I probably should have explained better at first but what I meant when I said “same tier as Alabama” was like the same type of college in regards of size, popularity, type of town located in (college town preferably), etc. "Tier was not the right word. So with that said, have is Alabama, LSU, and UK. Any more colleges like these guys?
@jt216. Alabama seems to have the best deal for high achieving students, who didn’t get the qualifying NMS score. In Michigan, depending on your ACT score, you might come pretty close at MSU. Outside Michigan, look at Arizona State (https://scholarships.asu.edu/estimator), Arizona (U of A’s net cost for high-merit OOS students will be competitive or slightly lower than ASU’s). ASU’s Barrett Honors College is top rated, with gorgeous facilities, and the Fulton Engineering College is a top-50 program. Many of my sons’ friends are in Barrett and love it.
Miami University in Ohio is a smaller school and only teaches undergraduates, so teaching is a big focus. The campus is gorgeous and Oxford is a very pretty little college town. My middle son is a freshman there and loves it! He’s also an ME major. They have good merit aid. http://miamioh.edu/admission/merit-grid/
Iowa State is an excellent engineering school and OOS tuition is “only” $21,000 per year. ISU’s campus is similar to MSU’s and Ames is a smaller version of East Lansing. With a decent ACT score, you would likely qualify for an $8000 scholarship and my youngest son was also offered another scholarship from the College of Engineering. https://www.admissions.iastate.edu/award_calc/freshman.php
In bang-for-the-buck among Big 10 schools, Minnesota is a top engineering program and OOS tuition is “only” $22,000/year. (Michigan’s OOS tuition is $43,000/year freshman and sophomore years and $49,000/year upper division!)
Based on your other posts, you have a decent shot at getting into UM, which offers a great engineering education. But upper school engineering is still almost $20,000/year even for in-state students. Based on my oldest son’s experience, Michigan, Purdue, and Illinois are very stingy with academic scholarships. My oldest son was accepted into Michigan and Purdue Engineering, OOS. He was a NMF, had a 2320 on the SAT, passed 15 AP exams, and had a 3.83/4.00 unweighted GPA from the second rated high school in the US and was only offered $10,000 per year by both schools. He is now a second year Aerospace Engineering major at Texas A&M, a really good engineering school, which provides full rides for NM qualifiers.
@Beaudreau That is a lot of very helpful information. I appreciate all of it. I do wonder if you elaborate a little more on your comment about being able to come close to Alabama’s merit aid at MSU? Considering I am an in-state student in regards to MSU, I’ve been researching MSU and U of M for months and I have not come across any information indicating that MSU is good in respect to merit aid. Can you maybe give me some links that I may have missed? Thanks again.
ASU’s Barrett Honors College is top rated, with gorgeous facilities, and the Fulton Engineering College is a top-50 program. Many of my sons’ friends are in Barrett and love it. The Barrett dorms are new and do offer private rooms. Tempe is a top college town in the middle of a great metropolitan area. https://barretthonors.asu.edu/
U of A’s Honors College is less structured than ASU’s and I don’t like Tucson as much as Tempe/Phoenix, but reasonable minds may disagree. Arizona’s campus is prettier and more traditional than ASU’s. The new Honors dorm, Árbol de la Vida, is really nice and does offer singles.
We visited Alabama in December. It’s very impressive, with beautiful new engineering buildings and dormitories. First year students do have to live in dormitories, but they are the nicest dorms we have seen in 21 college visits. The new Riverside development offers singles. Space is limited in Alabama’s dorms, so few students live on campus after freshman year. Greek life is huge, as are the Fraternity and Sorority houses. Tuscaloosa seems to be a very nice college town and campus is first rate. Don’t worry about being an outsider, over 60% of this year’s freshmen are OOS and 1/3 scored 30 or above on the ACT.
Here is a similar thread with auto admit merit aid. Most schools are not as generous as Alabama.
Ohio State gives a buckeye scholarship for OOS students plus other merit scholarships and engineering scholarships I believe. But deadline is Nov 1.
They have football, big school, excellent engineering
@jt216. If you score a 33 or better on the ACT, you would qualify for the Honors College scholarships of $5000/year for instate students (in-state tuition provided for OOS students) plus a $3000/year professorial assistantship. http://honorscollege.msu.edu/scholarships-incoming-freshmen Your GPA is good enough (my son has a 3.53/4.0 UW GPA.) You would also qualify for a $5,000 study-abroad stipend. Finally, you would be invited to compete for one of 10 or 20 full-ride scholarship through the Alumni-Distinguished Scholarship competition.
Check to see th criteria for maintaining those scholarships. Unless something has changed, the Barrett scholarships had very high GPAs for renewal.
@Beaudreau Oh those $5k scholarships for Honors College students are something I’ve seen most colleges give. I was looking more along the lines of full-tuition. However, after calculating the difference between going to UA with that full tuition and going to MSU w/ the 5k scholarship, UA only comes out ahead by about $18k in the 4 year total. That’s not too bad when you think about the fact that one college is giving u full tuition when the other is only giving u less than 25% of tuition. Thank you.
University of Mississippi - full tuition
@jt216. You also need to add in around $1500/year for airfare to and from UA, with only limited flights to Birmingham, the nearest airport, plus shuttle cost. That’s if you only come home for Christmas. If you want to come home also for Thanksgiving and Spring Break, you need to double the airfare expense. That further reduces the cost difference. Summer internships may be close to home if you go to MSU. Alabama seems to have good placement opportunities with all the local automotive facilities, but you couldn’t live at home. So that’s another cost.
You also may be interested in this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/1838290-michigan-state-v-ua.html#latest
Now, if you are a top football prospect, your worries are over. 
Howard University has both full tuition and full ride scholarships that are fairly easy to get.
Did you take the PSAT?
@nw2this Yes but I was only 94th Percentile. From what I’ve seen from my very brief research, you need to be 99th for Finalist and 96th or higher for Semi-finalist.
@jt1216 and when you weigh options I would recommend you calculate:
- net cost of a degree (factor in anticipated increases if its a $$$ scholarship rather than full tuition and if students often take longer than 4 years to graduate add in that cost and does the scholarship cover)
- also review what GPA is required to keep the scholarship
- What are the average starting salaries and mid career salaries
- Compute ROI
I’ve heard people mention Univ of Arizona and Arizona State.
If you have a 34 ACT or higher and a good GPA – I think it’s 3.5? – University of Alabama Huntsville will award full tuition plus housing for four years. If they have your major, that beats even UA.
Just let you know, Howard Univ. is a HBCU-historically black college/university, meaning that you are REQUIRED to take classes like history/culture, and whatnot of Black Americans.
Not that it matters, but it looks like it’s only one course: https://www.howard.edu/academics/corecurriculum.htm
Not too different from many other schools which have some sort of race & ethnicity requirement.
Oh ok, thanks for letting me know @romanigypsyeyes