If you have the $ to send your kid full pay to a $60k/year school, you’re already in the upper class.
Why do you think that HYPS would “change his financial/social class” more so than other colleges (including UT Austin) would? Also, would such changes be those he cares about?
Of course, if you will be paying list price to HYPS if he gets in, you are already in the top few percent of income and wealth.
I’d be concerned about applying as an engineering students without a physics final grade at least (Penn for one likes to see the physics SAT2) and without STEM related ECs.
So, is “the (neighbor) kid” you’ve been trying to “help” now your son?
“A heart wants, what a heart wants, you don’t have to have a logic to like someone or something.”
Yes, you do need critical thinking and some logical approach to game this one. Critical thinking isn’t the same as getting top grades in hs.
If you leave this to a shrug of the shoulders and “I can’t influence him to widen his thinking” (in large part because you agree he has to aim for the top of the tippy tops,) you miss what it takes.
Same kid who, in another thread was looking for quickie awards to ace this HYP or bust challenge? So off.
And he wants to keep engineering as an option BUT is really interested in humanities BUT is applying undecided? You complicate matters.
How much do you really know about what the elites want? And how easy it is to dismiss an applicant who treats this hierarchically? That refers to both the notion only top schools will suit and that val, GPA, more AP are the key factors.
“we would rather have him go to UT Austin and buy a house.”
Hey, don’t diss UT-Austin like that! I went there (flunked out, but still). What’s interesting is by settling on UT-Austin and having cash in his pocket, won’t your son already be ahead of the competition that blew all their money on college? That cash cushion has many advantages. For example, in the tech world he could get a job at a small startup and tolerate a stock+smaller salary instead of needing a larger salary to live on. Or he could use some of the cash to start his own tiny software company and see if it catches on while working a regular job.
Most posters have been extremely helpful, others though sometimes bit bitter and rude did offer a different perspective. I’m thankful to all. Keep your critique and suggestions coming, me and many like me would benefit from this thread.
Going back to @WorryHurry411’s original question: I see no problem with your son’s proposed course load. Nor do I think there is anything wrong with one reason for pursuing that course load being that your son wishes to be the valedictorian. Being valedictorian is admirable and a significant achievement. And despite the comments of many on this thread, some colleges will give preference in admission to a valedictorian over another otherwise similar candidate.
Having said all of the above, you and your son need to be much more realistic about his chances of getting into one of your “Plan A” schools. He is obviously very bright, but his ECs fall into the “nice” category, and HPYS are looking for more than nice (Just an aside: I think his musical theater work, and directing with the local theater company are very interesting – I hope he continues to pursue these!).
I’d also echo what many on this thread have said about finding schools that are good fits for him – not just the most “prestigious” as measured by USNews. Right now your list includes numbers 1, 2, 3, 4a, 4b, 4c (ties), 8, 9, 14, 15a, 15b (tie), and 20 from the National Universities list, and numbers 1, 4 and 9 from the "National LACs list. This prestige chasing won’t benefit your son – he could well end up at a fantastic school that doesn’t suit him at all.
You can spend the next year and a half arguing with the OP about which schools belong on the “worth paying an extra 30K per year” list. Ultimately that depends on the value the OP believes they are getting for that money and I find it rather amusing that some parents are arguing so aggressively that the list should be expanded, whereas plenty of other parents would insist that there aren’t any schools worth paying an extra 30K per year over UT.
So is there a list of school suggestions of schools which are significantly better ranked than UT and where the OP’s son has a good, not remote, chance to win a large merit award to bring the cost in line?
Thank you @mathyone for trying to brainstorm a solution, instead of questioning my question.
We are also wondering about schools should we visit? I certainly don’t want to spend our money and time visiting all top 50 schools with 5% chance of acceptance rate.
"significantly better ranked than UT and where the OP’s son has a good, not remote, chance to win a large merit award to bring the cost in line? "
The schools that are significantly ranked better than UT dont have to offer merit $$ to get top students to apply to them.
The whole point of merit scholarships is to give tip top students that “lower ranked” colleges really want a financial incentive to enroll- students who otherwise might choose to enroll at a "higher ranked , more prestigious schools.
