The subsidized portion will only be $3500; $2000 is always unsubsidized.
Our daughter (OOS) was accepted into Aerospace at CU and also accepted at Purdue FYE. She really liked Purdue but is nervous about being in FYE and not a direct admit. She has several other good options, but does have CU in her top 3 and is still exploring Purdue further. We are planning a second trip to CU and Colorado school of Mines in the next month.
I think she will lock it soon, but she is waiting on general scholarship info from several schools. At the end of the day, I would not let her choose her second choice over a few thousand a year in cost difference but the way things have come thru for her there are cases where the delta is much larger.
What other options is your daughter considering and what do you find about CU that brings it up to the top? Thx
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Thx! How was Be Boulder for a Day? I will be taking my son to the same even on March 18. Last July we did Campus, Housing, and College of Eng tours.
We have $52k scholarship at Iowa and $40k scholarship at ASU, both direct admits into Aerospace, plus CU Boulder with only $8k. CU Boulder is ranked higher than both but Iowa and ASU are clearly cheaper.
Other schools are 2+2 Penn State, Ohio State and SUNY but they are not direct major admits. VT waitlisted us. So did GT earlier this month.
Still waiting on UMD, UIUC and UF regular decisions. Only UIUC is higher ranked than CU Boulder in Aerospace.
I honestly think it is Boulder for us despite the cost. I donāt think the difference is big enough to really care when the program is clearly better at CU.
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Yes, unsubsidized. Sorry. $5500 loan which my daughter can easily repay (we got that from Iowa paperwork as well). Plus $2000 scholarship. The rest is on us.
Same place. Paid $200, got the key, applied for scholarships. Didnāt do anything with housing yet.
Congrats to your daughter on her current options and good luck on the other possibilities. Our daughter has received similar strong merit from UCF, Auburn, Clemson and Colorado School of Mines.
She knows a young lady from our hometown who is employed in the Aerospace field along with her husband. They went to their respective state flagships for MechE, met in a one year NASA post grad internship that led her to a Masterās at Cal Berkeley and him to a Masterās at MIT. Their collective advice was to choose an undergrad program first for fit, second for cost and third for ranking. Also, they said to keep geography in mind in terms of internships and future employment. So, if CU one should expect to find work on the Rockies front range or West coast. This is not only based on their personal experience but many of their colleagues. They also pointed out that the biggest areas of growth in Aerospace are Astro (SpaceX, ULA, etc) and UAVās (Drones). Lastly, she knows another young lady who works at SpaceX who went undergrad at Georgia Tech but reiterated what the otherās said above.
Knowing how hard the decision is for our daughter, I thought you might appreciate what we have learned. So, as we discussed with our daughter, she knows the cost, ranking and obviously the geography just trying to find the right fit in a time when taking a deep dive into these schools in challenged by the limitations put on from the Pandemic.
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Absolutely and thank you for sharing.
Iām a female engineer myself - photonic research in telecommunications with several EE degrees so I can completely relate to what your friends are saying. I went to SUNY and Northwestern.
Honestly the only thing I want for my daughter in her first job is not to experience the bias I felt from the older male generation, and I feel it is less likely in a state like Colorado or East coast companies, because Silicon Valley has a huge gender pay gap and surprising lack of diversity despite companies effort to resolve it. And I think South still retains its unconscious bias towards females in these fields (obviously not everyone). I work myself for a Silicon Valley company and my 60-people upper-ranked department has two women in it.
I never worked in Aerospace but knowing that it is as highly arrogant as EE, I canāt imagine it being any easier in ASE than it was for me in EE. Once she gets her aerospace legs and becomes more confident she can go anywhereā¦
So one of the selection criteria for me was specifically female graduation rate at schools that we applied to. And looking up Boulder college of engineering showed 96% for recent years for gender/race/major that matches my daughterās.
The other important thing was the rank because of how many long term friends one creates in college. My specific field isnāt large (photonic EE) and everyone knows everyone if you get to higher levels in your industry. ASE is same and it does matter at the end - first of all because most engineers are arrogant and second of all these relationships tend to run long past colleges years. Also things like space (vs. aero) orientation is important from that point of view and CU Boulder is really what she wanted - space engineering.
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Btw, I agree that fit is critical but I think fit is a sum of many elements, and things like graduation rate, general nationwide rank, personal rank, location, college culture, female/male ratio and costs are actually a part of āfitā and fit isnāt a stand alone concept?
So CU Boulder for us:
Graduation rate - yes (but only for our specific major, not that great for Boulder overall)
Nationwide rank - yes (top 10)
Personal rank - yes (was #2)
Location - yes (Boulder is often #1 in best place to live - what else can you want)
College culture - donāt know much about it, as we are in Chicago suburbs
Female/male - could be better at ASE (only 25%)
Costs - no, but I think we can afford
At least thatās the list Iām running in my head, lol
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Are you sure itās Iowa, or do you mean Iowa State? I donāt think Iowa has an Aerospace Engineering major; Iowa State does. If you are comfortable paying $20,000-25,000 per year more for CU Boulder over Iowa (State?) or ASU and your daughter thinks itās the best fit for her interests, by all means choose CU. However, I donāt think you should choose based on ranking.
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Iowa State, sorryā¦ And yes, it is only $25k a year after the scholarship there when it is $57k at Boulder.
So actually $32k of difference.
It isnāt rank itself - it what gets CU Boulder that rank. If you look up their focus of research - all space (what she wants) plus being #1 public school for NASA grants. Iowa doesnāt have a program like that.
