<p>By the way, congratulations on your hard work and performance. Please don’t fall into the trap of chasing privates that match your scores only to end up with massive debt. Make the schools pay you for how well you’ve done. You’ve earned it.</p>
<p>Mariquet, you haven’t said a dang thing about what you’re looking for in a college. What are your preferences? Feel free to be subjective.</p>
<p>I would look to add a few more east coast schools that are more within reach. I also would look for a balance between public and private schools. I would recommend considering Lehigh, NJIT, Clarkson, and RPI to your prospective list.</p>
<p>Berkeley EECS is worth the premium.
Different story if interested in another engineering discipline. </p>
<p>Northwestern gives virtually no money for NMF.</p>
<p>CalTech has 2 full-tuition scholarships a year.</p>
<p>Duke, JHU, and Rice have some big scholarships.</p>
<p>Vandy really likes high stats (so does WashU), and may throw much money your way.</p>
<p>A female going in to engineering should be very attractive to schools like Stevens/RPI/WPI/NYU-Poly and you could get big merit aid at those places.</p>
<p>Cooper Union is a good suggestion. Olin is also half-price tuition (Webb is tuition-free).</p>
<p>You may get one of the few big merit awards at UMich/UIUC/GTech.</p>
<p>Getting money from Purdue should be easier.</p>
<p>I would also look at UMD, which has some big merit scholarships.</p>
<p>What can your family contribute? Run the NPCs at HYPS and the other schools on your list. Have you run NPCs anywhere? As people have mentioned, you can only take out a small amount in loans yourself and your parents would have to take out the rest. If Yale is affordable, they’re looking to strengthen their engineering student body and would like more female engineers. Thus probably the easiest of the most prestigious schools for you to get in to right now.</p>
<p>Oh, and you’re likely to get huge merit aid (full-tuition) at a bunch of LACs that have 3-2 engineering programs with Columbia. Need a B or better in every required class for guaranteed transfer, though. Also likely to get huge merit at Scripps, which has the 3-2 with Columbia and Mudd.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan do you know if the merit aid for those 3-2 programs extends to the second school?</p>
<p>Re. SAT II tests - it is a good idea to take physics (or chem?) because some of the engineering schools don’t accept bio as their “science” (Princeton, U Penn, possibly others - check the ones you want). Also, there’s not necessarily a need to take the French exam, particularly if you will have an AP in French.</p>
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<p>This is correct. For example, the University of Michigan College of Engineering offers the Geisinger Scholarship, a $20K/year merit scholarship for engineering students from selected states, one of which is New Jersey. There’s also the Shipman Scholarship, a merit scholarship at $31.500 for OOS students. There’s no guarantee the OP would get one of these, but her credentials would certainly make her competitive and being a woman in engineering probably improves her chances.</p>
<p>Michigan also has a major capital campaign now underway, with a goal to raise sufficient funds to meet 100% of need for all students, including OOS students. They’re not there yet, but my understanding is that they’re inching closer to that goal. So some of the earlier posts flatly stating that as an OOS student you’ll get neither need-based FA nor merit aid from Michigan are just wrong. Some OOS students do get shut out, others get fairly attractive packages.</p>
<p>OP’s family income is high enough that need-based FA is likely to be relatively small except at the most generous schools (HYP) which give substantial need-based aid up to a household income of $200K or so. Most places the cut-off is closer to $150K. It may be worth applying to a few need-only schools (e.g., MIT, Stanford) and see how much they offer if admitted, but I certainly wouldn’t count on that strategy. Better bets for reducing net COA are schools that offer merit aid and/or schools that have a lower sticker price. Rutgers should definitely be on the list for its low in-state sticker price; it has a pretty good engineering school and does offer some merit aid. Purdue has a top-notch engineering program and gives big merit aid to top students it really wants; same for Illinois. Minnesota has an excellent engineering school, perhaps not quite at the same level as Purdue and Illinois, but close; merit aid is spotty, but the sticker price is reasonable. Michigan engineering is at the same top-tier level as Purdue and Illinois, merit aid highly competitive but worth a shot. Case Western has a pretty good engineering program and is known for giving big merit awards. My recommendation would be not to spend a lot of time looking at schools that are not as strong as Rutgers in engineering–e.g., U Rochester, Alabama, Clarkson, NJIT, to name a few that have been suggested here, though others argue any ABET-accredited engineering school will do. </p>
<p>@“Erin’s Dad”</p>
<p>I very much doubt it. However, if you get a full-tuition scholarship there, your tuition costs are essentially cut in half (while paying an extra year of room&board).</p>
<p>Oh, and to the OP: many of the female-only colleges seem to have large merit awards available.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan </p>
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<p>I am curious, if Northwestern gives so little money to NMF why was it the third most popular (after Chicago and Vandy) to get awards from and actually enroll (183)?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf</a></p>
<p>Even more surprising since some of the publics seem to be throwing money at National Merit Finalists so why do NMF like Northwestern so much if they don’t give much money?</p>
<p>UT Dallas - free ride + $4,000/semester (!) stipend
and also very generous aid at Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Alabama, Arizona etc.</p>
<p>Dunno. They may replace loans with grants (what NU calls scholarships), but NU gives out virtually no pure (no-fin-need) merit money.</p>
<p>Also, it does promise to meet full need and is an Ivy-equivalent, and offers more career options than most publics.</p>
<p>Interesting - Northwestern web site says it awards $2,000/year to NMF which looks identical to Chicago
Vanderbilt’s web site says their award is 5,000 (or 2,000 if given other awards) which is more generous.</p>
<p><a href=“Northwestern Scholarships: Undergraduate Financial Aid - Northwestern University”>Northwestern Scholarships: Undergraduate Financial Aid - Northwestern University;
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<p>Actually, if you look at the total numbers of National Merit Scholars actually enrolling at colleges and universities in 2013, the order looks like this (colleges with over 100 NM Scholars enrolled, Fall 2013):</p>
<p>Chicago 314 [217]
Harvard 268*
Vanderbilt 260 [194]
Northwestern 249 [183]
USC 245 [192]
WUSTL 202 [157]
Yale 178*
MIT 177*
Stanford 176*
Oklahoma 173 [151]
Princeton 162*
Georgia Tech 161 [128]
Texas A&M 150 [126]
Northeastern 144 [115]
Duke 139*
Minnesota 135 [107]
Alabama 123 [111]
Penn 121*
Arizona State 119 [102]
UC Berkeley 109*</p>
<ul>
<li>College does not fund National Merit Scholarships.
