<p>janniegirl, when I used the word ‘unattainable’ about colleges, I meant it in the general sense. At some schools your D might not get accepted. At others, like Purdue, since people are talking about that one, she might get accepted, but it would not be affordable. So unattainable in any case. If you can’t pay, then there is no going there. </p>
<p>I’m sure your D is a fine student, and nothing in any of my posts was meant to detract from that, so I hope you aren’t reading them that way.</p>
<p>jannie, the best way for you to help your D is by getting her information- lots and lots of information- and allowing her to draw the conclusions on her own.</p>
<p>Nobody here is suggesting that there is anything wrong with her profile. But your D will be able to look at a spreadsheet (which you may need to help her construct) and observe that there are a lot of schools where she is likely to be admitted, based on your HS’s experience with that college and kids with profiles like your D’s, but where the sticker price you guys- as a family- would be expected to pay isn’t feasible. And then she will observe that there are a number of schools where she is a possible-maybe-longshot kind of admit which might have a lower sticker price. And some schools where she is a slam dunk, potentially affordable.</p>
<p>And she will construct her list based on her conclusions. She may decide that she’s got to dramatically ramp up her score- or take the SAT- in order to be looking at a different set of schools. She may decide that some of the colleges she wasn’t interested in initially are worth another look once she sees the holistic picture of admissions/affordability. She may decide that she wants to throw the dice on one reachy school but spend most of her energy on the realistic admits/lower sticker price places. She may decide she wants to commute from home to save money for a year.</p>
<p>If you are annoyed with the tone here, it’s because a bunch of us are trying to help you see past the names and the “I don’t want to go to college with all the losers I went to HS with” which is a very common teenage reaction. Your D’s best bet may be both an admissions and financial value- and if so, she may need you to help line the numbers up so she can see that. She may decide that it’s not worth taking on the kind of loans she’d need to take to go to out of state dream school, or she may decide that she’ll stay up until midnight every night prepping for the SAT for a few months in order to get into dream school which has merit.</p>
<p>But a truncated in-state list-- which is generally going to yield the most affordable options, isn’t going to help your D right now.</p>
<p>@sylvan8798 Her thoughts are I want to go to a good school, I don’t want to go where everyone in my high school goes, I don’t want too big, and some schools seem too rural, and 4 hours or so from home seems about as far as she wants right now. I am working on her though, and her dad, to start thinking realistically. Too much info seems to be overwhelming, so I’m trying to help her see the positives for the places that appear to line up with her career interests. She’s kind of looking for the right fit for her personally, while also trying to keep in mind the costs. She sees herself somewhere between the smart kids who party and the nerds who never party. I think regardless of where she goes, she’ll find her place, but right now, this feels big to her. She spent her entire summer away traveling with a drum corps, so we had to postpone a lot of these conversations until now. </p>
<p>Dad left college with what was at the time significant debt. Now that debt might represent one or two years at a reasonably priced college. He thinks taking on debt for the right school’s program is worth it, while I do not (I graduated with zero debt from undergrad, about $13K from masters). I will be interested to see what he thinks of the state schools we are visiting. </p>
<p>The whole process of college applications often means applying to a varying array of colleges. Some are reaches, some are matches and some are safeties. A lot of people don’t like those labels, but it makes it pretty clear that there are those schools that are more like lottery tickets.</p>
<p>I’ve been through this process many times now and see my kids and their peers make their picks. Sometimes those lottery tickets work out; some times not. My college son’s close friend had very high stats all around and was not accepted to any of his top choices. The schools that were his "matches’ cost more than his parents wanted to pay–they would have paid for ivy or brand name, but they could not bear coming up with the same amount of money for schools that weren’t as well known and as high on the rankings. So he ended up going to a safety with a full ride. He was quite depressed about the whole thing, but he managed to get into some accelerated type of MD program from there, and is now in his first year of medical school and feels at the top of the world. </p>
<p>The choices on the table at the end of the process are not always what we had hoped our kids would have. </p>
