Check out chancellor/powers-Knapp at UW Madison. Especially for URMs
https://cspks.wisc.edu/
I think it is unhelpful to act like local commuter schools wouldn’t work just fine. UC is a great system. There are plenty of high stat students choosing local public universities for financial reasons.
I think UC Irvine should be considered on its own merits, not just because it is close. It’s a great school for engineers
It also has one other really big advantage. It is very close to the BEST international market, with the BEST bread ever. It rolls out of an oven like a pizza oven and people wait in a line for it, and then you carry it across both arms up to the cashier. You have to buy two, one for eating the second you get to the car, the other for home.
My daughter is planning to take her boyfriend to California and she said her first stop will be for bread.
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Another vote for U Delaware. She would be competitive for the Distinguished Scholars, and the top award is the Eugene DuPont full ride. Good school for chemical engineering. Great campus.
I think personal anecdotes are useful. It lets the OP and all of us know what the range of possibilities can be. From full ride + to zip.
I suggest that the DD to start with the schools deemed best. Best as in Favorites, chances of being affordable, chances of getting in, and especially the ones with early deadlines. They’ll serve as safeties, litmus tests and that way no thoughts of lost opportunities later like the Georgia Tech scholarship. You get one shot at some of these things and with state school, in particular, earlier is better. Seats fill up and then that’s it.
Once the early apps are out, the pressure will be less and the RD apps will already have a lot done. The young woman can just go until she’s done.
I’m sure she’ll have some good choices, but still think she needs to cover her bases, especially in terms of affordability.
My child doesn’t have a lot in common with yours, other than anticipating the National Hispanic Scholar notification this month. In researching on this site, I found the schools who offer the most merit for this - I am in TX and unfortunately they are all out of state for us - but the school you mentioned, U of Kentucky, had also caught my interest. Do the virtual tour on their website if you haven’t. The campus and dorms look AMAZING. The dorms have private individual small rooms for privacy with shared living and bathrooms. The campus has the wow factor (at least from the online tour) many of the campus’ I have looked at don’t (many look like worn office parks instead of colleges). He is planning on Nursing, and that program looks good as well. So, while I had ZERO interest in sending my sheltered child so far from home, I can’t ignore it and he will have to get a good offer somewhere closer to home to beat it. So while we have a ways to go in this process, a pretty much 75% paid for education sounds pretty awesome! It’s definitely worth looking in to. Good luck to you!
@KIMZ99 I agree. Uky is a beautiful campus with amazing dorms. That area of KY is nust pretty in general. On our visit, we went for a hiking on nature trails not too far from campus. (Outdoor activities were a draw for our dd.) It was definitely a top contender.
Even if it doesn’t offer a free fly-in, airfare and hotel room for a visit for a full-ride option is a heck of a lot cheaper than walking away from it for a school offering a free fly-in at a cost of $20,000/yr.
A quick note regarding University of Kentucky: while the scholarship is guaranteed for NHRP scholars, admission to the Lewis Honors College is not. So if you are interested by the Lewis Honors College, make sure you allow time to work on your application. Also the scholarship is not for a full ride. It is for full tuition + 10K room allowance the first two years (apparently it was close to full ride a few years ago but that is not the case anymore).
Regarding Boston University and Northeastern, please see the comment from @tbrixton posted on March 26 in the thread “NHRP 2019 College Scholarship List” started by @ArizonaParent . Their NHRP scholarships are defined as “up to” scholarships rather than guaranteed scholarships like the ones from ASU and UK(y). High earners will probably be disappointed.
It seems like some universities try to hide information on their websites…
I looked up Delaware, and found the UD Trustee Scholarship with a max of $17K, but with a COA of $51K that won’t cut it for us. I had to search for “Eugene DuPont” and their website implies that it is only a $2500 scholarship : https://sites.udel.edu/honors/eugene-dupont-scholars/
Am I missing something?
