Engineering schools for OOS A+ student with need for financial aid

College Search & Selection
1

Hello,

First post here!

Daughter is applying for FALL 2016.

She is strongly hoping to major in ENGINEERING, looking towards biomedical, mechanical or chemical.
Her qualifications:

  • She attends CHARTER SCHOOL OF WILMINGTON in Delaware (top-ranking science Charter school) and has a 4.1 weighted GPA.
  • She received a 5 on her AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE exam her junior year.
  • Her senior year schedule is:
    AP CHEMISTRY
    AP STATISTICS
    AP US HISTORY
    Honors Physics
    Honors Calculus
    Honors English
  • She is an avid participant on her state robotics team, she attends daily for 2-3 hours and they placed 21st in national championship last year.
  • She was accepted to CORNELL’S Curie Academy (week-long women engineering seminar/camp) last summer and that has confirmed her desire to study engineering and apply to CORNELL. She received a application fee waiver as a result.
  • SAT scores: 700 reading, 710 math, 640 writing
  • SAT subject tests will be taken in Oct

Her top choices right now are:

  1. Cornell
  2. Virginia Tech (oldest daughter attended there)
  3. NC State
  4. Georgia Tech
  5. University of Florida

We are ideally looking for a school that could offer close to a full-ride (with financial aid, scholarship), last resort would be the D of E loans which can be maxed out to $12,500 a year.

We are DE residents but may be POSSIBLY be relocating within the next year to NC (job move) of course this would impact the price.

What are your thoughts? Any recommendations for other schools we should be looking at?

2

You may want to check residency requirements in NC to determine if you’d qualify for instate tuition at the schools you’re interested in if you move.

3

Have you run the net price calculators on the web sites of the schools already on the list?

Check the residency rules for both DE and NC. In the best case, she may be able to choose in-state residency in either state; in the worst case, she may lose in-state residency in DE but not gain it in NC (i.e. out-of-state everywhere).

If she is strongly interested in chemical engineering, she can try for the University of Delaware’s Du Pont full ride scholarship.

What is her unweighted GPA (which is what most colleges use, or they recalculate their own weighted GPA)?

http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ lists the following full rides with engineering that she may be eligible for:

Tuskegee (3.7 GPA, 1300 SAT CR+M)
Howard (3.5 GPA, 1400 SAT CR+M)
Florida A&M (3.5 GPA, 1800 SAT CR+M+W)
Louisiana Tech (3.0 GPA, 1400 SAT CR+M)
Prairie View A&M (3.5 GPA, 1760 SAT CR+M)

A full tuition merit scholarship may be doable if she gets a large enough Pell grant that, combined with a federal direct loan and some work earnings, can cover the room, board, books, and miscellaneous expenses. The above list includes full tuition scholarships at the following:

Alabama - Tuscaloosa (3.5 GPA, 1330 SAT CR+M (1400 for non-engineering))
Alabama - Huntsville (3.5 GPA, 1330 SAT CR+M)

Some that a retry on the SAT and ACT might get:

Mississippi (3.0 GPA, 1440 SAT CR+M)
Temple (3.8 GPA, 1420 SAT CR+M)

The above automatic scholarships may be safety school candidates. For match and reach full tuition to full ride merit scholarships, take a look at the list in http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1461983-competitive-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html .

4

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We are ideally looking for a school that could offer close to a full-ride (with financial aid, scholarship), last resort would be the D of E loans which can be maxed out to $12,500 a year.


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Then take off:

U Florida
GT
VT

^^ these schools won’t give a full ride or even close to one.

What kind of aid did your older DD get at VT?

What was your older DD’s FAFSA EFC?

<<
D of E loans which can be maxed out to $12,500 a year.
<<

The fed loans aren’t that high.

Stafford Direct Federal Loans are:

frosh 5500
soph 6500
jr 7500
sr 7500

Did your older D get $12,500 loans for her last two years in college? If so, that’s because either she’s independent, or you were denied a Plus Loan.

Are you saying that you can’t contribute any money towards your child’s college costs?

5

Yes, by all means thoroughly investigate the options at UDelaware, since it is one of the top ChE schools in the nation.

