My son is a junior and attends our school district’s gifted academy. His ACT scores came in and he got a 34 composite, with a 4.2 weighted GPA, 3.7 unweighted, though his school does NOT report UW GPA at all. He is in the top 10% class rank. All of his academic classes are either AP or honors. He’ll have 13 APs under his belt by the time he graduates. He’s done well on all the AP exams. He is a varsity athlete, and does a club or two, and he does some community service events every year but that’s it for ECs. He’s a pretty laid back kid - not one of those go-getting, lead everything kids.
We make too much money to get any need based aid, and our EFC is far beyond what we can actually afford. He initially only wanted biomedical engineering, but he’s opened his options to include mechanical, electrical and chemical and possibly do the biomedical route for grad school.
We know he will get Presidential Scholar at University of Alabama, and he really likes that school. We’re going to look at Huntsville and Birmhingham as well, though I have a feeling he won’t like them as much.
We live in Illinois, and our state flagship is a great engineering school, but they offer no merit for stats like his, and the current in-state tuition is $37K per year, which is way out of our range. (We have two kids coming up right behind this one, and retirement looming within 2 years after the last one graduates, so no parent loans or co-signing big loans for anyone in the cards here).
What are the chances of getting a merit scholarship at Rutgers?
Looking at max of about $18K out of pocket for us (not including books, and the other expenses) - we expect the kids to take out the federal student loans to have skin in the game, so about $23K total available for freshman year.
Reasonably speaking - we can’t go above contributing more than $20K per year towards his education (not including books and such, we figure those are sort of like the day-to-day expenses that we already cover for him). We have two other kids coming up behind him that we need to consider. He will be by himself for 3 years, then he and his brother will both be in college at the same time, then my middle and youngest will be together for 3 years, followed by one year of her by herself. We have to be fairly conservative with them to make sure that there’s enough money for everyone to get educated (and for us to have a roof over our heads when we’re 80). We COULD get all sorts of loans and encumber all of them with massive debt to go to better schools, but I honestly believe that is a foolish thing to do. I’d rather that they get a decent education and have under $25K debt when they graduate. (I expect all of them to take on some responsibility for the cost of school - I may end up paying it all off for them later but I’m not telling them that.)
UA, UAB, and UAH are all affordable for us - with the scholarships, we can pay for everything. All three seem to be well-regarded and a good, solid option, especially since it’s pretty near guaranteed that he will get into the honors colleges at these schools.
IUPUI is another one that is in our price range, as is University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, though I have heard conflicting reviews on the quality.
I really wish we could afford U of I Champaign, but the pricing for residents is terrible - $37K per year now. I honestly don’t think I want my kids living here after graduation as the state seems to be in a financial and economic death spiral.
I hadn’t thought at all about the western schools - I’ll have to start looking at those. The only downside is that they may be harder to get him home for breaks and such. But then again - so much to offer to live in those areas - it would be a great spot to vacation for the family.
My son is a senior with stats very similar to you son. He received merit packages from both MSU and OSU that put total cost of attendance around $25k out of pocket.
We live just south of Milwaukee and did not consider UW-Milwaukee. We had concerns regarding retention, graduation rates, and facility quality. We did consider UW-PLATTEVILLE. If UW-PLATTEVILLE is within your price range, you may want to consider them in place of UW-MILWAUKEE.
I am from NJ with two kids at Rowan (in state COA is around 30K, OOS COA 39K). They both got fantastic merit aid (my daughter got 11,500 a year). I know Rutgers gives some merit, but not nearly as much as Rowan and typically only to the tippy top. You’ve probably never heard of Rowan , but it is worth a look. They are growing, well regarded and have all the certifications. The nexus of the school is engineering, due to a huge donation from Henry Rowan around 1990. Brand new engineering building, PhDs teaching the classes (not grad students) etc. They do have biomedical engineering as a major, along with EE, MechE, ChemE.
(I work for a medical device company and two of our products are tissue with regenerative properties, always happy to talk about that .)
I’ve been doing a lot of research on merit scholarships lately because we are in a similar boat (also in IL), although my D19’s stats are a tiny bit lower and she’s not interested in engineering. With a 34 ACT, he’d be in the highest tier of merit scholarships at Miami of OH although I do not know whether or not its good choice for engineering. He’d automatically qualify for merit $ at OSU and Ohio U, and instate tuition at Kansas. All would be in your budget, there are some excellent honors colleges there, and I’m pretty sure they all have excellent engineering programs. Also as others have said, don’t be afraid to try some private colleges too. i know high stats kids who received large merit $ packages from Case and Clark, that probably bring those schools in-budget for you.