<p>As she goes through the process, she may change her mind too. My daughter wanted a small school, no more than 2500 or so. Her first choice became a state school of about 11,000. The factor that was ‘so’ important became a non-issue (although I don’t think she would have been happy at a school of 25,000+). When she first looked at the now-chosen school, she said no, it wasn’t for her. We looked at a few more and she didn’t like them either so she went back to the first one. This was about April of junior year. By May it was all she could talk about. We visited again in Sept and they made her feel like a princess, and she’s never looked back. She moved in last week and each and every minute is better than the prior one.</p>
<p>This is a kid who doesn’t look for problems. Everything is fine with her and with that attitude, everything does work out for her.</p>
<p>Take a look at Rose-Hulman. They have an excellent reputation for turning out good engineers. It’s a fairly small school (and rural), but you never know! They also offer merit awards…<a href=“Scholarships & Grants | Rose-Hulman”>404 | Rose-Hulman;
Common Data Set numbers: <a href=“404 | Rose-Hulman”>404 | Rose-Hulman;
<p>The thing I;m having a hard time comprehending here is, why not Ohio State? To me that seems like the obvious solution. Consider the following:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>OP’s daughter wants to study engineering. According to US News, OSU is the 26th-best undergraduate engineering school in the nation. Which, if the ranking is accurate, means there are only 25 better. That’s pretty darned good considering there are some 3,000 colleges and universities in the country. For engineering OSU is just one step below #23 Harvard, at the same level as RPI and Penn, and ahead of #35 Brown, #35 Case Western, #43 Yale, #49 Dartmouth, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>More particularly, she’s interested in Chemical Engineering. I don’t have undergrad program rankings, but OSU’s graduate ChemE program (a proxy for faculty strength) is ranked #23 nationally. Case Western, the other local contender, is #45. Princeton at #7, Cornell at #18, and Penn at #19 are the only Ivies that outrank it. So bottom line, an excellent school for the student’s intended major.</p></li>
<li><p>Is OSU affordable? Total COA is about $25K for an Ohio resident, so that’s already about $5K less than the OP’s EFC at an expensive private or OOS public school that meets full need. Assume the student can contribute $4K/year from part-time employment during senior year of HS, summer employment, and term-time employment at school (probably not work-study because that money will go to students with demonstrated financial need, but there are always waitressing and bookstore jobs in college towns). Further assume the student borrows the maximum federal Stafford unsubsidized loan of $5,500 for a freshman, a bit higher for upperclass students, which would leave the student with about $28K debt at graduation–a very manageable figure or a chemical engineer. That leaves the OP about $500 short of the amount she says she is willing and able to pay. Is that $500 ($41.67 per month) a deal-breaker? Really? For the 23d-best ChemE program in the country? I don’t know whether OSU engineering has a coop option, but if it does that could drastically reduce the out-of-pocket cost even further. Two of my brothers are engineers; both did coops which paid for a large part of their college costs, opened up valuable networking opportunities and led to permanent job offers, and gave them valuable professional experience which gave them a huge leg up in the competition for full-time employment after graduating.</p></li>
<li><p>Can the student get in to OSU? GPA is stellar. ACT of 27 is third quartile for OSU (middle 50% 26-30), but the admit rate is 67%, and likely a bit higher for in-state applicants. So a 27 with that GPA might well do it, but pushing it up to a 28 or 29 could all but seal the deal. Can she get into a better ChemE program with those stats? Well, maybe, but the admissions bar is going to be higher and the financial demands likely greater at any higher-ranked private or OOS public school. Worth investigating, though, and worth pursuing if the finances look promising. Case Western is known for giving big merit awards to students they really want. A 27 ACT may not be competitive for those awards, but with that GPA a slightly higher ACT might do it.</p></li>
<li><p>My conclusion: OSU is the obvious starting point but it’s worth targeting a few “reachier” schools and a few “safer” schools to see what the combination of program quality and costs looks like, and to have alternatives if OSU works out, and fallbacks if OSU doesn’t work out. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Let me emphasize here that I’m no OSU fan. In fact, I’m a Michigan alum, which has conditioned me to hold OSU is disdain. But purely as a value proposition, for an Ohio resident who wants to study engineering, and chemical engineering in particular, and who has the stats to gain admission to OSU, OSU is going to be very, very hard to beat. I think the challenge should be to burnish the credentials to secure admission to OSU, and then to see if any school beats it, considering both price and quality. (But hey, nothing’s to stop you from quietly cheering for the Maize and Blue, even as an OSU student).</p>
<p>Ohio State’s mid 50 ACT is now 27-31. They’ve been working hard, and successfully, to raise it. Check the 2013 CDS. If you are using collegedata for that info, they have not updated, still using 2012 CDS or older. Also, the admit rate looks to have gone down to 55% in 2013 . 17,400 accepted of 31,300 applicants.
