Colorado Mesa is in Grand Junction. Fort Lewis is in Durango.
One last thing: I am so grateful to all those who responded with constructive advice. I will copy and paste the supportive and informative suggestions and pass it along to her.
Regarding budget, if you and your parents can contribute up to $10,000 per year, then the budget based on her student contribution would be:
about $10,000 with no loans or work
about $15,000 with federal direct loan or work
about $20,000 with federal direct loan and work (the stretch budget)
It looks like Texas public universities’ in-state list prices are at the very edge of affordability based on the above. Schools with full tuition merit scholarships should be within the above ranges. Full ride merit scholarships are obviously better.
Please note that it is not “schools” that are accredited, it is individual degrees at the school. Post #32 mentions Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The included link is to the accredited BS in Mechanical Engineering. However, the BS in Electrical Engineering does not appear as an accredited degree on the ABET site.
http://main.abet.org/aps/accreditedprogramsearch.aspx
Colorado Mesa does not appear to have any ABET accredited degrees.
In line with the numbers that @ucbalumnus, neither Arizona nor Arizona State are going to be within the budget stated for an OOS student without substantial merit aid not likely with an 25 ACT, and they are both on the order of the same size of UT Austin.
Drexel is known to have a great engineering program, but honestly since she is from Texas with those scores she can go to UT or A&M. I am am engineering student, I didn’t go to either, but Aggies have a STRONG network, ABET accreditation, and it’s a great school. Consider the networking capabilities for her school choices. Being a smart engineer means nothing without the network after college.
Oh and college isn’t about being nerdy, I look completely different from everyone else in my program and have completely different interests but that did not stop me from making friends. Engineering students tend to study together. All she has to do is make one friend who is a social butterfly and she has instant access to all study groups. Also getting involved in one or two orgs (ie being on an exec board or committee that actually does something) will help her start to build a network. And usually there are strong cultural networks that even shy students thrive in. We have the Asian Student Association, and AISES which is an engineering group for Asian students at school. Then there are the general orgs for everyone to mingle so she can have the best of all worlds: culture, people I’ll eventually work with, and engineering. Lastly, she can always switch to industrial engineering, they still get decent pay and its known to be easier. College courses can be a challenge, engineering is not impossible. There will be super smart kids that fail just because they don’t know how to study. If she knows how she can pass any class. Failing a course is not the end of the world. A lot of us do it. Some classes are just put in place to test your endurance for the degree.
I know this thread is a couple months old but wanted to chime in for those considering Colorado Mesa University, CMU’s program is ABET accredited (just google Colorado Mesa ABET and you’ll get to the right info). Also, what they told us when we visited is that the mechanical engineering degree is offered as an extension of CU Boulder and that your diploma comes through CU Boulder. You save money by paying CMU tuition for everything but the classes in your major. Then for those classes, you pay CU Boulder tuition levels, but at least you still only pay CMU housing and fees (much cheaper than CU Boulder).
Wow… aren’t we stereotyping female engineers to be grim, dikey, souless drones?
Perhaps she should try the SAT. Everyone is different but my son did significantly better with it.