So…are you saying that you can spend $20,000 or so out of pocket, and then the additional $5500 Direct Loan? ($15,000 for tuition/room/board plus $5000 for “incidentals”?)
If so, you have a $25,000 a year budget including your of pocket and the Direct Loan.
I have three things to say…
If you think you can contribute $1000 a month or so to college costs, start banking that right now each month. You can do something like start a 529 for your kid. This will give you two things. You will have a little nest egg to help pay college costs in three years....and you will see if $1000 a month is a sustainable amount for you to pay.
The net price calculators are right now set up for students enrolling in fall 2020. Please view them as a very very rough estimate of what things will be like in 2023. Some colleges absolutely do change their financial aid awarding policies.
I would suggest you put grad school out of your equation. You are generously trying to fund as much as you think you can for four years of undergrad.
Some types of graduate schools prefer students to have work experience before applying. If that is the case, your student will be over age 24 and independent for financial aid purposes when applying for graduate study.
This student will be independent for financial aid purposes once they get their bachelors degrees for most grad programs.
Funding for grad programs is another whole story. It’s primary merit based. It is awarded based on the strength of the application and the college’s desire to have the student as part of the cohort. I do agree this student could potentially be a stronger applicant with some work experience under their belt.
As a grad student, they would be able to take out Grad Plus loans up to the cost of attendance…but I wouldn’t suggest that.
Agreed, and it is impossible to predict what type of grad school really would interest this student in 7 years. Could be an MBA or med school or a PhD, all very different criteria.
Your D is bright and is on an excellent academic path. Remember that there are a lot of kids who have the same academics. I'd be slow to add more rigor as a way to stand out because it has diminishing returns.
Home schooled applicants need standardized tests to validate their GPA. Make sure your D is prepared for every AP test and preps for the SAT/ACT.
Now it’s about the rest of the application:
You mentioned your D struggled in an interview. Help her work on that. For my 2 oldest daughters it was working as a host and then waitress.
It would be great to add a non academic EC. Could be volunteering or just a club she is interested in. Especially good if the EC can lead to a leadership position senior year.
You mentioned 2 non-recruited sports. Participating and excelling at a sport is a great EC. I can understand that you don't want to name the sports, but be sure to look at how they can add to her application. Kevin's daughter being a female hockey goalie had to make her application stand out.
Think about applying to competitive summer programs for the summer between junior and senior year. Look for the ones that are free or almost free. They look great on an application. MIT's MITES program is an example of what you want to look for.
I would talk to a financial advisor about your situation and see what you can do to increase what you can pay and decrease what the NPC says you can pay.
The recommendation to fund undergrad only and leave a masters to the kid makes sense. Arguably, if that was the plan, there potentially would be more money to use on undergrad.
Partly it’s because we don’t know which types of masters are funded (theoretical?) versus unfunded. Currently, the kid has no plans to study say, pure math (say, to a masters or PHD) or pure physics. Obviously could change. Also, a future employer could potentially fund a masters.
Since I knew what I wanted to study and did it, it wouldn’t surprise me if the kid stayed true to their interests . However, once I graduated, my stop/start career expanded beyond my field of study. Ended up making more money from my “craft” skills than my “degree” skills. Didn’t consider my degree worthless. Just had more interesting/flexible work options with the “craft”.
The current goal is to help the kid do an engineering undergrad then a design masters (don’t think anyone funds those!). If we can help make the undergrad affordable, then we can figure out how to pay for the design masters (current tuition $45k USD). Yes, that can be “on the kid” after working a few years. But wouldn’t it be best to finish both, then rise up the ladder at an employer? A business school masters requires a few years of work, but design ones generally don’t, correct?
Remember that if your student attends a college where AP scores and college courses taken while in high school can fulfill some requirements (e.g. math requirements, since she is very advanced in math), that can allow for taking more out-of-major electives in product/industrial design (or related fields like arts and social sciences) as an undergraduate, if the college offers such courses. Relevant courses may also be found in engineering departments (e.g. 178 and 179 in http://guide.berkeley.edu/courses/mec_eng/ and 186 in http://guide.berkeley.edu/courses/ind_eng/ ).
Also, many people do product/industrial design without a degree explicitly in that subject.
I have no idea what a design masters degree is, but I would expect you can get one with a 5th year of coursework at some schools. You might check. Most American undergrads do change their major, and many, maybe most, do take time off before pursuing grad work. They need a break.
@ubcalumnus Incredibly helpful. What future potential schools are also similar? What’s best for the kid is getting access to specialized courses that further technical knowledge, over any general eds that are repeats. Note: not advocated skipping any math or physics and doing poorly in a required class. Just wanting every course’s content to count and inspire the kid’s potential.
