I know as a parent it is difficult to hear your that your high achieving child is “average”, ( believe me I’ve been there) , but I think would be much harder to hear"'not good enough " My son is highly ranked in his class and has a very good GPA, but our motto has always been " We’re smart, but not full ride smart." We’ve heard at many college visits "
What makes you different than any other of these high achieving students?" While that was very hard to hear, it helped focus us in our college search. Good luck. I’m sure you’ll find what you need.
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@mom2collegekids are you saying Alabama is a good shot or no?
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Yes…a good shot! … at Alabama your daughter WILL GET the assured full tuition award PLUS 2500 per year as long as she applies before Dec 15.
To second @Nerdyparent , I have a relative at Tennessee Tech and he loves it. Total STEM kid too. I haven’t looked into what they offer in the way of merit, and he was a TN resident with excellent stats.
If you could nudge up her ACT to a 34 (or corresponding SAT score) and stay at or above a 4.0 (hopefully this includes weighted GPA’s - double check me) I think Alabama-Huntsville offers a “full ride.”
http://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships (see the “Charger Excellence” info).
Illinois Tech
Harvey Mudd
Northeastern
Olin College
VCU
Those are fine, but generally expensive.
$10,000 sounds like a lot of scholarship money, and it is next to a $10,000 tuition bill. But stand it next to a bill for $35,000 to $40,000 and it just isn’t.
A lot of us who earn a living as engineers aren’t as impressed by a school’s paper pedigree as we are by our peers who graduated from it. Was talking about this over coffee with a co-worker recently, and in general, we’ve seen good and mediocre engineers from all kinds of places. At first it’s a surprise to run into a sloppy engineer from a top 3-4 school, and a really capable engineer from someplace like Lake State, but that’s life.
Our DD is similar to yours stats wise. Our first visit was to UAH (Alabama Huntsville), and she liked it.
We don’t think of it so much as a safety as a benchmark - everything else is compared to it on quality, campus, and net cost. The net cost is looking modest - 10-15k/year, depending on outside scholarships. Having that as a benchmark took a lot of the pressure off the search. Candidly, I like both it and Mich Tech a lot better than Case Western after visiting each. I did not expect that.
It’s a really solid benchmark, UAH.
Anyway, I suspect your final cost will be lower at these schools than some of the ones you’ve listed, even though it isn’t automatic for all of them:
Alabama (Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Huntsville)
Auburn
Mississippi
Mississippi State
Arkansas
Toledo (heavy into co-op experiences)
Bowling Green State U.
University of New Mexico
Wichita State
Oklahoma
Texas Tech
South Dakota School of Mines
Possibly some of these too:
Miami (the 1809 one)
Michigan Tech
Louisville
Arkansas
You might try Clarkson, Rose, and some of the other schools in
http://www.theaitu.org/ , like Illinois Tech most of them are spendy, but for some, the student body is predominately male. Realistically, that just about has to boost the odds of scholarship, particularly for ME (not so much for biomedical engineering).
Shortly into our search I quit asking her to look into schools that relied heavily on grant aid, as outside scholarships were often subtracted from any institutional grant, leaving the net exactly the same. Fine. Next.
Huntsville accepts weighted GPA, but the top automatic award is Tuition and Housing, not including a meal plan.
Take a look at it with g*gl’s street view; it’s changed a LOT in the last 3-4 years. Look also with something like B1ng’s aerial view and you’ll see what I mean.
NMF I think gets tuition, fees, room and board at UAH.
Having a solid benchmark school handy makes it possible to risk the application fee for a couple of these - some of which have full tuition competitive scholarships. Otherwise, I imagine it would be really stressful.
ME, EE, Computer Science & Engineering all are predominately male. Bio E is not. That’s my logic anyway, we’ll find out in a couple of months if there’s any truth to it. 
What is your daughter’s PSAT score? Be advised that Wichita State, suggested above, doesn’t have chemical engineering. But they do have other engineering fields and they offer a full ride for NMFs.
Your D’s stats are strong for Florida Tech.
Its avg merit award is $15k per year, so not very much for a private.
It’s a private with a COA of…$57k per year.
Merit ~ Non need-based aid determined by:
Academics
Alumni Affiliation
Athletics
Music/Drama
ROTC
State/District Residency
If you have need, it does give need-based aid, but merit would be applied first.
Is it all about the money, or are there other aspects of a college that are important to you?
Addendum regarding Tennessee Tech - if out of state and admitted to the honors program, there is an honors scholarship which will take care of the out of state portion of the tuition:
All the schools you listed have strong engineering programs. My daughter is at IIT. She’s getting an excellent education there, and having a great experience overall. Her biggest class has been 50-75 students, and most are much smaller, even first year. She knows her professors. IIT offers good scholarships as well. Your daughter’s scores seem in range for acceptance at least. I don’t know anything about the robotics scholarships–my daughter was not involved in robotics… They do have active chapters of various engineering societies, including SWE.