I have finished round 4 of re-reviewing merit aid for more schools. Here’s what I found :
(Probably) Alabama Huntsville : Automatic full tuition based on my daughters grades & ACT. That would leave about $12K per year
(NO) Carnegie Mellon : Nothing - all need based
(NO) Clarkson : Would be nice for hockey but they only make a mention of “Clarkson Scholarships” with no amount or number
(NO) Case Western : Seems like they only have 5 or less full tuition scholarships for STEM (they have more for other majors)
(NO) Butler : No chemical engineering
(YES) South Carolina : 45 Full tuition scholarships, plus they have $25K for NHRP and state that it can be stacked with another merit scholarship - so another big merit scholarship could mean a full ride
(NO) Illinois Institute of Technology : Couldn’t find any mention of merit scholarships
(NO) Michigan : Website is unclear about merit scholarships - it just says they have university scholarships and do not state how many or the amount. You’d think if they had real merit scholarships they would provide some details about them.
(Maybe) Texas A&M : They have the Brockman Foundation scholarships which are full rides, but they don’t say how many
(Maybe) Wisconsin : Chancellor’s and Powers-Knapp Scholars offers full tuition
(NO) Notre Dame : Their website specifically states “limited number of merit-based scholarships” and that’s pretty much it
(NO) Delaware : The largest merit aid scholarship I could find was for $17K, while the COA is $51K
(NO) SMU : No chemical engineering
(Probably) Need based only elite schools : Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell : If our other daughter qualifies as a second college student it may bring these within reach. Or maybe she’ll get lucky and I’ll lose my job (I didn’t say it would be lucky for me).
Other schools we were considering that don’t seem worth re-reviewing and can be eliminated (please let me know if you have any different information!) : UCSB, Wyoming, Duke, Penn State, Cal Berkeley, West Virginia, Florida, Syracuse, Texas, Virginia Tech, Washington, Dartmouth, Penn, Colorado, UC Davis, TCU, Baylor
I think the next step is to organize the viable universities into 3 categories based not on chances of being admitted, but on chances of being within our price range - I’ll use the same terminology :
Safe : Schools that, based on my daughter’s grades, ACT, and/or NHRP, would bring the tuition, room & board down to less than $15K
Target : Better schools that she could have a chance at a full tuition or full ride scholarship
Reach : Elite schools that if the planets align might be affordable. Most of these schools have a later deadline anyway so we could target them for applying after the first two groups.
Most full tuition or higher competitive merit scholarships should be considered reaches, rather than matches/targets, since there is typically no way to assess chances on competitive merit scholarships, which are typically few in number for the big ones.
The need-based-only elite colleges that have a possibility of being affordable should be considered reaches or high reaches.
@KevinFromOC I searched and could not find the Distinguished Scholar awards at UDel either. They may have been discontinued. They were offered just last year. It’s so sad that merit scholarships are drying up as college costs go up.
@KevinFromOC Regarding elite schools, our experience suggests that Cornell is likely to end up much more expensive than Princeton, Harvard, MIT and Stanford (similar to Carnegie Mellon - fors us in the 60K/y range whereas the NPC for Princeton suggested a price of “only” 30K/y was a possibility) if you cannot price-match with one of those tip-top schools (and if you get admitted to one of those tip-top schools I don’t see why you would want to go to Cornell). Also note that private schools like Cornell and Carnegie Mellon are somewhat sneaky when they send you the financial award because the price they list in bold is the price after deducting the optional federal student loan and the optional federal work study. So the price you see at first is about 10K lower than the “real” price (the one that you should use to compare offers).
I’ve lost track…are you having her apply to any elite schools that have small numbers of merit awards? It seems like you are eliminating those. There are a some…but honestly in all these pages, I’ve lost track of what you have already jettisoned.
@KevinFromOC Also you might want to dig further on Viriginia Tech before ruling it out completely. They do offer small merit-based scholarships (as in up to 5K scholarships) for sure. One small scholarship would not be enough to make it an option, but maybe it is possible to get multiple ones, or bigger ones?
