I second the suggestion for Temple, which would seem to satisfy most of your non-financial criteria. They awarded too many scholarships last year, precipitating a huge budget deficit, and so they might not be as generous in the future as they have been. I see no harm in applying, nevertheless.
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Anything in California? I’m guessing not, but that is another place he thinks he might like to go to school
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Calif is not great with huge merit, which is what your child needs.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek mentions about being around intellectual peers. She has a son at Bama. 35-40% of the students have an ACT 30+…and these students are heavily concentrated in STEM majors. Her son does have intellectual peers in his classrooms.
ACT 30 is top 95% in the nation.
@mom2collegekids @mathmomvt About RPI, the Medal Scholarship is $25K now, but RPI has other scholarships as well, including the Leadership Award - I don’t know what the max they give for that is but the one my D got was $18K. They also combine awards - my D got several (though I’m pretty sure one was need-based rather than merit, called the Rensselaer Grant). In total my D received $46K in grants from RPI. One nice thing is that they’re guaranteed for 4 years without minimum GPA requirements, and if you go for a co-term Masters program they extend to that. Anyway, it’s hard to know what you would get, but it’s worth a try.
We know plenty of high stat students in and out of STEM at UA. DD is a junior eng student, and is part of honors program and has Presidential and eng scholarships. Very good for OOS merit, and for some students allows a lower cost opportunity than their state programs and potentially also better educational opportunities.
Very good safety, and can visit the school if some of the other opportunities/scholarships don’t pan out, or during evaluation/decision of programs/schools.
Just apply to UA by the scholarship deadline to include in your student safety list.
Yes, RPI is worth a shot, and I’m not worried about intellectual peers at Bama.
Kid has been looking over my shoulder and says he doesn’t want to live in a red state – but I know college campuses are can be quite different than the surrounding area. Honestly I think the size might be more of a concern for this kid – both my older boys were overwhelmed by the size of UMass Amherst, which is smaller than UA. How much that matters may depend on how well there are “schools within a school” (honors college, special programs, cohesion within a major, etc.) that make the place feel smaller.
Anyhow, worth putting on the list as a possible safety, for sure, and we’d want to visit to see how good a fit it will be. My kids did sometimes surprise me in which schools they liked that I didn’t think the would, and vice versa.
There are some others that have been reported, but they are extremely hard to get (e.g. UCB Drake full ride for mechanical engineering majors only).
A 3.5 renewal GPA could be rather stressful on the student who needs to renew the scholarship to continue to afford attending the school. Basically, the student needs to grade-grub like a pre-med student. This can deter the student from choosing interesting courses that may be difficult, for example.
@ucbalumnus I agree. That is why I posted the questions to consider. Some students obviously are not phased by that requirement bc they are making the choice to pursue those scholarships. The Wells at IU-B, for example, requires a 3.4. That is still pretty high, but several kids on the 2017 thread are pursuing it.
The kids may not realize how stressful keeping that GPA could end up being. I would be wary of a scholarship with a high renewal GPA requirement, especially if there is no grace period.
I second the University of Hartford suggestion. There are substantial merit opportunities there. Also Western New England University in Springfield, MA is another possibility but I don’t know about merit there. Employers in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut hire engineering grads from these schools routinely.
I suggested University of Hartford, but I honestly think University of Hartford and Western New England College are not of the same caliber of UVM, WPI, Northeastern, or RPI. There will be a sacrifice of quality. I’m not sure how much it is though. It’s not a “slam dunk” choice.
I suggested Hartford and Western New England as possible safeties for the OP that were in the northeast. A strong student will most likely get substantial merit at Hartford so that really would be a good financial safety if you need one besides your state flagship. At the University of Hartford, the Ward School of Technology merged into the College of Engineering so now there are BS degrees in both Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Technology within the College of Engineering so there are several options available. I know several graduates from these schools working at regional engineering companies so I think they are worth a look as safeties.
Western New England’s maximum merit scholarship is $20K against a cost of attendance of $55K :-/
University of Hartford does offer full tuition scholarships.
It would be helpful if one of the many college search tools would include availability of scholarships for a given set of stats so that you could search for schools that fit your criteria where you’d have a decent chance of getting merit aid.
Hi! Just a high school senior from NH looking for financial safeties! Before I was so worried about getting INTO college, I forgot to think about the paying part. Nearly had a heart attack when I did the Tufts (my #1) net price calculator and found out that I would have to pay full price myself because of my parent’s income…
Anyways, I was doing some digging and found a couple colleges for your child to consider if he hasn’t already:
Vanderbilt*
Ohio State* (they also hand out unlimited full tuition for one year awards)
Tulane
UMass Amherst
WPI
Boston University*
University of Rochester*
RPI
Webb Institute
U of South Carolina
Syracuse
Clemson will give up to 50% off to OOS
(*very competitive, but possible!)
You guys seem to be experts and probably know most of these, and not all of these are NE, but just in case… 
Really wish I was a resident in CT or VT though, I think they are very generous to their high achieving in-state students.
@mathmomvt When you say you can afford 15 to 20 k, does that include Stafford loan and him working in the summer?
Ohio State merit awards are shrinking as the university shifts to offering more need based aid. It is amazing how quickly the offers and admission requirements changed in just the few years between my oldest three years ago and this year.
University of Toledo has respected programs with an awesome career services office, good labs, great professors and offers generous automatic out of state merit aid. But who knows if those offers will still be available a few years from now.
@frontpage UMass will cost 32k with max merit.
@gearmom – no, we can do 15-20K plus what he can contribute through federal loans and summer employment. He has about 5K saved that he can put toward college as well. The 15-20K is just for our parent contribution. And actually we can probably do 20-25K at this point. He can probably do about 10K per year of self-help from his savings, summer employment, and federal loans.
@mathmomvt Well that changes things. So his budget is about 30k a year. Maybe 35k. Try Northeastern, WPI, UMass, RPI.