<a href=“Institutional Data | Office of Academic Affairs, The Ohio State University”>http://oaa.osu.edu/irp/irosu_cds.php</a></p>
<p>It may be that size of OSU is offputting to OP’s D. She mentioned in her most recent post that her D likes smaller schools. It is true what another poster said that attitudes towards larger schools can change. I’ve seen that happen to several families posting on the “class of…” threads in parent forum that I follow. A student who has been insisting on a small school does about face and decides that a medium or larger school is better and henceforth rejects all small schools. But OP probably knows D well enough to know if such a switch is likely and what environment would be a good fit for her. I was promoting OSU myself before OP said that about her D.</p>
<p>Has anyone mentioned the thread about cheaper OOS schools here? Perhaps there is something there that is suitable. Actually now it looks like CC consolidated all the lists of scholarship/OOS waiver/cheap schools into one sticky with links to all of them at the top of FA form.</p>
<p>Just want to point it out that the mid 50 for the whole university is usually a bit lower than the mid 50 for the engineering school in the same university.</p>
<p>All the big publics in the Great Lakes are great schools. OSU, Michigan, MSU, Purdue, UIUC, UW, UMinnesota, you can’t go wrong with any of them. You can argue that oh, Michigan and UIUC are better than MSU and Purdue, but they’re all more similar than they are different and lots of people graduate successful from all of those schools.</p>
<p>I’ll also say on not wanting to go where kids from your high school went, my high school was the biggest feeder school to my college (Pioneer to Michigan - you can look it up - my year there were about 140 that went to Michigan right out of high school), I didn’t see people from my high school all that often. Occasionally I did and I’d say hi or something if I knew them, but it’s not some overwhelming thing that you’re going to see people from your high school all the time. </p>
<p>Agree with bclintonk about OSU. I will be very surprised if OP’s D doesn’t get in, though she may not get into Honors.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s huge, but it’s also very friendly, and there are various ways to find a smaller community: Greek system, Women in Engineering residential house (<a href=“Learning Communities : Housing and Residence Education”>https://housing.osu.edu/learningcommunities/women-in-engineering-learning-community</a>), etc.</p>
<p>I sympathize with not wanting to go where all your HS classmates are going, but this is where the size of OSU (or OU, or Miami, or Cincy) is a plus. If her classmates aren’t in engineering and don’t live in her dorm, she’s unlikely to see much of them.</p>
<p>As for the urban schools being near bad neighborhoods and the rural schools being too rural…right now, just apply, and you may find that it’s not such a big deal in the long run. There just aren’t that many Georgetowns that are in a beautiful neighborhood in a vibrant city, etc. Kids learn to love the schools in less than perfect locations.</p>
<p>It’s actually fortunate that the student wants to study Chem E. There just aren’t Mickey Mouse programs filled with airhead students in that field. They don’t exist. So I’d be much, much less concerned about the eliteness of the program and the fellow students than I would be in social sciences, humanities, business, communications, etc.</p>
<p>To put it really bluntly, the daughters of rich families can afford to have Goldilocks tastes (not too big, not too small; not too near, not too far). And if she gets lucky with merit money, wonderful. But it’s important to start focusing now on schools that you know will provide a strong education and be affordable. Put emphasis on getting the daughter ready for the possibility of making it work with an Ohio public school.</p>
<p>@billcsho:</p>
<p>Engineering would have higher stats, but that’s balanced out (and maybe then some) by being a girl applying for Engineering. Also, many publics seem to value GPA/class rank more highly than test scores.</p>
<p>Agreed about the size thing. BTW, as for the whole HS moving to college together fear, OH isn’t like MO or AR where the state flagship takes in a huge percentage of the state’s HS grads because there are few other public options.