Also: the masters we’ve found is in a specialized subject matter at a certain school and would be incredibly important. It’s also in-state. So in this case, the undergrad/masters combo is currently non-negotiable - but the undergrad can’t be done at the same school. It would forego the strong MechEng base. Is it possible to get a second masters, given that it would be in another specialized area? Ie. Graduate with an undergrad/masters from one school, then add the second specialized masters on from the other? Might seem like an odd question. It’s why this thread was started.
(Unless the kid switches tracks, can’t get in, etc. Should that happen, we’ll deal with it.)
@roycroftmom Don’t disagree. One reason for doing six years of school at once and ending it? The kid wants a few kids. Not enough support or thought is put into how a female can excel, have their kids (early-mid career) and not torpedo a career while interacting with a spouse and parents.
The earliest the kid will graduate high school is 16, if she only does three more years. If she can do her undergrad and masters and still graduate at 22-23, this buys her career time before kids. This may shock many posters on cc, but it’s a practical matter. Course planning the past three years has fed into this thought. Course planning for the next three years does as well. Looking at all potential paths at this point.
The UC’s and cal states are very generous with AP credit. Alot of privates limit the total # of AP/IB credits that they will accept, and/or they will accept the credit but not in lieu of taking their classes to meet a major’s requirement (i.e. AP credit bumps student up to a higher level class but student still needs to take xx credits in that discipline). It’s been said before but based on everything you’ve said, I’d repeat that Cal Poly SLO looks like a great option. You can find great info on CC including the MCA calculator and the stats of students accepted, by major. CPSLO seems far more data driven than holistic driven and thus easier to predict acceptance than the UC’s.
“The UC’s and cal states are very generous with AP credit.”
Although this is true in terms of unit credit, there aren’t many APs that count for credit towards required classes for a major. A 5 in AP Calc BC is probably the most useful one for a STEM student. UCs don’t allow AP credits to be counted towards gen eds either, other OOS publics are far more generous in allowing gen ed exemptions based on AP credit.
And the ability to complete a degree more quickly is governed by how many required classes there are (as well as issues like sequencing). Any engineering degree is going to have a large number of required classes, so for example at UCLA mech eng has 38 required classes if I counted correctly, compared to arts subjects which may have fewer than 20 required classes. Gen eds are on top of that (5 for engineering, which is slightly fewer than for arts subjects). So a PoliSci major with AP unit credit can graduate fairly easily in 3 years (some do it in 2.5 years). But a MechEng major almost certainly can’t (at least not without taking classes every summer).
This discussion about school options and credits taken is crucial, since I am the one figuring out her high school course schedule (as per her interests versus the rigor expected).
The goal is to enter college/university with as many appropriate classes taken as possible to have a more interesting/advanced/specialized schedule. A combined undergrad/minor/masters - whatever can be had - that’s what I’m trying to figure out now.
The kid has a decent path covering math, science, history and languages to the AP level. Gives flexibility. There won’t be many electives beyond the A-Gs though.
Since the kid is not at an elite public or private high school, the second best thing is arguably to graduate and get to where she will find her tribe.
A note of caution, OP. If she attends College early she may not find her tribe. College students are older today than they were a generation ago-some late birthdays are held, kids take longer to graduate, etc. So while it was unusual but not rare to have a 16 year old on a college campus 40 years ago, today I would say it is very rare. There can be a big difference in social maturity between 16 and her 18 or 19 year old peers, and, frankly, boys are more aware of the risks of associating with a minor girl. I would not expect her to be accepted easily.
This is a good point about age. My D was the youngest in her cohort groups both in HS and now in college, and she graduated after 4 years of HS at 17 (turned 18 later that summer). Almost everyone in her year is 1 - 2 years older, some even more because of gap years.
I’ll going to say that majoring in MechE to then enter design seems . . . circuitous. And a bit of overkill.
It would be like majoring in EE to enter HCI/UX. Yes, if you squint, they both are related to computers, but almost nothing from the EE curriculum would be applied in HCI. I feel like the relationship is the same between MechE and design.
Though, granted, an engineering degree does preserve different options if she changes her mind later on.
It is common for strong-in-math students to use AP calculus credit and/or college course work in calculus, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations while in high school for subject credit after starting college. Note that transfer students who come in as college juniors will do the same. If there is any concern, the student can try the old final exams in those courses from the college to check her knowledge of the subject matter. Unconditionally repeating courses that the student already knows would be a waste of time and tuition.
UNM College of Engineering offers a d full suite of ABET accredited engineering programs–chemical, mechanical, electrical & computer, nuclear and biomedical.
This is actually dependent on the specific campus and division, so better to check each individually. AP credit applicability toward major requirements also depends on the specific campus and division.
Which community college courses are considered subject-equivalent to UC and CSU courses can be found at https://www.assist.org .