Hello - I am not completely familiar with all of the common abbreviations, so forgive me if I spell out something I should have abbreviated
My daughter is a rising senior leaning toward engineering or computer science. Her scores are 35 on the ACT (36 if super-scored) and 1530 on the SAT - 36 & 800 on math. She will graduate with either 16 or 17 AP classes. She LOVES college football and would really enjoy that experience. She also plays French Horn and would likely do marching band if it’s an option. We have visited many schools:
Wash U
Northwestern
Notre Dame
MIT
Yale
Harvard
Penn
Princeton
U of:
Illinois
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Iowa
Michigan
Her #1 thus far is Northwestern, and we are going for a second visit there next week to reaffirm her interest. We’d hoped to get to Vanderbilt & Duke, but won’t make it yet this summer. 25 years ago, I visited and applied to one school and got both my BS & MS there, so my hubby and I are learning as we go in this whole process. She does have a counselor in school, but thus far has not offered any input (hoping that improves this school year). Financially, we will likely qualify for some aid at the first list above. I so appreciate whatever feedback you can offer to a few questions:
How hard is it to “sell” your interest in a school without having visited?
Are there schools you recommend taking a look at that I haven’t mentioned?
With her scores, are there schools that you would not bother with?
As the parent, have you run the net price calculator on each college to check affordability? You need to tell her the financial limits before she makes her application list, not in April when it is possible that all of her admission offers are at colleges that are too expensive.
Does she have a safety that she is assured admission to the school and her desired major, and which is assured to be affordable?
Yes, we have played with the Net Price Calculators and have a preliminary idea for those schools. I am not sure yet about her “safety” school(s). Would you recommend any not on the list?
Purdue and Georgia Tech would fit on that list for CS. For Ivies I think most would look at Brown, Cornell, Columbia before Yale for CS but maybe you have other reasons for excluding them. With her stats you might want to consider Arizona State; PAC12 football and potentially pretty good merit money. Her stats are competitive so you may as well throw Stanford into the mix.
I am from Illinois also. I don’t think you listed her unweighted grades. This is important to give you the correct guidance. My son went to the top school in the state and didn’t know you could even do that many AP’s… Lol…
You will get little to no money Out-of Illinois and the reason my son is at Michigan. We got decent money and it is not costing that much more then champaign. They have everything you are looking for at Michigan and ranked high in all engineering fields. Michigan had many 35 Act kids on their 10, 000 waiting list this year. Write a great essay!
Since you put down Iowa, with that application you can choose Iowa State University. She will get accepted to both within 2 weeks or sooner. If she applies today (very easy app) she will know soon. Great engineering school with good football team and crazy school spirit Like Michigan… Hint) They also give very good merit especially if she has 4 years of a language.
I would add Cornell if her grade point is good. Purdue is a good safety. Texas and Wisconsin can be tough for out of state. Same with Vanderbilt and Duke.
If she is a CPS student, Northwestern can be a free ride if chosen… FYI.
MIT… Why not… Same with Stanford. If you can afford the application fee go for it.
Look on Naviance if your school uses it to see what the past students got in with. I would go back 3 years.
Schools like Michigan don’t super score. They also don’t use weighted scores so A=4,B=3,and so on.
Some schools like Princeton don’t track interest…of course you are interested. (see Section C7 of their common data set). Other big Us can’t track interest of 50,000+ students.
Honestly I would look at my state’s state U to get the best value!
@Bopper for Illinois that can be a two edge sword. Many go out of state since University of Illinois champaign gives little aid. If her GPA is what I think it will be then she might some and might be worth it but many kids go out of state and get better merit aid then our state gives. Plus a governor not supporting his own world class schools…agh…
Northwestern should meet need “if” accepted. That might be hard to pass up.
Contact the schools regional counselor to let know interest. Ask if they are visiting. Go to school fairs when the schools come (should of done this as a junior). Sign in! Some schools have regional talks in the city and suburbs… Again sign-in.
A story about NW, way back 40 years ago the school was considered to be at the forefront of computer science. One of the first great chess computers was built there, having won numerous championships during that time. Though it still is one of the leading institutions in the country in general, it has slipped a bit in Computer Science over the years.
In a cruel twist of fate, back close to 40 years ago, I was accepted into NW, most likely with the help of being a CPS student at an all minority HS and considered to be a URM at the time, despite having an ACT of 30 and a SAT under 1400. But this poor boy didn’t want to deal with the whopping $10K a year tuition, plus living in a dorm, even though grants and scholarships would have covered about 60% of things. Fast forward to this spring, my kid with a 1540 SAT and 35 SAT and some great hooks - rejected at NW.
To the OP, as you probably already know, NW gets a good number of its students via ED and the acceptance percentage goes a lot higher via ED, so if NW is your choice, I highly suggest going ED.
If your income is under $150k Ivies like Harvard, Yale and Princeton will be affordable. I was going to suggest Brown though aid isn’t as good as the others. Cornell, Stanford and MIT. Would she be interested in WPI, RPI? Check out Olin for engineering, though very small and likely no football. A wonderful school but very selective. Also Tufts?
I figured she wasn’t in the selective enrollment CPS schools with that many APs… We usually start in 11th grade and get like 6-12 in by senior year. Some suburbs (I work in Western Suburbs) tend to start like 9th grade for APs.
UIUC has been on a state demand to take its own the last few years and tone down the 25% goal of going after full pay Asian kids. UIUC has offices overseas for this…Think they take like 70 % instate now. Much like Georgia and Georgia Tech
Northwestern, Michigan, Vanderbilt, Washu, Wisconsin, Minnesota, are all touchy /Feely schools also. They want to know you want to be there.
Since you said you might revisit NW. I assume you already did the engineering talk /tour thing. Make an appointment with someone from engineering like the head or assistant head of the department. We did this at many colleges and talked but skipped the school tour. We discovered very early on just doing our own walk since like all the schools chemistry buildings sorta looked the same… Lol.
Also email /talk with the band head. Does she have to set up an audition? Michigan’s Marching band is made up of 30% engineering students BTW.
When my son emailed to thank whomever he met with he also cc his regional school counselor for that specific school. This way that person was in the loop and usually got a nice email asking his thoughts about the school etc. So “interest” was assumed and didn’t have to be forced. Plus meeting with a professor /department in our eyes shows the ultimate interest. For out of state schools an email to whatever schools department will work.
Also make a school account and pursue the website. There is some theory that some schools have to ability to know if you made an account and that does show interest if true.
Sorry forgot to add this… If she has contacts she met she can use that in her essay of “why” this school. Always nice to put down that after meeting with Professor X from that school you gained knowledge about this and that. Again… To me this shows the ultimate interest and maturity.
Curious why she doesn’t have Carnegie Mellon on her list. They have a band (you have to wear a Kilt) and Div 3 football (7-4 record last year) and better CS than Harvard or Yale - though probably not better financial aid.
You have visited many diverse good schools. Good list for good academics. Have her look at the overall campus feel et al. Very different choices. Upper Midwest public/flagship U’s have excellent academics and a different atmosphere than the private U’s. Consider the social life- little Greek presence (available if desired) with no influence on the majority of students to much more.
When she makes her lists she should look at required and available math, engineering and CS courses for her potential major. Seeing what is common/different may help her choose.