Maybe @xraymancs or will comment.
Somehow discussing Cornell and these schools as equals seems odd. It’s also the all or nothing approach, either it is free or it is too expensive. Sometimes there are good options in between.
Certainly the Cornell net price calculator should give you a good idea of what that option would cost, likelihood of getting in will vary based on their interest in her FIRST activities and her ranking at her school and other applicants to Cornell. There are other schools that meet financial aid, again NPCs are the easiest way to figure out the amounts and also the likelihood of OOS scholarships. You can also look at common data sets, if only 20 people are getting merit scholarships at a 25K student campus, well, don’t count on it unless you have discovered a cure for AIDS. All these top 30 or 40 schools are getting outright stellar applicants who get these big awards.
Having financial aid needs does muddy the waters of what the lowest cost school is, the Ivies and other top 20-30 schools get cheaper, many public options, especially out of state, will not meet need at all (I think GT falls into this category, but NPC will reveal all).
Unfortunately, on a national scale, there are a lot of stellar applicants and a few uber-stellar applicants. I think if you are one the latter, you would know…
I don’t know about the novelty of female freshman applicants for say ME, although BS graduates still seem up to 90% male.
The 70% male schools could either be great fun for your daughter or intimidating, they won’t cater to her, but the goods are odd and the odds are good, or whatever. It does prepare her for a career that is likely also 70% or higher male.
Cornell is definitely a reach for the OP’s daughter. I think that Washington U and Rice are pretty unlikely; WashU places a notoriously high priority on test scores, and the OP’s daughter’s are somewhat lower than what they want. Mudd and Olin would also be big reaches. She could try Clemson, Pitt, Purdue, et al for possible, partial merit awards.
Given her SAT score of 1410 , she is currently eligible for 7500.00 in aid at Clemson. If she had a combined score of 1440 on SAT she would increase her aid to 15,000 which sounds like a lot of money, but OOS tuition is high and I don’t believe it will fall within the price that the poster is hoping for.
Since the OP is looking for Merit Aid Cornell is not a good match. They only offer Financial Aid, no merit.
As @Parentof2014grad mentions, Illinois Tech typically offers good merit aid for many admitted students. Furthermore, students in the top quartile of the applicant pool are invited to campus for interview weekend and considered for the full tuition [Camras Scholarships](Camras Scholars Program | Illinois Institute of Technology). As a faculty member, I am not directly involved in the admissions process but the academic record of the OP’s daughter seems to be right in that top quartile for IIT applicants.
I agree with the notion that has been mentioned in this thread, that the quality of an engineering graduate is not solely correlated with the “ranking” of the institution attended. Most ABET accredited engineering programs will provide the student the wherewithal to become a competent engineer. The outcome is mostly determined by what the student does with the opportunities.
Thank you all for your opinions!
Her and I sat down for a long time yesterday and looked at the options. I ran the calculator provided by Cornell and if accepted, it looks like we may have a good portion covered by aid, this will remain her first choice school and she’s going to try ED. (if aid is not enough, we can cancel ED)
As for her other options, we are considering:
2. Alabama - automatic full tuition - I worry this is too far and the reputation of the school seems like a southern party school. Cornell and Bama are polar opposites, she LOVED cornell when she visited, I wonder how she will react to Bama’s campus/atmosphere? (safety school). Will visit as we get closer to deciding (very far from DE).
3. Clemson - trying to increase SAT scores to get 15k aid
4. NC State
5. Illinois Tech - as you all mentioned, thank you! They also have a FIRST robotics scholarship (20,000) she will try for
6. Purdue
7. Tulane - the school is pricey, I’ve visited this school before and I think she’d like it but is it really possible to get 40-50k merit/aid to attend here? Some of you mentioned this school as giving large merits.
8. U of Tennessee-Knoxville
9. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - (safety)
Virginia Tech’s application is due in January so depending how the others go, we may apply here but I think chances of scholarship/aid is slimmer than other options on the list. This is more expensive than when my oldest went here, up to 29k now just for tuition for OOS. I think she could get into the Honors College which looks like the only way they will offer scholarships.
I’m unsure about GT now, as you all mentioned, it may be a reach to be accepted, therefore no chance at merit scholarship, possibly some aid but looks like GT is in the 30’s for OOS.
I’ve read Texas A&M may grant OOS tuition waivers for qualified applicants to get in-state. Anyone have experience with this, how likely is it?
I wouldn’t consider RPI to be a safety.
I think I read recently that only 4 pct of students are OOS at A&M. Tulane does give some really big awards. Could be cheaper than Purdue where you likely wouldn’t get more than 10k. I wouldn’t worry about engineering depts at any party school. If another safety fits better then use it instead.
Just FYI, Clemson’s application is live now and their housing is determined by application date,not admit date. In order to be eligible for merit, application must be complete with everything by Dec 1 or 15 ( double check those dates, can’t remember) I’d go ahead and apply and send in my updated scores , IMO.