Pitt could be a possibility although the merit certainly isn’t automatic. They have biomedical engineering and a heck of a lot of research opportunities on campus. (The medical hospital facilities are pretty much interwoven on campus.)
They also have all the other typical engineering disciplines.
We are OOS for Pitt. When DS first appplied, he was awarded full tuition (he had 35 ACT, 4.0 UW) which brought our costs down well below $20k/year. He ended up with the chancellor’s scholarship which is a competitive full ride opportunity.
Iowa State University has a lot of engineering students…very good programs from what I hear. They offer OOS merit aid too. Full price cost of attendance for 2018-2019 with room and board for OOS is about 33,000 but merit may bring it down to an affordable range.
@NJRoadie I took a look at Rowan - their calculator puts them in our range. I am actually originally from the east coast. My mother still lives in Flemington. We’ll be heading out to visit her and will head over to Rowan with my son to check it out. Thank you for the tip! I went to Rutgers, which is one of the reasons I thought of it for him - especially with big Pharma in NJ!
@missbwith2boys What were your DS ECs like? Mine has had only a few, none with any leadership positions. He’s one of the smartest kids in his class, but not one of the leaders. If there’s a group forming for a project, he’s not the one jumping up to lead it. He’s the one that the other leaders are scrambling to get on their team. Colleges are usually looking for the leaders, I think, to get those big, competitive scholarships. I saw a few where they were looking for creative thinkers in the essay questions - he’s definitely got a shot there.
One of the things that we’ll have to work on is how he presents himself on his applications. He has dealt with learning disabilities (he had IEP for both speech and ADHD through elementary school). His grades aren’t perfect, but they are good. He can make careless mistakes on tests that drop him down a grade. His papers and his projects are spectacular. His ADHD disability oddly enough is also his superpower and it’s why other kids like him to work on his projects. He is able to make some really interesting logical leaps - so from a creativity and out of the box thinking perspective, he’s fantastic. From a transcript perspective, he’s lower down on the totem pole.
All of the really competitive scholarships that I’ve seen so far are looking for leaders.
What about University of New Mexico? I believe he would get a decent guaranteed scholarship there.
An IEP from elementary school really shouldn’t impact him at all…now. I’m a speech pathologist, and I worked in a primary school. Many…many of my students had no lingering educational issues in the secondary school.
I will say…if he wants any kinds of accommodations in college…his disability assessments need to be current.
Take a look at Mississippi State University. They have great automatic merit for your son’s stats. I heard good things about the Bagley College of engineering.
@thumper1 He’s no longer on an IEP, but has an active 504. He has minor accommodations these days - mainly if he needs to write anything by hand - he still has issues with that. He’s fine with keyboarding. He doesn’t need extra time for assignments or anything, and doesn’t need any extra testing time.
@elodyCOH New Mexico with the Amigo scholarship would provide in state tuition. Total COA would be less than 20K per year. Arizona State with its excellent Barrett Honors Program, offers merit scholarships for students with high test scores/GPA that might fall within your budget.
In the Northwest, Western Washington, Washington State, and Wyoming offer merit for OOS students.
@elodyCOH he was captain of the varsity cross country team his senior year but that’s about it for leadership. He’d step in and teach the calculus class if the regular math teacher was out. But otherwise I’d say that his research stuff was probably what helped him over the edge. We also had some regional diversity to offer.
Pitt’s application is pretty simple and it’s available quite early. There are 3 short answer questions on the app that folks are supposed to use to help provide some additional info beyond the stats. It seems like Pitt first wants to see the stats and then it uses those questions to boost folks up to the initial round of scholarship $. So if your kid applies to Pitt, pay attention to the “optional” short answer questions. I wouldn’t treat them as optional.
, but it is worth a look. They are growing, well regarded and have all the certifications. The nexus of the school is engineering, due to a huge donation from Henry Rowan around 1990. Brand new engineering building, PhDs teaching the classes (not grad students) etc. They do have biomedical engineering as a major, along with EE, MechE, ChemE.