<p>Yes, the Gemstone I believe is an interdisciplinay living-learning community. There are also departmental Honors Programs, like the engineering one. I have a family member starting in a living -learning Honors Program (not engineering related) there in the fall and the family is pleased with what is being offered. If Maryland ends up being your top choice and the finances work out, I would not worry too much if you do not get into Honors. Many in your engineering classes as you go along will be very good students .</p>
<p>That’s good to hear, thanks! some extra money from maryland would likely put it above the others, though. Otherwise I think all of the universities I’ve added thus far seem about equally as expensive. But I’m confident that I can get a good education regardless of where I go.</p>
<p>You have a great attitude about that. Not sure if you have any interest in Virginia Tech or not and it is not as close for you as Maryland, but they do have an actual living-learning type (residential) program for first year male engineering students called Galileo. <a href=“http://www.eng.vt.edu/residentialprograms/galileo”>http://www.eng.vt.edu/residentialprograms/galileo</a> Beautiful campus, friendly students, great school spirit, and great recruiting.
There is also an Honors program. <a href=“http://www.univhonors.vt.edu/html/about.html”>http://www.univhonors.vt.edu/html/about.html</a>
Good luck!</p>
<p>@thegc97 - Just to clarify, the Honors College at UMD is made up of 7 different programs, i.e Gemstone, University Honors, Integrated Life Sciences, etc. You can find more info at honors.umd.edu. Each one has its own living-learning community (dorm). After being accepted into the Honors College, students fill out a questionnaire and indicate their first and second preferences for a specific Honors program. Merit aid consideration is completely separate from Honors College admission evaluation. Merit aid is most strongly influenced by SAT scores and GPA. However, given the average high scores achieved by the Honors college students, they tend to be the ones who get merit aid. Good Luck</p>
<p>Thanks for the help sevmom! I’ll look into Virginia Tech.
@SoofDad I actually wasn’t aware that merit aid and the honors college were independent. Thanks for that information!</p>
<p>Soofdad, It is my understanding, unless it has changed, that the programs you are describing at UMD are the scholars programs, not the honors program. The honors program is highly competitive and offers the most merit aid. The scholars program is competitive, but not as much as the honors program, and offers less merit aid. It is the program where you pick the living-learning community you want. Honors students live in honors dorms separate from those of the scholars. Getting into the honors program is comparable to getting into an ivy league school. At least it was a few years ago. </p>
<p>And about UPenn, the estimate for the net price is around 31k. It says I would receive about 30k of grant/gift aid from upenn. My family income is somewhere between 140k and 170k. Does this sound probable? It seems very generous. </p>
<p>It’s possible. The top privates could be quite generous with fin aid these days. Have you tried running the NPC at other Ivies?</p>
<p>I just checked for brown and columbia. Columbia shows a bit more, and Brown shows a bit less. They seem generous. But my brother goes to cornell, and the aid we get for him is not even close to these numbers. I haven’t tried the cornell NPC. Could it be because for that one year we’ll both be attending college, so I receive more aid?</p>
<p>You definitely want to include some of the smaller [url=“<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org”]AITU[/url</a>] schools besides RIT, RPI, CMU and Case Western. These schools might have some very good merit aid or competitive scholarships for students with your academics and test scores. Since they all specialize in engineering and science, you should be able to get a top notch engineering education at any one of them. Employers know about them and do a lot of recruiting on their campuses.</p>
<p>@xraymancs thanks. I’m trying to stray away from those schools that specialize in technological majors (that’s why I’m not very into gatech). I don’t know for sure if I want to stay in engineering, even though I like math and science. And I don’t want to limit my opportunities, and I can’t really know for sure right now what I want to do. </p>
<p>I know for one company that I worked at there was no recruitment of GT, perhaps it’s more of an East Coast/South area. I never did see a lot of MIT nor Cornell either, we had an East Coast office, perhaps that is why. But I distinctively remember there was a lot of UofMichigan, UIUC, Stanford, Wisconsin, and Purdue, mostly top 10 engineering schools and local UCs such as UCB, UCLA, UCD. Not a lot of USC either that must be the LA area.</p>
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<p>You should try Cornell’s NPC. Also, your brother’s aid will likely change when you enter college.</p>
<p>@maggiedog - My D was admitted into the Honors College for the Class of 2018. We have attended several presentations given by Dr Dorland regarding the set up of the Honors College. My D selected University Honors and was admitted into that program. At orientation, she registered for classes, including her first Honors seminar. Her LL comunity will be in Hagerstown Hall. It is true that Honors is more competetive than Scholars and that Honors students tend to get the most merit aid. Please check honors.umd.edu for the most current info regarding the Honors College.</p>
<p>@maggiedog - My D was admitted into the Honors College for the Class of 2018. We have attended several presentations given by Dr Dorland regarding the set up of the Honors College. My D selected University Honors and was admitted into that program. At orientation, she registered for classes, including her first Honors seminar. Her LL comunity will be in Hagerstown Hall. It is true that Honors is more competetive than Scholars and that Honors students tend to get the most merit aid. </p>
<p>Just to follow up again, the most current info regarding the UMD Honors College can be found at honors.umd.edu</p>