First hello and q's from PA

Parents Forum
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<p>I am going to go right to the brass tacks here, though I will sound harsh. Your daughter’s test scores are lousy, and unless there is a high math part to them, it’s going to be a tough go at any selective school even as a female engineering prospect. And if she slides in there, she’s likely to get weeded out. I am saying this based on actual statistics, but will temper it to say that my own husband is an exception to such a rule. He graduated with honors from one of the most rigorous schools in the country with sub par SAT math score and a lousy grounding in high school math. But this is a rare accomplishment. Even well prepared kids tend to flush out of engineering programs. They are very difficult. What math is she taking now? Will she be taking an AP calc course next year? What is the record that your school has with the AP Calc test–what grades are the kids getting that take that course? This is what the admissions officers will be looking for.</p>

<p>IMO, a small school with a small engineering department that has interest in bringing upkids with less than stellar math scores is her best bet. Not the CMUs, PItts, Penn States where the weed out is ruthless. I would recommend looking at the small schools in PA and within the radius you want and looking at them. Washington & jefferson , I think, some of the smaller state schools that have engineering, maybe, maybe Bucknell. I highly recommend looking into the Coast Guard Academy, the Merchant Marine, SUNY Maritime, Manhattan college as some no cost, low cost schools that specialize in giving special attention in getting someone through the rigorous engineering regiment. </p>

<p>My cousin’s DD was a 2100 SAT with the math score the highest of the parts, went to UDel for engineering and that was it after the first year. She did not flush out of the school, but here is the problem when there is money at stake and one doesn’t do well: If there is a merit award based on gpa, you likely will lose it. Your GPA becomes below 3.0 and you can’t easily bring it up, you can be shut out of a lot of internships and govt type work. That’s what has happened to her No huge disaster as she will have a 3.0 by grad, but without that bad first year, her cumulative gpa would be a lot higher, so it cost her in some internships, she got turned down by some internal program that required a 3.25 gpa, and she lost a small (thankfully it was small) scholarship. This is a girl who was always a good student and still is but the math and engineering and physics sank her. </p>

<p>The other thing is money. Run the FAFSA estimater and some NPC at some sample schools to see what you will be expected to pay. If you can’t pay those amounts, you are going to have to do some hunting, because the FAFSA EFC is pretty much the minimum you will be expected to pay before getting penny one in government aid including work study and subsidized loans. Merit money will go towards need first so it’s very difficult to get a deal better than that EFC. Big awards are not easy to get. I really think you cannot beat the Coast Guard Academy for prestige, cost, attention in getting someone through the regiment, the desire for more females in the corp,and a job right afterwards. You do need to look at a lot of alternatives, and many of the suggestions here are truly reach, lottery tickets for your daughter.</p>

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<p>Be aware that for financial aid, they don’t care what your bills are. </p>

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<p>Thanks for the school recs - I am making a list.
I have been running the EFC calc as well.</p>

<p>@cptofthehouse, you are right, her test scores are lousy, shockingly so, actually - not just as a mom talking - she is actually great at math according to every math teacher since middle school (top of the class each time).
Basically I am going to do a novena that she tests well this June.
She takes Honors pre-Calc now, and is signed up to take AP Calc & regular Statistics (school does not offer AP for it) next year.</p>

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<p>Sorry, I accidentally posted where I should have saved draft …
Also, thanks for pointing out how the rigor of engineering could be a struggle, specially if she has to maintain a gpa, that’s a very good point. That’s something we will talk about this summer after she gets through the 2nd SAT. I actually think she might prefer something like applied math / operations research.</p>

<p>(Correction - I was wrong, she’s taking AP Calc & AP Statistics next year)</p>

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<p>I highly recommend that she take the ACT. My STEM kids both did better on it. </p>

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<p>Another school to look at with engineering that doesn’t require the scores of CMU etc is Wilkes University. </p>

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<p>@deb922 my deal with her is if the June SAT is also disappointing, try the ACT (take a practice one and see how she does, then do real prep to take it in the Fall)
Question - how did your kids prepare for the ACT? self-study or a class? thanks!</p>