Wouldn’t a bunch of her classmates be going to MiamiU, OhioU, UCincy, and a bunch of the other OH publics? While not as big as OSU, these aren’t exactly small schools either, so where do these schools draw their students from?</p>
<p>In 2012 the mid 50 in engineering at OSU was 27-31. Since the university’s mid 50 moved up a point the next year, it is possible that engineering’s did also, could be 28-32. Easy enough to call engineering dept and ask, if she decides to apply. Still seems like a decent chance.
<a href=“https://engineering.osu.edu/academics/admissions”>https://engineering.osu.edu/academics/admissions</a></p>
<p>She took the ACT once, in spring of junior year. Worth seeing what happens when she takes it again. Plenty of kids raise their score. Mine went from 27 to 30 with minimal efforts.</p>
<p>"To put it really bluntly, the daughters of rich families can afford to have Goldilocks tastes (not too big, not too small; not too near, not too far). And if she gets lucky with merit money, wonderful. But it’s important to start focusing now on schools that you know will provide a strong education and be affordable. Put emphasis on getting the daughter ready for the possibility of making it work with an Ohio public school. "</p>
<p>Love this, Hanna. Ever so true. We see this a lot. Yes, an Ivy would be preferable, or one of those small, selective LACs, and the job market is better to go to MIT, and sleep away college, private college, a smaller college, a better cimate, a big city, away from a big city, …the list goes on. And that’s fine. That’s a dream list and we can all dream and apply and see if it works out. But the real challenge of finding a college is to find one that fits as many of the things one wants and still is affordable. That is the bottom with most things. Buying a house, a car, etc. We don’t get everything we want most of the time when we have time, money, selection restraints. College is no different.</p>
<p>Exactly! It just seems for some reason that even people who have had “selection restraints” their whole lives go all Goldilocks once they start shopping for their kids’ colleges. I don’t understand it. We send our kids to the best K-12 schools we can in our communities. We don’t up and move halfway across the country and find new jobs just because there’s a better school somewhere else. For the most part, we make our peace with whatever “the best we can do” is within the larger parameters of our lives.</p>
<p>Yet somehow, when it’s time to apply to college, all of this sensibility seems to go out the window for some people. They seem to treat the college search like one big buffet–everything is on the table, and they don’t dare tell their kids “no” no matter what they want. </p>
<p>I’m going to file away the phase “going all Goldilocks” to use with our son this fall as he hones his application list. Wait . . . did I say this fall? I meant this week 
</p>
<p>“GTech was generous with a friend’s dd with similar numbers. Being female in engineering helps.”</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse - I’m not sure when that was but GT started taking the common app last year. So it’s really hard now to get merit aid at GT even if you are a girl. They do not have automatic merit scholarships like UA and some other schools. I think it’s a great school but if DS was OOS he would be going somewhere else instead because OOS tuition/room board at GT is $44,000/year…so while it’s possible OP’s daughter may get merit aid I’d also be looking for schools that are more generous with aid for OOS students.</p>
<p>@bclintonk she is going to apply to OSU. Suffice it to say we have a lot of knowledge of the goings on at OSU. Some of that makes it look good, some makes it look bad, or at least, not the right fit. But, we shall see. It IS huge though they try to make it feel small in a lot of ways. Personally, I’d choose UM over OSU any day. But UM seems like a pipe dream right now, sadly. </p>
<p>I agree. UMich, particularly CoE, is a reach school for many oos students academically and financially.</p>