Admission to Cornell will be super competitive, but if admitted the financial aid should be very good for an applicant of limited income resources, just like the other Ivy League schools. In addition to Ucbalumnus’ list, consider these colleges, who expend significant effort to attract female STEM students ($$);

Renssalear Polytechnic Institute
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Ohio University
Rose Hulman Institute of Technolgy
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
U of South Carolina
Clemson U
U of Kentucky
U of Tennessee-Knoxville (good Women in Engineering chapter. Female department chairpersons)
Washington U (BME, no ChE)
Saint Louis University (BME, no ChE)
Tulane U
U of Rochester
Rice U
U of Alabama-Birmingham

Now of course the “tech schools” have to work harder to get women to apply, one reason being the skewered gender ratio at these schools, a classic chicken-and-egg situation. Most such schools have a chapter of “Women in Engineering” or some-such club, many of which are very active and successful. I see that young women at SDSM&T have done especially well in recent years, getting great internships and permanent jobs at places such as NASA, Intel and the big natural resources companies and chemical companies. Hopefully CSM mom will contribute to this thread. She is very familiar with the Colorado School of Mines, another very, very good engineering school with a national reputation. I understand that CSM can be pricey, but CSM mom would know more about that. And Golden, Colorado is a wonderful place to be a student. I am told. Also check the posts about UAlabama-Tuscaloosa by Mom2collegekids, a person well versed in the assets and and appeal of that school. I understand UA has very generous scholarships for out-of-state students.

Finally, during his investigation of colleges, Lake Jr. took a look at Louisiana Tech because that school participates in a consortium of southern public universities (I think the State of Delaware participates) that offer Louisiana resident-tuition rates to qualified non-resident applicants. Be aware that the ROI of an undergraduate BME degree is often debated these days, But that’s another thread. Good luck.

6

Since UF is on your list, you may find this Admission’s report of interest:

http://admissions.ufl.edu/flipbooks/2014_Admissions_Report/#?page=0

For an estimate on “NEED” based aid, run UF’s Net Price Calculator:

https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/ufl

UF doesn’t award any automatic (based on GPA/Test scores) OOS merit scholarships. It does offer a limited number of “Tuition reduction rewards”.

For 2014: 569 OOS students enrolled
Alumni = $8,000; 42 awarded
Sunshine = $12,000; 17 awarded
Gator Nation = $20,000; 12 awarded
OOS Tuition = about $28.5K a year

UF also offers some, very selective, scholarships to OOS students. There is talk about increasing the number of OOS students, so they may improve/increase the number of awards for 2016.

7

Thank you for your replies, they were very helpful!

I looked at the list of full-ride tuition and I think we will add University of Alabama to our list. I’ve heard from friends that they offer full-rides. We’ve been considering - Renssalear Polytechnic Institute - as alot of her fellow classmates have received scholarship.

Ideally, we’d like to get an inclusive aid package from Cornell. I’ve heard IVY will give substantial aid packages, does anyone have experience with this?

I’ve looked at the NCSU Park scholarship - any advice on this? Does she have a chance for this? What about the GT Presidential Scholarship?

She plans on taking SAT again in November to try for higher score but GT and NCSU app is due by Oct. 15.

I’m also planning on looking for outside scholarships. She was diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis (JA) in middle school so I’ve looked at scholarships for this or for women in engineering. Any specific scholarships?

8

I think you’re confusing “full ride” with “full tuition” merit scholarships.


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SAT scores: 700 reading, 710 math, 640 writing

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I don’t think that a 1410 M+CR (2050 total) is competitive for GT awards or the Park Scholarship. Students getting those awards will likely have 1500+ M+CR…and a higher weighted GPA.

The recipients of those top awards are typically students that those schools suspect that ivy schools will accept, so those awards are often intended to “poach” those students. Your student has very good stats but she doesn’t appear to be a competitive ivy applicant.

yes, Ivy schools give great aid packages to those who qualify with demonstrated need… Those schools will look at family income, family assets, non-custodial parent’s income/assets.

Are you low income? Does your child have a non-custodial parent?

How much can you contribute each year towards college?


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has a 4.1 weighted GPA.

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What is her unweighted GPA?

What kind of aid did your older DD get at VT?

