Looking for financial safeties - Northeast math/sci/engr schools with assured merit scholarships?

College Search & Selection
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We are just starting the search process with our third son, a sophomore with excellent grades who leans toward the math/science/engineering fields, but doesn’t yet know what he is interested in within that cluster.

As I send him off to write a “practice” PSAT tomorrow morning, I am realizing that the landscape has changed since our older two boys were looking. Both of our older boys were NMFs and that qualified them for guaranteed full tuition at several schools: WPI, Drexel, Northeastern, UVM (we are in-state).

Now I don’t think any of these schools offer full tuition for NMFs. UVM guarantees $6K to NMFs – that’s about 1/3 of tuition+fees. They now offer full tuition only to one top student from each HS. He’ll likely be in the top 10 in his class, but unlikely to be #1.

(He has no scores yet, but I’d say he’s a likely NMF – in that range anyhow.)

Thoughts on where we should be looking for a couple of financial safeties (not necessarily based on NMF status). We can probably afford to pay $15K - $20K per year but are unlikely to get need-based aid to bring our cost into that range.

(Yes, he would consider schools outside the northeast too, but is there nothing that fits in this region anymore?)

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http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/ - most recent list but still not completely up to date.

Not guaranteed based on nmsf, but consider Pitt.

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If you are in VT you are not far from Albany, NY. I happen to live in this area and we have a thriving engineering/nanotech/technology industry with higher education to support it. With your son’s strong stats you might want to consider RPI because they do give out a lot of merit aid. SUNY Albany has many programs and a more reasonable tuition rate. Union College has an excellent engineering program within a LAC and also gives out merit aid. Good luck. I’m sure he will do great and get some nice offers.

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It is really hard to get into a top notch University (other than in state public universities) for $15-20k per year unless you become more geographically flexible and look at schools like Alabama and Ole Miss. It would be better if you could use the next 2 years to get your annual budget up to $30k or $35k.

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I do not know of any NE schools that would give him guaranteed merit. Take a look at SUNY Buffalo. OOS is reasonable compared to many other state schools, they are known for science/engineering, and there are merit awards. Pitt is another good one.

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<<
can probably afford to pay $15K - $20K per year
<<<<

That means that you need a full tuition award. Your 15-20k will pay for room, board, books, fees, travel, misc.

The NE has long been a terrible place for full tuition awards…particularly if eng’g is desired.

We learned a few years ago from another poster that UPitts full tuition awards are for top stats PLUS top 2% of class.

Even for NMFs, the awards are dwindling.

Fordham may still have full tuition for NMFs, but does it have eng’g? Don’t remember. Fordham tends to be far less generous to non-NMFs.

He’s going to have to leave the NE area.

If you can, visit Alabama.

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<<<<
k per year unless you become more geographically flexible and look at schools like Alabama and Ole Miss.

It would be better if you could use the next 2 years to get your annual budget up to $30k or $35k.
<<<<

Sure…in the next 2 years, double the amount you can pay. Lol.
It should be a snap to come up with an extra $60k+ in two years!!! :))

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Yeah, especially with kid #2 currently in college!

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We will look at Alabama, and RPI. Is there information on RPI’s merit scholarships? I know they are very expensive to start with, so merit that “looks big” may not be. Their scholarship page here doesn’t have any details. http://admissions.rpi.edu/aid/scholarships.html The way our HS awards the Rensselaer medal makes it not an option for our son.

If we move away from “assured merit” to “likely merit” what does that open up?

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How about Temple? They have a few large scholarships for students with outstanding stats

http://admissions.temple.edu/cost-and-aid

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@mathmomvt I’d still suggest looking at RPI, WPI, and Northeastern. UMASS is likely the best public engineering school in the Northeast and should not cost much more than UVM either with scholarships or through the NEBHE exchange if the major is not offered in VT: http://www.nebhe.org/programs-overview/rsp-tuition-break/overview/. Perhaps the University of Hartford, but I’m not sure how good it is for engineering. If you’re willing to go out further, UT Dallas is a good engineering program that still gives out full scholarships.

