So, I for sure want to be an aerospace engineer and my dream job would be to work at SpaceX or NASA building rockets and such. I’m currently a senior in high school taking dual enrollment courses. I have a 4.5 GPA (4.0 unweighted) and as of right now a 31 on ACT (super scored) and a 1300 on the SAT. I want to go to a very good aerospace eng school that will be affordable and give me the best college experience, this may be looked down on here but I want to party and go to football games and stuff. I want a big school. So small private schools are kinda out the question for me. Oh by the way I live in Florida. So right now my top choices are Georgia Tech, UF, UC-Boulder and UC-Berkely. I don’t want to go to UCF because it is too close to home and I don’t like the college really. And I don’t want to go to Embry Riddle because it’s not the type of college I’m looking for as I have said earlier. Also FIT seemed like an option but I’m not sure how good of a school it is. So any advice? I’m really looking for the best school that I could afford, I’m banking on getting loads of scholarships for school because my family doesn’t have a lot of money to pay for college. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thank you !
Take any California public school (Berkeley) off of your list. The UC’s (and Cal States) do not provide financial aid (scholarships) to OOS students. Full fees would be $55K per year.
I totally agree with @“aunt bea” the UCs are competitive for OOS and do not provide fin aid
Maryland, Purdue, and UIUC won’t work for you, because they offer very little merit to OOS students. Wichita State gives automatic merit for good stats, so that might work. Your best bets would be Bama or UAH, but you’d need to work on bringing up your ACT for the best merit. Also, UAH is wonderful for aerospace engineering, but it’s not a large party school.
Boulder is also a public state school in Colorado, so I would also take that off of your list.
If you plan on going OOS, and need financial aid, you need to find some private schools that are not publicly funded by other state’s taxpayers, and who have need and merit based aid for your statistics.
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Georgia Tech, UF, UC-Boulder and UC-Berkely.
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It’s Berkeley
Only UF would be affordable from your list. Those other OOS publics would give lousy or no aid.
What is your ACT w/o the superscore?
How much will your family pay each year? You qualify for Bright Futures at Florida schools.
You can apply to Alabama and you’d get a good sized merit scholarship. It has all the things that you’ve listed. And NASA is in Alabama as well.
I would caution you from pursuing aeronautical engineering as an undergrad. The discipline is very specialized and limits your opportunities out of undergrad. You would be better served with an undergrad degree in MechE concentrated in AeroE, and (if you want) a graduate degree in AeroE.
Now that that’s out of the way: how do you define affordable? UF would probably be the most affordable option all things considered. As for good schools in MechE/AeroE that you may consider: Georgia Tech, Berkeley, UT Austin, UIUC, UMd College Park, Purdue University, UMich Ann Arbor, Harvey Mudd College, and UC Berkeley. I know you’re already considering some of them, i basically pulled these schools off of my list of “good” engineering schools. These schools will all be much more expensive than UF, and you would need higher test scores to be really competitive (33+ ACT and the equivalent new SAT score).
NASA has facilities across the country. UMD College Park is about 15 minutes from the Goddard Space Flight Center (one of the largest NASA centers), AMES is in the silicon valley area (relatively close to Berkeley and Stanford), JPL is in southern California (near CalTech, the Clairmont Colleges…), etc.
You should also look at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Air Force Research Labs, JPL, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, MIT Lincoln Labs, etc as potential
^^^. I agree…totally. MechE is more marketable, and if you can include some AeroE courses, minor, or concentration, then super.
My kids’ undergrad has AeroE, but often students realize how limiting it is, and either change to MechE or do a double major, or add something else to be more marketable, to get more internship opps, etc.
Alabama-Huntsville. You qualify for a full tuition scholarship, it’s located in “Rocket City,” and you would get housing thrown in if you score a 34 on ACT.
http://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships
now you will not get the big school big football environment, but if you are serious about NASA you should give it serious consideration. at least apply there as a safety school because the automatic merit $$$ plus being in Huntsville make it a very good choice considering your future plans.
Although you are a senior, others looking at this thread may be rising HS juniors and seniors interested in exploring aerospace at Texas A & M University’s summer program:
https://engineering.tamu.edu/aerospace/about/outreach/undergraduate/camp-soar
However, a more general program would also be helpful, like UA SITE program http://site.eng.ua.edu/