The highest ranked U that offers many [ 350 1/2 to full tuition merit scholarships ] to tip top stat students is USC.
But the chances for winning one are statistically the same as getting into Harvard, simply because of the # of students overall applying to USC.
And USC wants students applying for top scholarships to demonstrate that they REALLY want to go to USC. And are not just submitting an application.
NO ONE “deserves” a merit scholarship at any top ranked college. There are too many other top kids applying who would be ecstatic to receive just a thick envelope on April 1.
Start college shopping and visiting with affordable safeties first. If he is excited about going to UT Austin, UT Dallas, Alabama, etc., then the likely event of a shut-out at super-selective colleges and super-selective scholarships will not be a huge let-down.
Those colleges which have no chance of being affordable should not be visited. If you are not willing to pay for Cornell, Brown, Columbia, Penn, Middlebury, or Williams, then there visiting is a waste of time and money, and risks having him fall in love with a school that he cannot go to.
It also depends upon what acceptances we have to choose from, we wouldn’t be too upset paying for Cornell, Brown or UPenn’s Wharton.
We’ve been to few schools within driving distance, including UT Austin, UNT, UTD, SMU, Baylor, TCU, A&M. All are safeties and he would get full ride or full tuition at most but UT but he wasn’t impressed. We have to drive to Rice sometime soon but he doesn’t like idea of living in Houston.
WorryHurry, did you mean to say “we would not be too upset paying for Cornell, Brown or Wharton”?
@ucbalumnus *wouldn’t be too upset
Be honest with both yourself and him about finances early on, before application season. I.e. do not build up any expectations (either explicitly or implicitly) of going to expensive colleges that you are not willing to pay for.
Try not to be like the parent poster in this situation:
Summer between junior and senior years, says “money is not a factor in the decision”, kid’s list (apparently with parental encouragement and approval) is mostly expensive private schools without merit scholarships:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1789885-best-schools-for-math-comp-sci-with-undergrad-research.html
March of senior year, does not want to pay for expensive private school that is the kid’s first choice:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1866912-need-advice-on-college-choice-etc-p1.html
Just throwing in a story here. I am good friends with a group of students that I met on CC probably 10 or so years ago. None of them post here anymore but we have our own spin-off site and group facebook chat. We talk literally all the time.
I am the only humanities student among them. I’m also the only one who didn’t go to an elite college. They went to Cal Tech, Harvard, UCLA, MIT, and Penn (at Wharton now finishing up her MBA) (some went to the same colleges). A few work at google, twitter, etc. One is in IB and two are pursuing PhDs (one in math, one in some form of computer science). Almost all of them went to these places because they were told by their parents that it was that or basically nothing (mostly first generation students with Asian parents).
We are now in very different places in life. They live in NYC and Silicon Valley mostly… renting out super expensive and pretty small apartments even though they’re making 6 figures. I am getting my PhD in a humanities subject at a top uni and own a house and have a small family. Most of them tell me how jealous they are that I’m happy and own a house and married at my age. They don’t see that happening for at least a decade for them- even though that’s something that most of them want very badly.
This is all to say that there is no one set path that is going to magically get to comfort and happiness. My PhD friends here at Michigan in all sorts of subjects came from all different college backgrounds. I’m sure my CC friends know people working at google that are happy but they are not. I took the “UT-A and house” route and have zero regrets.
Whatever your son chooses to do, I hope he does it for him and for his future and not some imagined future that you and he have in your heads that is only accessible through ~3 universities.
I’ll throw in my story here as well.
DS , who was a top student at a prestigious private HS, applied to many top colleges 10 years ago… And was accepted at most of them.
He was accepted at 12/15 colleges he applied to, including 2 Ivys, Chicago, Wash U, Pomona, Carleton and other top 20 U’s/ LAC’s, all with little FA , and also received a full tuition scholarship at his “safety”- USC, which in 2006 was ranked far below any other college he applied to.
His classmates were very surprised [ and some parents at his private HS were appalled] that he would end up choosing USC over ALL of the other more “prestigious” colleges where he was accepted. But for many reasons, it turned out to be the right decision.