[n] = Number of National Merit Scholarships funded by the school itself </li>
</ul>
<p>As you can see, the pecking order looks much different if we consider only National Merit Scholars funded by some source other than the school itself. Then we get: Harvard 268, Yale 178, MIT 177, Stanford 176, Princeton 162, Duke 139, Penn 121, UC Berkeley 109, Chicago 97, Northwestern 66, Vanderbilt 66, USC 53, WUSTL 45, Georgia Tech 33, Northeastern 29, Minnesota 28, Texas A&M 24, Oklahoma 22, Arizona State 17, Alabama 12. To which a more complete list would add schools like Columbia 85, Brown 71, Cornell 69, Texas 67, Rice 64, Dartmouth 60, Michigan 56, Notre Dame 52, Caltech 42, UNC Chapel Hill 37, UVA 36, Williams 30, Johns Hopkins 28, Georgetown 23, NYU 20, etc.</p>
<p>Why do so many National Merit Scholars go to HYPSM when HYPSM don’t give them one thin dime for it? Well, doh, they’re HYPSM, and besides, they have generous need-based FA that will take care of anyone who needs the money, and as for those who don’t need it–well, they don’t need it, and they figure they’d rather have a first-tier education than a little extra cash. That’s the market Northwestern is competing in. But not everyone looks at it that way. Students who want to parlay National Merit Finalist status into cash will by and large go where the cash is being offered even if it means trading down in perceived educational quality, and choose schools like Alabama and Arizona State. Your question presumes that’s the market Northwestern is competing in; I don’t think so. Northwestern does quite well competing for National Merit Scholars funded by outside sources, and clearly it can dramatically increase its number of National Merit Scholars (nearly fourfold) through the simple expedient of offering a few token thousands to the other Finalists who apply and are accepted. This also suggests that the number of Finalists attending other top schools is probably quite high. So a school like Harvard could also probably similarly triple or quadruple its number of National Merit Scholars by offering a token National Merit Scholarship to every Finalist in its entering class. It doesn’t see a need to do this because most of those people are happy to attend Harvard without a financial incentive to do so.</p>
<p>@bclintonk I wish <a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf</a> or some other site also published a list of National Merit Finalists or national merit commended enrolled by universities (since the National Merit Scholars are a confusing subset due to the varying award criteria). Even better would be a list of where all the students at or above some cutoff (35 ACT or 2300 SAT perhaps) actually enrolled. Looking at the 75% ACT and SAT scores at elite colleges - seems like the numbers are too high - ie there are more incoming freshman with top 1/3 of 1% test scores than were reported by the college board and ACT. </p>
<p>@2018RiceParent:</p>
<p>I guess I fail to see the purpose of such an endeavor.</p>
<p>As for the College Board and ACT numbers, are they for the US only or worldwide?</p>
<p>Also, note that students can take tests multiple times while schools usually only report the highest score. So 2/3rd of 1% of all students could get in the top 1/3rd of 1% of all test scores.</p>
<p>"Thank you so much for all the advice! I have discussed finances with my parents, but they, unfortunately, are stuck in the mindset that I am going to an extremely elite college and the degree will be worth the loans I’ll take out. "</p>
<p>That is a fine opinion if THEY are paying, but not when you are paying.</p>
<p>Definitely check out Case Western…they are known for merit money. They do track interest.</p>
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<p>@2018RiceParent:
Some schools may be lying (won’t be the first time). Some schools may be gaming the system. Some schools tout the 75th percentile of their <em>admits</em> (not matriculants). A large percentage of the student body at Cornell, USC, and many publics (Cal, UCLA, etc.) are transfers and their scores won’t be reported. For a while, Columbia reported only stats for Columbia College, not Engineering. Now they include Engineering but still not General Studies.</p>
<p>That’s why I prefer to look at alumni acheivements: the “American Leaders”, “Student Awards”, and PhDs subcategories of the Forbes ranking as well as a ranking the WSJ did on percentage of the student body who attend certain elite professional schools (while keeping in mind the caveat that achievement is mostly due to the student, not the school).</p>
<p>At least those aren’t gameable or can be influenced by lying.</p>