My daughter is currently ranked 1 out of 691. Has all the AP courses and got 5’s. GPA unweighted 4.61, Weighted 5.41. She plays soccer, basketball, and track. During the spring it’s track and then to club soccer. I mention this because I’m hoping this will be a factor on her college applications. She is interested in chem eng and business. This makes Upenn and MIT her choice schools. I know these schools will be difficult to be accepted to. Our family makes too much for need base but can’t afford sticker price. My question is if accepted would we pay sticker and should she go, or go to say Lehigh which offers merit and has an IBE program?
Good that you are having this conversation now, so you can clarify for her before she applies. I’m not sure anyone can tell you if one school is worth it over another. It depends on your finances, whether you have other kids, and what her career goals are.
But the bottom line — if you can’t afford what a school would charge you, then it needs to come off the list. She is lucky to have high stats that make her competitive for merit at good schools. Be sure she shows interest, meets all the merit deadlines, etc.
I’d make it clear to her what you can pay, then work with her to find a variety of schools that may work. Unless merit is guaranteed, you can’t be positive if or how much she will get, so look for several schools that would work for her.
If you haven’t run the net price calculators on the school websites, you should for each school she is interested in, including UPenn and MIT. You can also Google the Common Data Set for each school and look at their websites to understand if/how the handle merit aid.
Thank you for your reply. I am new to this forum and am happy to see help from people going through, or having gone through the same
I also would not “expect” merit from a school like Lehigh. It’s possible she could get some but there are no guarantees. And getting accepted to a school like Lehigh is no slam-dunk either, even with those stats. Applying ED would improve acceptance chances.
Lehigh offers merit to approx. the top 4-8% of applicants. Only the top 1% get the full tuition, so that should not be assumed by any. Your daughter, however, sounds awfully competitive to be in that pool. I would suggest, first of all, having her decide her top choices NOT purely based on selectivity. If any offer Early Action, that’s a good move bc you can get some transparency about financial aid or at least an offer/denial/referral on the table. If she decides Lehigh is among her top choices, the most important thing would be for her regional rep to know her level of interest, otherwise she might get wait-listed in regular decision because they might think they won’t yield her. IBE itself is incredibly competitive… about 1200-1500 applicants for around 50 spots… and all those kids go on to great jobs and/or grad programs.
@rtknicks If you have high EFC, good luck even if you are in top 1%. I know a case, high EFC, IBE admitted 1570 SAT, 4.0 UWGPA, 14 APs, 5s across Chem, Calc, English, History, meaning whether STEM or not, Salutatorian with solid extracurriculars and then some got absolutely no academic merit from Lehigh. High EFC? You may be out of luck for merit.
@rtknicks I would bet that if your daughter meets the threshold for merit-based aid at Lehigh, she would also be accepted to UPenn, MIT or both. Regarding “need” based aid, Lehigh’s EFC calculation is typically much higher than the FAFSA EFC because the school includes your home equity in the calculation whereas the government some top tier and Lehigh tier schools do not. You have to do some digging to see which schools are more friendly to middle/upper middle class families. I would agree with the others that have said you will likely have to pay list price at Lehigh. Also, I would definitely not do ED because that is binding, and if you have the home equity or other assets to pay for it, I doubt they would consider financial hardship as a valid reason to back out.
You might consider that there are many private universities with great programs and great teaching that are not so focused on their ranking and selectivity score that will offer $~25k+/yr. merit-based scholarships to students with your daughter’s stats. Generally, these scholarships are described on the school’s website, and are reflected in the Net Price Calculator when you enter the student’s stats.
Thank you all for your input