to pay for school. But he understands as well that we won’t pay 75k/year for school. DS is pretty chill about it overall, he isn’t expecting to get into a T20, but wants to apply to a few anyway. “you definitely don’t get into the schools you don’t apply to”
Is this a sound strategy? The schools with great merit aid seem nice, but are not ranked particularly well. I read some posts saying how great it is to get a degree from a top notch program, and others saying it only matters that they are accredited and in the long run it is better to start out with no debt because the long term salaries will even out if you are good at your job. Anyone who has been, or kids have been, in this situation? What did you choose, and are you glad you did?
I’ve worked with mediocre engineers from top schools, and great engineers from average schools. Engineering is a pretty level playing field. I would fall on the side of searching for a free option for undergrad, or as close as you can get to free.
QUOTE=chaphillmom top rated engineering schools that have a low probability of admission success that he can only attend if he receives an ROTC scholarship
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If he has low probability of admission success, and he needs a (competitive) ROTC scholarship to afford to attend, that makes such a school a double-reach (for both admission and the ROTC scholarship).
For many families who do not qualify for financial aid, but have budgetary constraints, it comes down to what is the target school that is affordable and still meets all of the marks. A lot of such parents will stretch the budget for name recognition schools. Also the ranking of the engineering department might not be as important as the the overall likeability of the school. As an extreme example, I know very few people who would turn down Harvard even over a Georgia Tech (higher ranked engineering dept) with generous merit money. So you have those issues in play.
In your son’s situation, he appears to have a solid target with NCState. Eminently affordable, great school, and great chance of admissions. Would he trade that for Similarly priced UNC-CH, if he gained entry? What about UVA for significantly more money as merit would not be likely from them? Would your son choose CaseWestern over NCState if they came up with money to make the cost differential irrelevant? How about Georgia Tech if it gave merit money? Or Maryland? Or Pitt? Or Tulane? How about a full ride to Tulane or University of Alabama, possibilities for his stats?
These are questions you should discuss with your son. You know right up front MIT, CIT, the Ivy’s are not going to give a dime for merit money because they don’t. So applying to those schools a waste of time and just caused emotional stress if accepted if you know up front that you aren’t going to borrow to pay that premium. How much more than the NC State cost are you willing to pay if the school is preferable to your son?
Friends of ours had UMich, CMU, Cornell, Georgia Tech, MD, PSU , and One of the SUNY schools as their choices. Georgia Tech was more expensive than the SUNY but with the discount and the fact that it is highly ranked in engineering and the student preferred it, the parents went with it. They might have sprung for PSU or MD as well, paying the OOS premium. The other 3 schools were off the table because of cost. $70k+ wasn’t going to work.
This is the sort of juggling act one does with colleges.
I’d add UAlabama (main campus) , Tulane, MD, Georgia Tech to your list and also any schools that have ROTC and he likes. Go for broke on those with the firm understanding that without the ROTC scholarship, it’s not going to happen.
@chaphillmom try to get into Honors at NCSU; only 185 kids a year get it, but the kid gets to register for classes before every other undergrad. It makes State amazing. In any honors essays, make sure your kid emphasizes they will go to state if they get honors in a subtle way; they are very careful not to offer honors to kids they think won’t go there. Wolfpaw, the ncsu portal for accepted/currrent students, has resources where you can see what kids get what grades with which teachers; for physics everyone takes the same test so you can see who the best teachers are; there are honors sections of many required classes for Chem, Math, Physics where they put the best teachers too. NC State with honors is almost like going to an T20 school with engineering. (the student still has to council themselves on when/what to take a bit). Use naviance! My guess is your kid is a lock. I don’t see the point of bucket #2. state and bucket 3 seem more reasonable.
Clarkson seems to be a school that is often overlooked, yet it continues to rank highly in graduate job placement. It also gives phenomenal merit aid packages (so I hear, anyway). The climate might be too much of a shock for a Southerner, but it’s worth a consideration.
