@blountwil2, FWIW, my son had three sure thing, affordable safeties, Oregon State, Colorado State and Utah. He would have been very happy at any of them. The key to picking a safety isn’t to have a dog “just in case.” It’s adding schools to your list that you’d be very happy with that just happen to be affordable and guaranteed admits.
@ucbalumnus my price limit is around 20k, however for a safety school I’d much rather it be <10k if possible. I agree it may not be assured, that’s why I want to apply for a few safeties and reduce the odds of getting very little aid.
@eyemgh that’s very hard, because I do want to go to a school with a top 50 program. I am trying to pick schools that I would be ok with going too at the very least; it’s just hard when I have my heart set on programs such as Vanderbilt or Northeastern
All that matters is YOUR ranking. If you put any weight in USNWR, Utah is #51 for UG engineering. Colorado State is #71. Oregon State, #77. NE is #42. Is that vastly superior? Rankings are very nebulous. You need to dig into their methodologies to make sure they resonate with what is important to you. The reason to choose NE, among many, is because the coop philosophy resonates with you. If it doesn’t, it’s rank is irrelevant.
To follow up on that, why was Utah on my son’s list? First, he knew he’d get in and he knew he’d get WUE tuition. That’s the definition of a safety, guaranteed admit and affordable. His stats were pretty good though, so there were lots of schools that met that definition. Again, why Utah? First, his an avid skier. He has no memory of life prior to skiing. There are multiple resorts do close to SLC that he could get satiated skiing without wasting a lot of time traveling. Half days are very possible. Next, they have a lot of commuters which is typically viewed as a negative. At Utah, it’s actually a positive. The 10k or so who live on campus tend to do so for all 4 years becoming very close knit, attending athletic events, parties, etc in effect making it feel smaller. Lastly, and most importantly for him, Utah changed their ME curriculum introducing the Spiral getting students involved in engineering hands on first year. That was the highest emphasis in HIS methodology. Oregon State was the only school that still does not start ME on earnest until third year and it was only on his list because it was his in state engineering flagship and was thus cheapest. His surprise at Utah was that he was awarded a year tuition free followed by three instate. He ended up at a program that was far harder to get into, but actually waited until the day before the deadline to choose Cal Poly over WPI and Utah. Two of his easiest admits made his top 3. It’s about fit, your own personal ranking. I urge you to look deeper. Why, besides ranking, do you like the schools you like? Then find others with those qualities.
Four college financial opinions I developed over the last year.
- Realistically, Case (and similar) are probably not going to work out. They may offer a lot of merit money, but they start with an enormous price tag. So … if they offered 30k a year in merit, the cost of attendance last year was (if I remember our visit correctly) north of 60k a year, and increasing by a couple percent per year. 5% of 60k is also a lot of money, and the scholarships typically don’t increase. So freshman year at a 60k cost of attendance school may net out at 30k, subsequent years should be, for planning purposes 33k, 36k, and 39.5k. Note that some schools artificially hold tuition to a number and will guarantee that, but the fees may be several thousands and generally there is no pledge to hold those in line.
Conclusion #1: the prudent engineer in me balked at first year costs of greater than 80% of the nominal parent contribution.
- The further we got into the search process, the less comfortable I was relying on grant money – there was one thread here last year about a student who went to UConn because of substantial grant and merit, but after the first year the grants disappeared, and he was looking at A Very Large Number ™ to continue.
Conclusion #2: Relying on grant aid is a gamble I decided against taking, because other offers were out there.
- Also, as I understand it, additional scholarships often (generally?) replace grant aid rather than stack. This may vary by school, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Conclusion #3: Unless the school is really up front about costs, prepare to do some real work to figure out the actual net.
- Have been and worked with engineers for a while now, and seen both good and poor come from all over the place. Known some great engineers to come from rarely mentioned schools (U. Cincinnati also has coops, FWIW, NEVER have worked with a bad engineer from MI Tech, a couple guys from Ohio U have surprised me), and some so-so engineers come from places that everyone seems to genuflect in front of. And to be candid, you get the occasional person who has no business being an engineer that comes from a top 10 school. On a purely financial basis, there is no justification to overspend on an engineering degree.
Conclusion #4: There may be other reasons to go to a school, and overspend is a very personal term, but ROI isn’t one of them.
That said, if the money works out at Valpo, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Also, there is the Midwest Student Exchange Program, where some universities in IN, IL, MI, WI, MN, MS, NE, KS, and one or two other states (ND, SD, IA?) offer substantial tuition reductions.
" I’m trying to arrange a visit this summer, I should be a NMF which would mean a 30,000$ scholarship from them on top of (hopefully) some additional need based aid." - Northeastern is a great school. But as others have pointed out, you usually can’t “stack” merit scholarships and need based aid. Run the NPC (Net Price Caluculators) at various colleges to understand how much aid you could get… but don’t expect to be able to combine merit/need awards.
NEU doesn’t promise $30000 for NMF, they say upto 30… if read it carefully. What they give could range from 1000 and up… also, it is more of a match or a reach than a safety for you unless you have super good EC’s
MSU Bozeman. Unbelievably great engineering school, good scholarships and great town.
You really ought to type out “Montana State University” instead of MSU so that everyone knows what you mean.
There is only one Bozeman and it is in Montana. 
Of course, but if you polled high school students around the country, I bet less than 25% of them could tell you Bozeman is in Montana (or had even heard of it). And sure, you could Google it and learn pretty quickly, but you could also be pretty lazy, see “MSU”, and latch onto it meaning the state university of whichever “M” state is closest to you. It’s just all around better to be unambiguous in the first place.
I know. That is why I added the " "
NM Tech
They stack scholarships & with good grades & test scores, this makes it VERY affordable.
You can even minor in explosives.
And as a MechE major, you can take a class in how to blow stuff!
Lots of opportunities for paid internships & research assistant jobs as an undergrad.
Smaller class sizes
Close knit campus community
Cons:
distance from home
it’s in a small town (Socorro, NM, which has ~ 9000 residents).
it’s an hour away from Albuquerque (nearest airport)
really only club sports. Their only intercollegiate team is rugby, I think.
colorado_mom, have you been to Bozeman?
I’ve never visited Bozeman (it’s 10 hours away). But I’ve heard it has a good engineering program.
@boneh3ad what do you think of MSU Bozeman?
I don’t really know much about it.