<p>Check what colleges Penn has tuition exchanges with (benefits of working for a university). There should be a whole network of colleges where you may get free tuition or discounts.</p>
<p>Check where the 16k benefit can be used (any restrictions?)</p>
<p>Run the NPC’s at every school on your list. What are your parents saying when faced with the numbers?</p>
<p>Penn State’s total cost of attendance, in-state, is 31k.
Shreyer only guarantees 4k in scholarships. You MIGHT get one of the “random” scholarships awarded dependin on major or ?? (no one knows exactly what criteria are used for some of them). But no one can count on them.
If the 16k benefit applies, can your parents pay the rest? If it doesn’t apply, can your parents pay the rest? If the answer is “no”, then Penn State cannot be a safety since it’s not a financial safety (you’re sure you can get in but you can’t afford it, at least not for sure.)</p>
<p>Since your parents make about 100k, their EFC is likely to be in the 25-30k range at meet-need schools (and can be <em>anything</em> at schools that don’t meet need, such as Penn State, Lehigh, Pitt, UMD-CP…) Can they pay that much? What if it’s more? </p>
<p>If your parents can’t/won’t pay their EFC, you’d need to add schools that have big merit scholarships - check out the financial aid forum.</p>
<p>Remove UMN-TC since you’re not feeling it, but seriously check out UMich, Rice, and RPI .
UMich is likely to be too expensive though (55k OOS, so you’d need to win a near full ride or full tuition for it to be affordable.)
If you like Lehigh, check out Bucknell, Union, Lafayette, Trinity (CT), Clarkson, and run the NPCs to see if they’d be affordable, especially taking merit into account (check out their merit scholarships).</p>