<p>you’re right, slumom, the COA (once you include books and personal expenses) is about $37K for engineers (OOS or in the non-state-supported schools) and the max merit is 11.5K, which is a little better on both counts than I had originally thought. </p>
<p>(Our experience with our first is that it’s very possible to spend less than the budgeted amount on personal expenses, but books for engineers do add up, even when bought used, via 3rd parties, etc.)</p>
<p>SLUMOM, do you know if tuition is paid during the school semester when one is on co-op? Also how does doing one or more co-ops impact graduation time? Are there summer academic sessions available? I can’t quite figure out how Alfred’s co-op program works compared to others I am more familiar with.</p>
<p>I think University of Hartford would be a good safety. They have a very good Engineering School and I believe the class sizes are not too large. Many projects in the Engineering School are supporting local corporations, schools, business etc. University of Hartford gives sizable scholarships to high stats kids who apply. It may be enough to get into range.</p>
<p>Also, Western New England College in Springfield MA is another Engineering school that flies under the radar. I do know that local companies respect and hire their engineering grads. Some do internships and co-ops. I do not know about $$ there though.</p>
<p>Pitt gives very nice, numbers-driven merit awards. The college of engineering gives additional money to top students. So a student could get a full tuition scholarship and then a couple thousand more for engineering.</p>
<p>mathmomvt, no, I am not familiar with how the co-op works. </p>
<p>All the people I have ever come into contact with at AU have been very friendly, outgoing, professional etc. So if you email a professor in the Engineering Dept. about the co-op, I am sure you would get a response. </p>
<p>We usually don’t add in “personal expenses” as those should come out of our child’s Work Study Job money. Books we do pay for usually from “Half dot com”.</p>
<p>Thanks all. I will check into all those options. </p>
<p>As for COA, we do what Slumom does and have the kid pay for personal expenses out of his Work Study or other job. But I included an expected job for the kid and expected summer earnings in the amount we can pay as a family, so I have been including the personal expenses in the COA as well.</p>
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<p>As I noted in Post #26:
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<p>Lafayette is generous in need-based aid, especially to those qualifying as Marquis Scholars. (If they weren’t, I would not have been able to attend.) To estimate what they would consider your EFC, you can use their online calculator found here: [Financial</a> Aid Tools and Policies Tuition & Aid Lafayette College](<a href=“http://finaid.lafayette.edu/financial-aid-tools-policies/]Financial”>http://finaid.lafayette.edu/financial-aid-tools-policies/)</p>
<p>In-state public universities are likely to be among your best options for a balance of affordable cost and decent engineering programs.</p>
<p>If he turns out to be a National Merit finalist/semi-finalist, a few out-of-state public universities will offer good merit scholarships. Otherwise, OOS public schools generally won’t offer much aid (although their full-pay rates still will be cheaper than the full-pay rates at selective private schools).</p>
<p>Private schools that show up in the USNWR engineering rankings (for whatever that’s worth) AND offer merit aid include:</p>
<p>Bucknell
Cooper Union
Lafayette
Union</p>
<p>Case Western
Rice
Vanderbilt
WUSTL</p>
<p>Merit awards at these schools typically have averaged around $10K-$15K in recent years (maybe enough to bring the net close to OOS public school rates, in some cases). Generally they go to students in the top 25% to top 5% of the entering class. The threshold has been lower at some schools. You can look up recent numbers in the Common Data Set file, section H, of each school that posts one on the Web.</p>
<p>U of ROCHESTER! they’re undergrad engineering ranking is under ranked (and I dont think they get enough appreciation on this site); we should probably be around were we are in the regular university rankings (somewhere in the 30s). Probably the top program in the country in optics/optical engineering and also near the top in bme. Lots of scholarship opportunities, ranking from 8K to full tuition. Rochester is as good, if not better than schools like Lehigh, Case, and Bucknell for engineering.</p>
<p>Tried to send you a PM, but your box is full.</p>
<p>Thanks for all those suggestions. </p>
<p>Our in-state public is pretty pricey, and they only offer a pretty small amount of merit aid except for NMF (in which case it is full-tuition and suddenly a much better deal). COA for UVM is 27.5K - 4.5K max non-NMF in-state merit… barely affordable but hardly a great bargain.</p>
<p>mathmom-
Just be sure you fit in a fifth year at some of the engineering schools as it is likely… Both RIT and VaTech told us to except it. </p>
<p>Friends son is at Northeastern (Co-op and 5 year program) and his spring/summer coop turned into a Spring semester only with salary of 10K now $3500. Don’t know what happened and neither does the student. Still doesn’t have a start date. (I work with his Mom and she is concerned.) Co-ops are not placements. Kids have to interview for the jobs. Great, great experience and resume builders but don’t know the percentage of students that don’t get any offers. Good question to ask. </p>
