@blossom Thanks, I will ask my daughter to review Harvard CS department
@thumper1 , yes she will retake SAT1 again, we are aware about that. I think we can contribute 5K to 7K without hardships towards parental contributions. After that we may have to take loan. In addition to that she will earn in summer also.
@Jpgranier yes thanks for suggestions. We are looking for safety school. When I ran numbers our EFC is around 5K.
Case western is a great one, especially since they do not have an application fee. Their merit is great, and combined with financial aid, you could maybe get down to the EFC even though they aren’t 100% needs met.
There’s a list of schools that are 100% needs met. Play around with the financial aid calculators on each college you’re interested in. Your FAFSA EFC does not correlate with colleges. They have their own methodology of judging your contribution.
Could anyone suggest some safety and match school for her? I am thinking state college in our geographic area.
What is your state of residency, and have you run the net price calculators on the state universities in that state?
Additional safeties may include automatic full ride (or close to that) merit scholarship schools:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/ (if National Merit based on 11th grade PSAT)
Verify on school web sites, since some have changed.
Your daughter should look at Williams. Excellent math program, excellent overall academics, notably in math and sciences. I understand that the computer science major is quite strong, and getting stronger as the school invests heavily in the department.
Williams is very generous with need based aid and actively recruits high achieving Asians. (I think because of its location, it gets fewer Asian applicants than similarly ranked schools.) Also of note is Williams’ Tyng scholarship, a fantastic opportunity that all financial aid recipients are eligible for.
Williams would not be a safety for anyone, though.
Indeed.
And if one’s going to include Williams, you may as well include Swat.
Agree, Williams is not a safety. I meant my comment to be in response to the OP’s original question.
Your posting is not timely as many schools have an application deadline of January 1st. This includes Harvard, CMU, Princeton and Tufts University on my quick check of some good choices on the east coast.
Many of the most competitive schools meet financial need, but do not give “merit” aid as they have plenty of applicants who merit their education. Brown indicates a date stamp of 11:59 eastern time, January first this appears standard for the Ivies.
All of the above would meet your requirements, but there are others that would also fill the bill.
Avoid the nice little college that does not have the caliber and range of courses needed, but does give you a free ride. I used to work in college transfer admissions and met students who had exhausted course options by the end of the second year and not met their educational goals.
Here are some suggestions of schools very strong in computer science and math with still open deadlines for regular decision. They offer “merit” money but tend to spent it on the early decision applicants.
RPI Jan 15th deadline (offers merit)
Virginia Tech Jan 15th deadline (merit?)
WPI Feb 1st deadline (offers merit)
Hope this helps! I did not relish the transfer discussions of years ago.
I check in periodically, but it still appears to be a “work in progress”.
It is an interesting to exercise compare what is actually offered (vs. listed) at Harvard to what is offered at Tufts.
Harvard is a bigger school, and it offers fewer classes for the introductory courses. This makes for much larger class sizes and more difficulty scheduling…
Harvard has offers one class of the intro CS course a year (shared with Yale) - Tufts offers two classes per semester
Harvard offers one class in discrete math a year - Tufts offers four classes per semester
Harvard offers one class for the second CS course a year - Tufts offers two classes per semester
Harvard offers one class in system programming a year - Tufts offers one class per semester
Lots of Harvard’s intermediate (200 level) courses are still “not offered”.
What is interesting is that although the schedules of Harvard’s 300 level courses are still “TBA” it appears that Harvard is planning to offer these courses more than once per year (i.e. prioritizing them over intro and intermediate level courses). This is good for grad students, not so good for undergrads.
Harvard also tends to have fewer applied computing courses:
No web programming or web engineering
No mobile device programming, or mobile medical device programming
No game development
University of Chicago has an excellent math department. I’m not as familiar with CS there, but from what I understand, it has improved over the past few years and continues to do so. UChi meets full need and, at least in my family’s experience, has been generous with need based aid as well as offering merit.
@retiredfarmer she is not a senior. We are gathering information. Thanks for your input.
@momrath, yes I knew that Williams can not be anybody safety. Williams is a very darn good school. We are looking for a college where alumni are very active and where she also receive be it need based financial aid (as we do qualify for it) or merit aid.
@GraniteStateMom UChicago we do not know much about it. But will check it out.
MIT and Caltech I have heard also offer very good need based aid. Does anyone have first experience about it?
@ucbalumnus thanks for sharing a great list
@Jpgranier your suggestion about http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2016-09-19/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need is awesome. We have a great source of info. I really really appreciate it.
You asked for suggestions in your geographic region… but neglected to say what that is!
What year in HS is this student?
What is her current GPA?