If he’s doing internships then they should defray the cost, and manageable loans (<$30,000 for engineers) are not terrible either.

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There are competitive merit awards at some schools, but until stats are known, it would be hard to recommend. Those awards tend to be targeted to either super-high stats and/or students who add ethnic diversity to the school.

The bigger issue is that you need full tuition merit. The RPI medal is about $15k, so that won’t get you to your goal.

As for “likely merit” that gets you to your goal of $15-20k??..you’d have to go down in ranking.

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That opens up this list:

http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/

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Our kids have to look for full tuition awards. NMF opens up more automatic scholarships. AZ, OK, KY, NM, and a few other states have high dollar automatic NM scholarships.

There are also a lot of competitive large $$ scholarships. Those applications are very time consuming bc there are a lot of essays to write. Plan on your student starting summer between jr and sr yr to try to get a head start.

This PDF costs $8 and is clunky/not user friendly, but the list is worth the $$. I spent 5 hrs going through any colleges I thought might offer something my Dd wanted and only made it through half the list. She added 1 school, so for us it was worth it. http://www.mykidscollegechoice.com/full-scholarship-list/

Be aware that most big $$ scholarships have early application deadlines, Oct 15-Nov is not unusual. Plan on applying broadly. But also make sure they apply well. These scholarships are extremely competitive and shoddy thrown together apps are not going to be worth anything.

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Rowan in nj offers a lot of merit if you are willing to move down the college ranking list. Good engineering school too.

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I don’t know if it can be characterized as a financial safety or if it offers “assured” merit scholarships – but Trinity College in Hartford can be very generous to outstanding students.

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The RPI Medal is 25K but their cost of attendance is over 60K. So… that doesn’t even really get us close. (Kid #1 was offered 26K in merit money back when COA was “only” 57K, so it’s possible to get more merit than the RPI medal even without getting the RPI medal).

We’re ok with him taking loans totaling under 30K for a “dream school” but for a financial safety, I want that to be within our price range without him contributing much, so it looks like we need to expand our geographic region. Even UVM in-state with a 6K NM scholarship is going to come to $25K.

We’re in the financial aid conundrum of having an income that recently increased, but we don’t have the savings that are expected for that income level. We haven’t looked at the finances that closely, and it’s possible that we can do more than we think now, and we will have one year with no kids in college to save up.

Kid #1 got need-based aid at Cornell, including 30K in loans to him and an expected contribution from him from his summer work (which as a CS student was easy to exceed, so he ended up with less in loans). Ended up with a fantastic job and is paying off the loans at an accelerated rate.

Kid #2 is on full-tuition scholarship at UVM Honors college. He’ll get out with no loans and money in the bank from summer earnings.

Both of them had full tuition offers at several northeast schools (Northeastern, Drexel, WPI) but those options seem to have dried up, unless any of them still offer reasonable numbers of full or near-full tuition scholarships for non-NMFs.

Is there anything we ought to look at in the northwest?

The kid is a white male, so not exactly high on the diversity scale.

My guess on stats (based on comparing him to his brothers and other kids I know) would be:

Top 3-5% of the class. 3.9 UW GPA (that would be a 4.0 most places – all A’s – but our school only gives 4.0 for 100%) , 34-35 ACT, 800 SAT Math, 4s and 5s on a handful of APs (likely Bio, Chem, Calc AB, Calc BC, one of the English courses – other than History which he won’t take at the AP level, that’s pretty much all our school offers)

Obviously you don’t know until you know, but this kid is pretty solid, so I’m comfortable beginning a search with those types of guesses in mind.

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Thanks for the info about RPI medal amount. For some reason I thought it was $15k…but that may have been a long time ago when S1 was applying back in 2006…lol

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That’s ok for a financial safety, especially if there is an Honors college or some other way for the high-achieving kids to be challenged/recognized and to have a social group of other “serious students” at a school where not everyone is one.

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@mathmomvt Live in the northwest, can’t think of a single good engineering school that gives substantial merit. Other than OSU and UW, I can’t think of a good engineering school period.