I thought Iowa State seemed high. It’s 2019 but my son got - I want to say - $15k from UMN.
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My son attends RPI and is on a large merit scholarship. They are known to negotiate merit in the spring too. Definitely keep it on the list. We have been very impressed with RPI.
Well, the fishing would be outstanding. The Mississippi goes right through campus and has excellent carp fishing which is incredibly fun. And then there is ice fishing, which is not to be missed. Crappies and sunnies through the ice are an outstanding eating fish, very different flavor than during the summer. Walleye too. And building and visiting your own ice house is a joy.
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How much merit did your son receive? Thanks
Yeah, I think he needs to go to school in the desert so he can focus. He’d be in heaven at UMN!
I think Alfred U gives significant merit. Materials Science & Engineering Undergrad Program | Alfred University FWIW, they also have Ceramic Engineering, Glass Science & Engineering, and Biomaterials Engineering.
There’s also U of Akron, but they specialize in polymer science and plastics engineering, which doesn’t sound like your kid’s thing.
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Have you looked into Boise State? It appears that your son would qualify for the Summit Scholarship of $10k/year, bringing the COA to about $16k/year. Within its College of Engineering, there is the Micron School of Materials Science & Engineering, offering through a PhD, and there seem to be a variety of research areas within the school. I suspect that there’s good fishing in the area. 
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Another school that your family might want to consider is Washington State. As a NMSF, your son would receive free tuition and would only need to maintain a 3.0GPA to keep it, leaving room & board costs to pay. It has an Institute for Materials Research which focuses on crystal growth, microfabrication, and electronic characterization, while other areas of research include ceramics and metals, electronic materials, nuclear engineering and materials, and polymers and composites, and there are biomedical materials research and composite materials labs, too.
Okay, last two. University of North Texas. If your son becomes a Finalist, then he would receive a full ride here (tuition, room & board, and books). If he doesn’t become a NMF, then he’d still likely receive a merit scholarship that would also come with a waiver of out-of-state fees and thus the costs would probably be somewhere south of $20k/year. It offers through a PhD in materials engineering, so there’s plenty of depth here, too.
The second school is U. of Utah. Even if your son doesn’t get any scholarships, if he stays in Utah for the first summer, he would qualify for residency (and in-state rates) for the remainder of his time. So the first year would be about $42k, but the other years would be about $21k. It offers a major in metallurgical engineering as well as materials engineering within the department, should that prove to be of particular interest to your son.
- Alfred came off the list as it only offers limited engineering degrees and we wanted a back up plan if he wanted to change engineering majors.
- We missed the Boise Summit scholarship and thought he wouldn’t get any/ much merit, so didn’t look any further. Thanks for this info.
- And wow, we totally missed Washington Sate national merit. We thought we had dug well into the NM schools.
- Univ North Texas - we were aware of the program and great cost. But know nothing about it and felt like we were sending him to the (nearly) cheapest school when we COULD pay a bit more for a school we’ve heard of. But maybe we should look in to it more.
- Univ Utah came off the list b/c the materials and metallurgical aren’t in the college of engineering, but rather in the College of Mines and Earth Sciences. As this is not at all his interest we crossed it off.
Thanks everyone. More digging for us to do.
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I would at least take a look into UNT a bit more. Just because it’s the least expensive option doesn’t mean it may not become his favorite option, just as the most expensive option on a list doesn’t mean it’s the best one either. Plus, applying to a school is far from the same as forcing someone to enroll. It’s classified as a residential campus, and though only 65% of first year students live on-campus, when there are around 6600 freshmen, that still leaves almost 4300 freshmen in the dorms to make friends with.
I know that there are out-of-state students who attend, as their music programming also has a really good reputation. Perhaps @dfbdfb might have some insight?
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I have a kid in her first year at North Texas (media arts major, on the production side of the house), and she’s loving it.
Could her high-stats self have gone somewhere with higher prestigiosity? Sure. Could she have gone somewhere more expensive? Heck yeah, easily.
But why?
(Very seriously, don’t fall into the trap that higher price equals higher quality. That’s not good logic. The North Texases and Boise States of the higher-ed world offer a most excellent education. And in engineering, ABET accreditation is all the quality control you need, really.)
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Thanks for the info and reminder. More just a school we’re not familiar with that needs more research. Thanks!
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And hey, once you’ve looked into it you might find that it’s not the right place for your kid! And that’s fine. But—perhaps especially for engineering—the number of colleges that provide a most excellent education is much, much larger than hanging around College Confidential would lead one to believe.
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