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<p>Just a note about using the Net Price Calculators. Many schools are using the system run by the College Board Big Future site. If you set up an account there and use it when you sign into the NPCs, it will save your data and automatically fill it in the next time (Only asking for additional info that might not have been asked the previous time.) This saved us a LOT of time because it’s annoying and tedious to have to type everything in 25 times!</p>

<p>The Big Future site is also useful because you can enter your D’s scores and GPA and classes and see where she fits on the graphs each school has under the “Applying” tab.</p>

<p>I was also going to say Bryn Mawr, though without better scores it’d be a reach. If you are looking in MA, definitely check out the tech schools already mentioned. My D’s engineering girlfriends applied to WPI, RIT, and Rennseleur(sp?)</p>

<p>If she’s interested in a liberal arts education with an engineering major (rather than a big tech school) she might want to look at Mount Holyoke College, where my D is going. They have a dual-degree engineering track where you take courses at some of the other colleges in the 5-college consortium (Smith College, Amherst, UMass Amherst, Hampshire.) They also have an engineering 3-2 program with Dartmouth, CalTech, or UMass.</p>

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<p>Use <a href=“http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx”>http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx&lt;/a&gt; to find ABET accredited engineering degree programs.</p>

<p>Mount Holyoke does not have any, but Smith and UMass do.</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr does not either, but Swarthmore does.</p>

<p>3+2 programs are rarely completed by transferring to the “2” school, perhaps because of admissions hurdles, an extra year of costs, and uncertainty with financial aid at the “2” school.</p>

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<p>OP, first, your daughter might do well to consider SAT/ACT-optional schools. There are many resources about this. I don’t know if any of them have SAT-optional engineering programs.</p>

<p>Second, please brace yourself for what is not meant to be an upsetting suggestion – you should find out what your community college offers. In a suburban Philadelphia county, you might have a good program available to you. The hardest part of college admissions is to find a place to go that you can definitely afford (without jeopardizing the family’s future or the younger siblings’ education), where she is also assured of admission, and where she can advance her academic and career goals.</p>

<p>The historic role of the SAT or ACT has been to give the kid from a small, obscure high school a chance to show that he or she is ready to compete in a college classroom with kids from schools that the elite colleges are more familiar with. Your D is at the top of her class, which is terrific, but she got there by taking only “some” APs, and it’s a tiny public school. If your D’s SAT scores are in the 500s, per section, as you seem to indicate, and her GC is suggesting Widener, she may not be a viable candidate for that handful of most competitive and very richly endowed schools that can make it financially possible for anybody they want to attend.</p>

<p>College is not the only thing that will ever matter in our kids’ lives, or in our own. Whether the kid is employed, self-supporting and happy at age 23 or age 25, means a lot more than whether there is an impressive college name on the new t-shirt in May of 12th grade. Success at age 23 means being able to complete the program, land the job, and not have too much debt. What has been said above, about people washing out of engineering programs, or getting Cs and losing merit aid, all seems to be true.</p>

<p>As you move down the academic food chain, you will probably find that need-based aid has its limits, and the school’s concept of “need” might be very different from your own. Please don’t be misled by the EFC, from a financial planning perspective. It is essentially a ranking of families, in terms of where they stand in line for a limited pool of governmental need-based dollars. It might not be a responsible decision to turn heaven and earth to pay the full EFC. And some schools will expect you to pay more than the EFC; they are not capped by the EFC in terms of what they can ask you to pay. </p>

<p>Merit aid is given to people who are over-qualified for the school. So, the student much reach down the academic ladder to get merit aid. There is only so far down that you can reach, especially with SATs in the 500s, and still find an engineering program.</p>

<p>The conventional wisdom has been that while you might get a great price on the first two years at a community college, you will not get merit aid when you transfer to a four year school. I think this has begun to change. I recently attended a transfer fair at our local CC, and was surprised at the reputable four-year schools that had booths at the fair, and said they do bring in transfers with merit aid.</p>

<p>At a good community college in the affluent suburban counties of the Northeast, the focus is usually not on vocational programs so much as teaching the first two years of the bachelor’s degree and transferring the kids out. The classes will be much smaller than they would be in most four-year engineering programs. The goal is not to “thin the herd”. They should have an engineering department, articulation agreements with schools that have four year engineering programs, and a history of transferring people to finish the degree at the four year schools. In NJ, we have a program where kids from the top 10% of their HS class can go to CC for free. The SATs are not considered. They can then continue to a state college with an automatic discount. Maybe Pennsylvania has something similar. I would make it a point to find out.</p>

