The University of Illinois has really excellent Engineering programs and STEM offerings overall. It’s also decent in the Humanities, so it’s a strong school all-around. Between the Illini and the Panthers, you have two good state schools into which you should be admitted. Illinois has a top-10 Engineering school; they don’t come much better, if at all. That’s something to keep in mind.
We need to find you some lower reaches, high matches and matches.
I think in terms of private schools, you might consider schools like these to add some mid-range to your search:
Rice - Low reach
USC - Low reach
University of Rochester - High match/match
Lehigh - High match/match
Case Western - High match/match
Boston University - Match
Syracuse - Match
Thank you baltimoreguy. However I am not Christian and therefore may feel uncomfortable going to “Trinity College”. Although to be fair I’m not sure how religiously affiliated that it is.
Also to prezbucky, the middle 50% ACT range for USC is 29-33. Mine was 34, which means that in terms of ACT I would be in the top 25% of the class. I’m not sure why this would be considered a “reach” for me.
As been pointed out several times on the thread already, your understanding of how financial aid works is…naive / flawed / you get the picture.
You need to educate yourself in this area (several good suggestions on this thread) or you are going to have some surprises in your future (and not the good kind!)
So, per post #16, you’re not looking for financial aid options after all? As others have pointed out, with a family income of $190k, you’ll be paying full-freight or very nearly so at your reach schools, which give entirely or almost entirely need-based aid. If you’re okay with your only choices being those or UIUC, then you’re done. If you want to have merit aid possibilities at schools that are easier to get into than your reaches and could net your parents a cost of $30-$40k rather than $65k, you’ve got more work to do.
When I filled out the online financial aid calculators most of the private schools that I are on my list would give me $5-25k of need based financial aid per year.
Do your parents run their own business? Do they have rental houses? Do they have other large assets? Do you have a non-custodial parent? If any of those are true the NPCs are probably not accurate for you.
CU and CSM are strong engineering schools but don’t give a whole lot of academic scholarships in comparison to how expensive it is. But just beautiful campus, especially CSM.
My son scored 34 on ACT and has 4.3 GPA. He was only going to get 16,000 and it cost 48,000 for OOS.
Pitt is a great engineering school. But with ACT 34 as a white male from IL(?) I don’t think you would get a full ride, especially in engineering. Last year the freshman class honors college eligible students had an average 1484 CR&M SAT, that is about 34 average, so that means many had a higher ACT score. Only 2% of applicants got full tuition, about 600, there are only a few full rides and they go to Chancellors scholars (usually not engineering majors), instate Stamps scholars and some URM students.
You will be full pay or close on most of the schools you listed.
Apply to instate, some schools that offer merit like Case Western, U Rochester, Lehigh, U Alabama, they are research universities that offer great opportunities for engineering.
Apply, visit and compare programs and see which you like best and makes the best financial sense.
Does it say how many other applicants are also in the upper end? If 30,000 students apply for 2,000 seats and 10,000 of them have scores in the upper end, the chances of any one applicant are very slim.