@ucbalumnus - agree, it is a double reach. But he is still interested in giving it a try. Actually, I think ROTC will be a bit more likely than acceptance to the high reach schools! But, obviously, not a guarantee for success. And by low probability, I mean that even for qualified applicants there is only a 5-15% chance of getting in.
UNC-CH has only biomedical engineering. The other NC publics (besides NCSU) with a selection of the usual engineering majors are NC A&T and UNC Charlotte.
@ucbalumnus must be an engineer; NCSU has a ton of engineering undergrad majors, there’s a co-op program which typically pays 18$ an hour plus overtime and per diems if sent out of state for a project. (they provide housing and a rental car too (for out of state) and usually onsite meals as well.) NC residents are lucky to have UNC and NCSU at 9,000$ a year in state tuition
My nephew was and engineer at NCSU. It was a great program. He decided it wasn’t for him changed to political science, went to law school and is now a lawyer. He has friends that stayed in engineering and got great jobs. I think it is an outstanding option and I would save your money and go there.
@cptofthehouse - we’ve been having those very discussions. He knows that anything significantly >NC State will need to be by either merit aid or ROTC. Georgia Tech, MIT are both two of his ROTC top choices and he would very happily go to either. Bucket 3 is something that he thinks will be fine, but doesn’t drum up the same level of enthusiasm. He spent 3 weeks at a NC State nuclear engineering summer program last year and really liked it- so his baseline school is one that he could be very happy about. @anon145 - I’ve heard the honors program at NC Stateis great. Any idea how difficult it is to get accepted? I know they automatically invite some students to apply based on stats, but I wasn’t sure if it was extremely difficult to get into.
I guess one question I have is for anyone who decided to take the ‘bucket 3’ pathway, and how you found that experience to be.
It can happen. One of son’s friends did Naval ROTC at Tufts. Only way he was going to get to go there. And he didn’t have the stats your son has. Just graduated.
My S21 is interested in engineering and we also are in NC. Public universities tend to dominate in the engineering world and most don’t give much aid to OOS – except those auto merits you’re targeting. That’s what makes NCSU so attractive.
Is he going to be NMF? If so, I think UF might also have a really sweet merit opportunity.
Do you have a top budget? There are some T15 public engineering that are more like $45 or 50k – not $75k like the privates. I’m thinking of Wisconsin, VT, Purdue. That may still be more than you want to pay – and it’s truly hard to justify over State.
Not exactly the same but my son chose an OOS public over in state Texas A&M or applying at other reaches by choice. He liked the program better and they gave him some great scholarships and enrollment in the Honors college and acceptance in a highly selective program. He is not an engineer but absolutely is loving his experience. He has fraternity brothers that are graduating engineers and they have job offers all over the country. I am an engineer and we have lots of people from all types of schools from all over the country and they do just as well if not better than the top tier school kids.
If he is adamant about what sort of engineering, and it narrows the firld, then the list will be short anyways.
I don’t like seeing kids limit themselves that way. About half the kids I’ve known have not stuck with engineering as s major. More than that for the various other majors. I’ve seen kids put their parents through contortions to get into some unusual program and they don’t last a semester. A lot of those kids were seriously directed kids, with excellent stats too.
Your strategy is indeed sound. ABET is a great leveler. UMi did a study on starting salaries across a variety of engineering specialties. Cornell- unquestionably a high-level engineering school- posts a lot of graduate data. Look at how they line up:
**US avg** v **Cornell**
BME: 62,411 v 47.075
Civil: 59,230 v 62,324
Chem E: 68520 v 79185
Env Eng: 59008 v 72,500
Mat Sci: 73964 v 68,675
Mech Eng: 64956 v 74,383
Obviously, you can only put so much weight on averages from a given year, and $10-15K is a big difference to a new grad! but to me the takeaway is that when you put it all together, the differences are differences of degree, not of kind- right out the gate…
There are differences in programs, and university ‘feel’- focus on those.Graduating w/o debt is a huge gift to a student- one they can’t begin to appreciate until they start knowing people with debt.
Fwiw, NCState is a super program, and I know quite a few students who actually enjoyed their engineering course there. Not a small consideration.