<p>Hi all, I was looking to see if I could get some help with finalizing my college list. Here is a list of some of my preferences:
- Would definitely prefer to be closer to family (Seattle area), but as you can tell with my list, it's been difficult to find schools that are close. I am not really looking to move to the deep south or the lower midwest.
-Prefer urban/suburban over rural, but if it's reasonably close to a city I wouldn't mind. I do not want isolated (5-6 hour drive to nearest big city), or surrounded by farms.
-I would rather be near in the middle of the pack in terms of academics than at the very top 5% of the school, although I am willing to be flexible if money is a part of it.
-I like medium sized (5000-15,000 undergrads), but if not, I prefer large over very small.
-Liberal over conservative atmosphere (I know this is true for most schools).
-I like a more campus feel, rather than just buildings in a downtown area that look like they have little to do with each other.
-Good financial aid. This is why my list is kinda top heavy, I cannot afford very much.</p>
<p>Here are my stats:
White male from Washington state
Electrical Engineering
SAT: 2190 (760 CR, 710 M, 720 W with 9 Essay)
SAT II: Will most likely take Math II and Chemistry this fall</p>
<p>Course Load and GPA:
Cumulative GPA: 3.689 (Very strong upward trend: Frosh 2.950/3.567 Soph 3.617/4.0 Junior 4.0/4.0
Class Rank: 47/353
Course Difficulty: Either most most rigorous, or very rigorous
ECs:
-100 Hours of Volunteering at local children's museum
-20-30 Hours of volunteering through service club (officer of club)
-National Honor Society this year
-Leadership club that puts on several events throughout the school year including freshman orientation
-Robotics class last summer
-4 Years of private lessons for drums and saxophone
-FIRST Robotics this year
-French Club member
-Math department award</p>
<p>Safety:
University of Portland
Rochester Institute of Technology</p>
<p>Match:
Boston University
University of Washington
Case Western Reserve University
University of Rochester</p>
<p>Reach:
Tufts University
Cornell University
Northwestern University</p>
<p>Does anyone have any tweaks or additions to my list? Any help would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I like your list here. How much can your family afford per year? Have you run the NPC on these websites? Even though universities like Cornell or Northwestern claim to meet 100% of need, that amount can vary. In my case, I would have a net price of 13k/yr at Northwestern and 8.5k/yr at Tufts. Over 4 years that’s $18,000 more we’d have to make up.</p>
<p>So, run those calculators! I’d hesitate from calling RIT a safety, however. </p>
<p>@Ctesiphon My parents will have 15k saved for me, and will be able to contribute 4.5k a year. I have run the NPCs and none of the schools other than BU are within reach at this time. I’m not sure how accurate they are though, because some of the calculators have places for my mom’s untaxed SS benefits, and others do not, so I am not sure the info is being represented correctly. I will be looking for outside scholarships though. I am prepared to go to CC if no options are affordable, though. Yeah, I was unsure when I was told it was a safety, but I am fine with going to CC if I get into no schools at all.</p>
<p>with 4.5k / yr contribution, maybe 2k/yr student contribution and 5.5k/yr federal loan you can potentially meet up a greater difference. However many NPCs already include a student contribution and loans. Are your in-state publics affordable?</p>
<p>The reason some schools may ask for SS benefits is because each school will calculate need differently, which I’m sure you know already. They may weigh that in consideration or they may not. However it is mostly governed by income & assets at most schools.</p>
<p>Might want to look at this list for some financial safeties:
<a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/</a></p>
<p>With that SAT score you would qualify for many on this list.
Keep in mind that for electrical engineering, any ABET-accredited degree will help you get a job almost anywhere you want as an electrical engineer so you have lots of good options available to you. Try to find one or two of those financial safeties you like, and then you can apply to some other reaches that would potentially give you good aid.
Nonetheless, engineering degrees are fairly consistent from school to school and as long as you maintain a good GPA you can go to grad school / go to work from any ABET degree. Exceptions may be for schools like UIUC, MIT, Purdue, Umich, etc. where engineering employers often recruit out of there.</p>
<p>Some reaches I know that give good aid are Rice University, WashU, Notre Dame, Lehigh. Lehigh probably a match for you. I think they’re all in fairly good sized cities. Try running the calculators on their websites and see if they give you a more reasonable figure. </p>
<p>Looks like you need financial aid or scholarships that cover full tuition, since the amount of your parent contribution plus federal loans and your possible part time work earnings may just cover living expenses. If the net price calculators show that your intended schools are not affordable on just need-based aid, then you are aiming for merit scholarships, not just admission (and if the scholarships are not automatic for your stats, they cannot be safeties).</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html</a> will be of interest.</p>
<p>In the automatic scholarship list at <a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/</a> , it looks like your stats will give you full rides at Tuskegee, Howard, Louisiana Tech, and Prairie View A&M, and full tuition at Alabama - Tuscaloosa, Alabama - Huntsville, Florida A&M, Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne. These might be safety candidates.</p>
<p>There are many other schools in the competitive full tuition and full ride scholarship list as well, for non-safeties.</p>
<p>@Ctesiphon The only in-state public school I could see myself at is UW, but it’s the least affordable of all my schools. They wouldn’t offer me any aid other than a loan, so it would be around 20k a year after the loan. The difficulty here is none of the automatic full tuition schools really seem like good fits for me, so even though they would be very cheap, I would rather just go to a CC for 2 years and then transfer to one of my top choices if they were the only affordable options. I figured my math test score was not high enough for Rice, otherwise it would be on my list, but I will look into all 4 of those schools, thank you!</p>
<p>@jkeil911 I will look through that thread, thank you!</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Like I told Ctesiphon, I would rather be at CC for 2 years than at a school I only chose because it was cheap for 4, but thank you for the info, I will do some investigating.</p>