ASU is a different matter. She actually got into Astrodynamics at ASU directly and thatās still on our list of options, plus $40k Deans scholarship is no small matter.
Ongoing research activities in Smead Aerospace span five focus areas:
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My nephew went to CU, in mech E (not sure he even took any aero classes) and works for Northrup (something to do with a moon project). Heās based out of Wash DC and actually moved there in Sept '19. He went back and forth a lot in 2020 with covid but finally gave up his apt and bought a house in Denver. Now Northrup is letting him work remotely and paying for him to fly to DC about once a month or as needed.
CU has a wonderful new Aerospace building and is really a great place. There are opportunities in Colorado (Martin Marietta) but grads arenāt limited to Colorado. My daughter went to Florida Tech and her friends are spread all over the place too even though NASA is just up the street. I will say they had a LOT of opportunities for internships and co-ops while in school because there is so much of the aerospace industry in the area. Itās called the Space Coast for a reason.
I appreciate your thoughts here and agree. We live on the east coast of Florida within 90 minutes of Cape Canaveral. I have long forgotten how many space launches I have seen including some Apollo missions, first and last Space Shuttle launches, etc. Florida Tech or as I know it, Florida Institute of Technology is close to our home and a good school. University of Central Florida, in the last few years, has become one of the best connections to the Space program in the country. Aviation week placed them No. 1 for total graduates into Aero the last few years running. My only knock on UCF is what OLEGEC points out with the low female ratio in the college for students and faculty.
The UF announcement is this week and that will complete her applications. UF has the prestige over the others though I am not sure there is much of a difference these days. However, our older daughter went to UF and studied Civil and is doing fantastic. That field is on fire with the growth of commercial RE and now with the approval of $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
Your last few posts have been very informative and I intend to show them to my daughter. Surprisingly, she wrote an essay on the challenges she experienced in her High School Engineering Academy where they started out with 8 girls and only two are completing the Academy including my daughter. I will say this was not due to the teacher. He was very supportive and great. Just teenage boys, which is what it is at that age. They grow out of it.
We believe we are approaching the process in a similar manner. She feels both Mines and CU are progressive. We have spent a good bit of time on Auburn and Clemson and they have strong Women in Engineering programs despite being in the south. My older daughter (UF Civil Engineer) will tell you that UF is very progressive with Women in Engineering. Purdue and Rose-Hulman appear to be solid in this area, as well.
As to the Industry, She has the same optimism you have about the future. Hopefully, for both your daughter and mine it turns out to be true. I do like them pushing the boundaries and I think it will work out.
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My daughter was in civil at Florida Tech. There were many more men in that major, as well as at the school itself. She didnāt find it to be a problem. Would she have preferred more women at the school? Most of the time but it really didnāt seem to bother her.
I know a number of women at both CU and Mines. CU is closer to a balanced engineering school but Mines is still very lopsided. They find ways to get female support. SWE, sororities, clubs, sports.
My BIL is a 65 year old civil engineer. Both his immediate supervisor and department head are women.
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Civil, environmental and biomedical engineering are the exception to this. They both attract more females and retain more females. I think the worst one is the one Iām in and the one my daughter is picking, lol.
Our HS has an Aerospace engineering class. #20 in the state, the school has a wind tunnel and other engineering classes. Does it really matter? Unfortunately not much - 3 girls in a class of 25.
We seem to be failing at this completely as a nation. And us specifically, because I work with Shanghai and European locations and with the exception of Germany the situation is much better.
Great example - we applied for scholarshipsā¦ Who already responded, who gave my kid money? Was not a high tech group, not a corporation, but Women in engineering. Good for them!
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I attended Be Boulder for a Day with my S22 and wanted to share some information about the Program in Exploratory Studies (PES) that I had not seen relayed elsewhere. The PES presentation included stats for students who were not admitted into their first choice program, but instead were admitted into and enrolled in PES. For students in PES who had originally applied to the School of Engineering, 20% end up successfully entering engineering via the Intra-University Transfer (IUT) process. For Leeds School of Business, that number was 25%.
I was surprised at how low these figures are. IUT to Engineering is guaranteed with certain minimum GPA requirements, yet only 20% of students trying to get there through PES āmake it.ā The presenters were understandably unable to break these figures down by those who actively decided to pursue another area of study and those who just couldnāt make the grade requirements. My son and I had been viewing entry into Engineering through PES as a reasonable path with just a little downside. But the 25% progression statistic significantly changed our views on the program.
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Wow. That is surprising. My son is in the same position. Applied to Engineering and admitted to PES. We are heading out from Philly to the Boulder for a Day program next month.
The criteria for IUT seems very reasonable-- 2.7 GPA in the science/math courses and 3.0 overall. As I understand it, that is the ONLY criteria. Right? If that is correct, then I think that it can only mean that either its hard to hit those GPA threshholds or kids arent applying for IUT. I guess the only way to get more info would be to informally ask PES kids while there if its hard to hit those minimumsā¦
Surprised to hear thisā¦
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After doing some additional research, it appears that the average cumulative GPA of students in Exploratory Studies is 2.66 as of Fall 2021. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/university.of.colorado.boulder.ir/viz/Cumulative_GPA/Campus-ByDemographics That may be a big piece of the explanation as to why more PES students arenāt satisfying the criteria for automatic admission into Engineering.
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Thatās a pretty low GPA. Can you tell what the overall freshman GPA is?
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