What was your older DD’s FAFSA EFC?

<<
D of E loans which can be maxed out to $12,500 a year.
<<

The fed loans aren’t that high.

Stafford Direct Federal Loans are:

frosh 5500
soph 6500
jr 7500
sr 7500

Did your older D get $12,500 loans for her last two years in college? If so, that’s because either she’s independent, or you were denied a Plus Loan.

9

I rather not discuss the financial aspect, of what we can/cannot afford, I am more so looking for advice on likely scholarships based on her stats.

What about outside scholarships? With her stats, any you recommend? Looking for scholarships geared towards women in engineering or kids with JA?

10

@hokiepokie2121 have you looked at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, TN?
It flies under the radar but is a great engineering school in a cozy little college town. They have OOS scholarships.

11

Why not get an estimate for your specific financial situation at http://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-attend/financial-aid-estimator ?

12

Outside awards tend to be for one year and for small amounts. If you’re looking for ways to fund 4 years of college, then those probably won’t work. A small award here or there may pay for books one year or another year, but they’re not going to fund 4 years of college.

The best awards come from the colleges that award them.

As for JA awards, you probably need to look at the JA website.

Outside eng’g awards are sometimes limited to continuing students so that they’re awarded to students who have made it thru the “weeding process”. There’s not a lot of motivation to award to incoming frosh who may either get weeded out or find that they don’t like eng’g.

My son’s outside eng’g awards were awarded for his junior and senior years.

13

Without trying to be negative, based on information given for MERIT scholarships only, while her stats are better than average for the average school, they appear average for quite a few of the schools on her list of desired schools. At quite a few schools in order to be considered for the large merit scholarships that you are looking for, her stats should be in the 75th percentile of applicants. When other factors are considered such as financial need, etc that changes things. I suggest that you run the net cost calculators for each school you’re interested in and look at the common data sets for each school ( like many of the others have suggested) in order to get a more accurate picture of what may be offered to your daughter by these schools. It really is hard to give general information because every school is different in their decision making process.

14

I think the difficulty you will face is that “full ride” merit scholarships are not all that common. Most aid is financial aid.
Is your daughter a possible NMSF? While her stats are very good, there are plenty of applicants with stronger credentials. We are looking at a couple of full ride options for my DS, but they require NMF status.

Run the NPCs for the Ivies. Your income is a determining factor in how much your COA will be. You could run the NPCs for Tulane and Baylor. These NPCs factor in merit awards, but I think the COA will still be high.

15

<<
Without trying to be negative, based on information given for MERIT scholarships only, while her stats are better than average for the average school, they appear average for quite a few of the schools on her list of desired schools. At quite a few schools in order to be considered for the large merit scholarships that you are looking for, her stats should be in the 75th percentile of applicants.
<<<

this is true. Her stats need to be WELL-WITHIN the upper quartile for consideration for those competitive awards at GT and for the Park award.

A 710 in the math section at GT is not strong at all. Over 50% of the GT frosh will have a HIGHER Math SAT than that. About 20% of students at NCSU will have a higher math SAT.

Your daughter’s stats are very good, but when applying to schools that attract the top students, there are going to be a gazillion others who have similar and STRONGER stats.

If you want a LOT of merit, then look at the schools that either have ASSURED large merit for her stats or where her stats are in the top 10% of the school.

Alabama is a rare school with engineering that is giving full tuition awards to the top quartile. That is not a typical scenario. The top quartile at Alabama is now an ACT 32+ (Your daughter’s SAT is equivalent to an ACT 32). It is very rare for a school to set its assured merit to a threshold that includes its top quartile.

16

Looking at scholarships for FIRST robotics team and I see Florida Tech offers large scholarships, what do you think fo the quality of this school?

Are her stats above average for this school?

17

Other ones I saw that give favorable large scholarships for FIRST robotics:

Illinois Tech
Harvey Mudd
Northeastern
Olin College
VCU

How do these compare? Any high ranking engineering programs?

18

@mom2collegekids are you saying Alabama is a good shot or no?

19

How does one apply for the DuPont scholarship?

20

FIT (Florida Tech) as well as the other “FIRST robotics” schools you’ve listed all have solid engineering programs.