He was HAPPY at USC and was able, with the incredible network of profs, and with lots of work on his part, to be accepted at his ultimate goal /“dream” graduate school- Caltech , all without us having to spend one thin dime on UG tuition.
Why am I mentioning this? Because I too, 11 years ago, was SURE that my super smart DS “DESERVED” to go to a top college. But the $$ it would cost us got in the way. And thank God that happened.
Having him graduate, with Honors, from what we previously thought to be a University that was “less than what he deserved”, on a full tuition merit scholarship, would NOT have been possible unless I had encouraged him to apply there in first place.
I suggest you swallow your pride, and cast a wide net for colleges and U’s that may offer your DS merit $.
You may very well be thankful that you did, as I was.
The very first thing you need to so is run the NPC on colleges A, B, C : can you pay full price?
For these colleges, getting a merit scholarship (when it’s even offered) means you’ve done something in your spare time no one else has done.
Consider he will NOT get a merit scholarship from these colleges (A, B, C - which all should be in the same tier.) It’s possible but very unlikely.
Being Top 0.5% vs. Top 7% in his high school class is irrelevant to these (A, B, C) colleges. After 8 AP 's it doesn’t really matter either as a student with honors and 8 AP 's has proved he can do the work at a high academic level. (He can take more for his interest but it’s absolutely not necessary).
Read and have him read _ how to be a superstar student_ by Cal Newport (not the exact title).
Answering your original question, I’d have your son pick his favorite 4 ap’s, 5 max, and spend the freed up time on one of the activities you listed, that he’s involved in already, and increase his impact.
Because it seems he hasn’t taken AP physics 1 or honors physics, and doesn’t have enrollment in engineering ec 's, due to his academic interests he should probably apply to UT Business + business honors and hope for Plan II, rather than applying for engineering - this trade off to guarantee he gets his major of choice. Applying undecided would likely be a problem since it’d make his admission to a specific major harder and more stressful - this is for UT specifically and doesn’t apply to other universities.
Try to visit UAlabama and Tulane, as they are relatively ‘close’ (you don’t have to fly to them) and get him excited about them. He’d certainly get merit at Tulane. 
If merit is paramount, I second the recommendation of Vanderbilt, WashU, Davidson, Emory, and Tulane.
If alumni network is a key criterion, outside of UT, look into Notre Dame, Michigan (Midwest) , UVA(South East), UWashington Seattle (PNW) and Penn State (North east) - the latter would be an academic safety and he would apply to Schreyer, but there’s no telling whether it’d be within your 30k budget since even for Schreyer admits the only guaranteed scholarship is 4.5k, anything else is pure luck.
WorryHurry, you have been around CC for a while, so I’m very surprised to see that you are still believing that HYPS (and ok, now maybe a few other Ivy League schools) are appreciably above other similar caliber schools and therefore the only ones worth paying for. I’m also surprised that there’s no school below top 20 that has seemed of interest to you until you get to your state flagship. Does what you read on CC not resonate with you for some reason?
I’ll toss in my story too.
Our kids applied to colleges without ever looking at or hearing about a USNews ranking. To be honest, we never read them, and we didn’t ever own or borrow, or look at the rankings before our kids started college.
We found out school rankings well after the fact because the colleges sent that sort of info out in their periodic newsletters.
So, how did we find such fine schools without reading and believing in rankings? We did our own research.
Check my join date and you can see I was not even a member of CC when my older child was applying to colleges in 2002. Actually, not sure CC was even around then…and if it was, certainly not as huge as it is now.
I was a member when second child applied, and I did post a query here inquiring about colleges in CA that had under 6000 undergrads. We got a bunch of great suggestions…and went on a college trip where we visited CMC, Chapman, USD, Santa Clara, Pepperdine, and took a walk around Stanford. My kid went to Santa Clara. @WorryHurry411 it’s a great school. But I don’t think it has the cache you are looking for…and it is not listed at all in the USNews university or LAC rankings. It is listed in the “Masters Universities” which don’t get any press on these forums.
There are a lot of wonderful and under recognized colleges in this country. It’s not all about name recognition, in my opinion. It’s about what the school has to offer.