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. The only reason Cornell is there is because my daughter had a lot of very good interaction with the hockey coaches there, whereas at Harvard and Princeton she was never able to get a hold of them or talk to them at all. But for the reasons you state, Cornell would probably be the first “elite” school to scratch off the list.
For Illinois institiute of Technology,
https://admissions.iit.edu/undergraduate/finances/first-year-scholarships
The big scholarships and the Camras Scholars and the Duchossois Scholarship. Camras is full tuition and Duchossois is a full ride.
@KevinFromOC Maybe reconsider WVU. OOS cost is $35k/year. Looking at the charts she would qualify for the $15k/year scholarship and be eligible for Dean’s or Engineering scholarships too and who knows what else. I hardly recognized Morgantown last time I was there. It’s not a metropolis but they’ve built-up that area with the school, hospital, and government facilities. The engineering school is ABET accredited. I’ve known several engineers from WVU and they’re sharp.
How does the Vanderbilt NPC compare with Princeton, Harvard, MIT? If it’s in the same ballpark, maybe add that one back to the mix. It would be tough to get one of their big scholarships but she might get admitted and get enough aid, especially if your other daughter is in school.
I think the terms Reach, Target, and Safe might be too confusing for what we’re looking for. So in terms of affordability, I’ll call them Automatic, Competitive, and Slim.
The Automatic schools then are those that would automatically offer at least full tuition (or there-abouts) based on her grades, ACT, and/or NHRP. Or, for UCI, based on in state tuition and living at home.
Those schools are (8 total) : Kentucky, Nebraska, Arizona, Arizona State, New Mexico, Alabama, Alabama Hunstville, UC Irvine
The Competitive schools are those where she would have to compete for at least a full tuition scholarship.
Those schools are (28 total) : USC, Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd, Colorado School of Mines, UCLA, UCSD, Virginia, Pittsburgh, Boston University, Northeastern, RPI, RIT, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Stevens Institute of Technology, Maryland, Rose Hulman, Johns Hopkins, Ohio State, Purdue, Utah, Franklin Olin, Clarkson, Rice, Delaware, Tulane, Illinois Institute of Technology, West Virginia.
The ones with a * by them also have women’s D1 hockey
There’s actually at least a couple that I’d label as both Automatic and Competitive - those that give large amounts for grades/ACT/NHRP and appear to let you stack them with other awards. Those schools are (2 total) : Miami Ohio, and South Carolina
Then there’s the “Slim” elite schools that offer no merit aid.
Those schools are (5 total) : Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard*, MIT
That narrows down the original list to 43, which needs to be narrowed down by another 20 or so. So how to pare down the list? Here’s my logic, which borrows a lot from many extremely helpful suggestions from this thread. I’d appreciate any suggestions or flaws seen in my logic…
Seems like a good old fashioned ranking is in order. Obviously this is very subjective - things like third party rankings for their engineering program (like from US News, which I know is somewhat arbitrary), school features (honors program, Co-op opportunities, ABET accreditation), school location, and maybe even a random number generator. Then, it would seem to make sense to eliminate some schools if they are lower ranked than one of the Automatic schools. For example, I’ll use Kentucky as the baseline : good school, full tuition, and $10,000 housing stipend for the first two years makes it’s cost very attractive. I think this is the best “Automatic” school on the list in terms of price. Therefore, if any other school ranks lower than Kentucky, it can probably be eliminated.
There’s also timing. For some schools, we will want to get applications submitted in the next month or so. Others can wait (such as the Slim/Elite schools) that have later deadlines and since they offer no merit aid there’s no point in killing ourselves with an early application. That gives us more time to focus on those schools later.
And as far as the “Competitive” schools go, we need to somehow get a feel for just how good her chances are of getting one of their top merit aid awards (or stacking merit aid). For example, some emphasize academics over volunteer/leadership aspects (and vice versa). Some also have very few scholarships for a very large applicant pool. And some from commenters here that just know a schools merit aid generosity is different from what they list on their website.
I guess I better get crackin’ in this long and arduous process! I should probably also re-read this entire thread to make sure I haven’t missed anything…