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<p>cptofthehouse: I disagree that 1700 on the SAT is lousy. Yes, it is rather low for someone who is interested in engineering, but it is above the 70th percentile for students taking the SAT. Bucknell is very selective and, like Lehigh and Lafayette, probably not a good possibility for the OP’s daughter unless subsequent SAT (or ACT) scores are higher. There are a number of less selective private schools in PA with engineering programs (Wilkes - mentioned above, York College, and Gannon come to mind but there are others). </p>

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<p>@scholarme DD took the ACT cold and did much better than the SAT. She then took about 30 hours of ACT tutoring over the summer before senior year. She hated the SAT and had scores like your daughter. Her ACT equivalent was some 250 points higher. DD is a strong student and felt the ACT was more curriculum based. Questions needed to be answered with less time allotted, but she found the ACT questions straightforward. Good luck to you.</p>

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<p>How aout Duquesne? It says the avg SAT score is 1677 but that is over all, not engineering.
Try one of the college search tools…that will help you out.</p>

<p>Also consider one of the 3-2 programs…start at a LAC and then after 3 years go to an engineering school.</p>

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<p>1700 isn’t a lousy score compared to the overall pool of students taking the SAT. But it isn’t likely to get the student into most schools that meet financial need.</p>

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<p>Both of my kids did better on the ACT. The one who took it seriously took a lot of practice tests (self-study) and really got his scores up.</p>

<p>Someone mentioned Bucknell. Forget it. Super-competitive. If Penn State is out of reach, don’t even think about Bucknell.</p>

<p>Your college list is such a wide range. You really need a better idea of test scores and then pick a couple of reaches, good bets, and pretty sure she’ll get in.</p>

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<p>Perhaps have a look at the University of Toronto or University of Waterloo. Both have excellent computer science and engineering programs. U of T’s SAT cutoff is about 1800 and she is striking distance of that. Waterloo’s cutoff is 1100 for the math and critical reading sections combined. They’re both about an 8 hour drive. </p>

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<p>Temple has an honors program.</p>

<p>I’d look at West Chester U.</p>

<p>I second the opinion of trying the ACT. Many students do better on the ACT than the SAT, and visa versa. Colleges don’t care which one you submit. </p>

<p>I’m not sure it is worth looking at out of state publics unless there is a very very good reason. For example, I think of U Md. as being equivalent to Penn State in most matters, so why pay the extra out of state tuition? Most public universities provide little need based aid to out of state students, and their merit aid is limited to the very top students. U. Del is an exception in that they offer both merit and need based aid to large numbers of out of state students. However, they do not usually meet 100% of need of out of students, unless you are at the very top of their applicant pool. </p>

<p>If you are eligible for a PHEAA college grant, it often pays to go to college inside PA. Many middle class families receive a $3,000 or $4,000 a year grant if they attend an in-state college, but receive no grant or a couple hundred bucks if they attend an out of state college. </p>

<p>I’d also look at transit options. For instance, now there is Amtrak service from Phila to Pittsburgh. However it could disappear in future years - it almost was cancelled last year because PA didn’t want to subsidize it. Some universities such as Penn State provide chartered buses to the Phila. area during breaks.</p>

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<p>Pitt runs shuttle buses to Philadelphia (30th Street Station) and King of Prussia for the holidays. E.g., Thanksgiving link:
<a href=“https://www.pc.pitt.edu/transportation/buses_thanksgiving.php”>https://www.pc.pitt.edu/transportation/buses_thanksgiving.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I too recommend ACT, especially if SAT Math score is problematic.</p>

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<p>I think that you should google “60 minutes umbc video” and watch the 60 minutes piece on the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. I think this program has been very successful with kids who have excelled at weaker schools, where competition isn’t that high, but who may not be competitive academically with students who have had more opportunity. This program which includes the summer before college goes a long way to making up the educational opportunity deficit and seems to set these kids up for success. Too many colleges let in students who are unprepared to make their numbers look good only to let them get destroyed once they get there. </p>