<p>Son is at SUNY Buffalo. Aero/Mech engineering. Doing great. Has had summer internships (paid) and doing paid research on campus throughout the year as well. He will graduate in 4 years, dual major. They do have the “Presidential scholarship”. Look into it. Your sons stats, if he does well on SAT and has high GPA may serve him well. Also, look into ACT> my sons felt it was easier than SAT.</p>
<p>RIT is a 5-year co-op program anyhow, but IIRC you only pay for 4 years worth of tuition. We can’t really afford to pay for 5 years, so he’s going to have to go somewhere he can reasonably expect to finish in 4. (My older son is only a freshman, but I don’t see any roadblocks to him finishing in 4 years thus far.) If they want to do a 5-year MEng program, they will probably have to come up with the money for that themselves (possibly by taking some time off to work). </p>
<p>What is your friend’s son majoring in? When we visited co-op schools (including Northeastern) with DS’11 it didn’t sound like any of them had trouble finding jobs for their engineering students in good standing. A co-op job is never a guarantee but the schools do do a lot to help the kids get them organized.</p>
<p>DS’11 also did better on the ACT than the SAT so we’re definitely attuned to that possibility. Thanks for the SUNY Buffalo suggestion – will check it out.</p>
<p>OP - If your son becomes NM, Drexel has been giving full tuition to those with NM. </p>
<p>I second Pitt and Lafayette.</p>
<p>UMass Amherst may be worth a look. It’s ranked the best public engineering program in New England for what that’s worth and is looking to attract more out of state students. They may be willing to send some merit money his way. They are building a new honors college dorm/classroom building which should be ready by the time your S is ready to go. If he doesn’t qualify for honors, the engineering RAP (residence program for freshmen) in the Northeast dorms is a non-partying alternative. The engineering college is a small college (about 1500 students) within the larger university. So far, my son has been very happy there. There is also a 5-college exchange program with the area LAC’s (Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire) so it is possible to take somes courses at other schools and get the LAC experience. I’m not sure how the numbers would work out, but the OOS cost of attendance is in the low $30’s so with some merit aid could bring it in range.</p>
<p>crazed, That is interesting that you heard from Virginia Tech to expect 5 years. Shrinkrap recently posted an interesting link about engineering education (which includes date about the average program length at each school). RIT does list 5.0 years for average but Virginia Tech lists 4.0 as average (the only one they list at 5.0 is mining and minerals engineering-all others they say 4.0-civil,mechanical,etc.). I have a son who’s a junior at VT now in engineering and he is having no trouble being on track to graduate in 4 years. Here is the link about the different schools . To find average program length, click on undergraduate, then Program Comparisons (where you will find average program length).
[ASEE.org</a> - ASEE - Publications - College Profiles - Search the Profiles](<a href=“http://profiles.asee.org/]ASEE.org”>http://profiles.asee.org/)</p>
<p>A friend’s son did five years at Virginia Tech, but he was also in the corps of cadets. I wonder whether being in the corps might impact the time it takes.</p>
<p>MD Mom, I would imagine Virginia Tech’s Corps of Cadets could be fairly time consuming but not sure how demanding it is since son is not in the Corps of Cadets. If you look at the requirements for graduation in most of the different engineering disciplines, they are based on completing the requirements in 4 years.However, this can involve sometimes taking 16 , 17 or 18 credits a semester and some kids may want to space things out more ,take less credits even if means taking longer to graduate. Of course,not sure why your friend’s son took 5 years . Could have been Corps, desire to not overload his schedule, need to repeat a course, transferred in to engineering from university studies, illness,desire to minor or double major,no hurry to leave Blacksburg,etc. Who knows.
Virginia Tech is too far away for the OP’s son if he wants to stay closer to home but just wanted to let people know it IS possible to graduate from Virginia Tech in 4 years in engineering(in case anybody’s following this thread who may have an interest in VT).</p>
<p>hornetdad, thanks for the reminder about UMass Amherst. DS1 found it too big/general for his tastes, but it does sound like the Engineering school and honors program could offer a nice smaller school-within-a-school feel.</p>
<p>Hornetdad, do you know what the range of merit-based awards is that they offer to out-of-state students? Their site doesn’t say, though they do have a competitive (not guaranteed) full tuition, fees, and room & board scholarship available for NMFs. </p>
<p>For anyone who doesn’t know, don’t be fooled by offers of “full tuition” scholarships at UMass. Most of the cost is technically “fees” and not “tuition”. MA students with high MCAS scores get free tuition, but it;s not worth much :-P</p>