Daughter currently attend a top prep school and receive a 50,000 scholarship each year, she wants to pursue computer science and we are looking for merit based or need based scholarship. All the GPAs and SATs are top notch, I am more worried about financing her education. We calculated following EFCs for each school by running net price calculator:
College EFC
Harvard 12650
Princeton 12800
Yale 13331
MIT 17696
Stanford 19700
Upenn 25000
Columbia 25107
Williams 27080
Dartmouth 28567
CMU 29165
Duke 29800
Cornell 29817
Caltech 31115
Brown 37452
In State University 20800
As majority of these schools are super reach for everyone, looking for colleges that award need based aid or merit based aid. All suggestions are welcome. Berkeley, Ga Tech, UIUC are out as they are out of state colleges, Thanks
What about RPI, URochester, Olin Engineering, Case Western, Tufts, NEU, Harvey Mudd, Swat, Wellesley(Has cross registration agreement with MIT which a HS classmate heavily took advantage of as a CS major), etc.
Just curious, why would you put GT, Berkely, and UIUC as being “out” while listing many other private schools that have a much higher list price?
I know that CMU has very little merit aid, but you should expect a good need based package. CMU also has an acceptance rate for women that is more than double the rate for men.
While the California public universities (like Berkeley) don’t offer merit or need-based aid to OOS students, other public universities do.
At GT for example, if your daughter is competitive for MIT, she can compete for GT’s competitive scholarships (from the OOS tuition waiver up to the Stamps). It’s worth looking into these competitive scholarships, as well as the automatic merit or need-based aid.
@shortnuke What I have been told that Betkely and UUIC are top schhol, but beacuse of out of state residency, will not get much aid, I will take berkley in a heart beat but @more than 40,000 it is not worth it
@ucbalumnus do not want to take too much loan, but after 20,000 we will be starting to strech ourselves very thin, let us see as lot depends very she gets admitted, I have not done any net price calculation for Berkley
@Gator88NE daughter’s school has told her that she may be school nominee for Robertson scholarship if she wants to pursue it, but those are extremly competitive in nature; Stamps scholarship we are looking very closely and we have to visit GT
Yep, the best scholarships at schools like GT will be very competitive. Even if she doesn’t get offered a Stamps scholarship, GT also offers a Provost Scholarship which awards 40 freshmen, non-resident students an out-of-state tuition waiver for eight semesters.
Still, it’s a long shot, but it may be one worth taking, if she’s interested in GT. The same applies to other public universities.
@Gator88NE at present tbrough a grant she is doing summer cs research at a top five school in computer science, hopefully this helps her in admission cycle, thanks for telling us more about other opportunities.
This means that, out of your original list, only the following are realistically in range:
Harvard 12650
Princeton 12800
Yale 13331
MIT 17696
Stanford 19700
In State University 20800
Is the “In State University” (a SUNY?) desirable to her, and is it an admission safety for her?
Looks like you and she need to make an otherwise-merit-seeking list, targeting full tuition or better merit scholarships (and reach/match/safety must be assessed on the scholarships, not admission). Some lists, but they are somewhat old, so verify on school web sites (some of the best known like Alabama and Howard are worse now than when they were put in the lists):
Something to keep in mind about Gtech, its one of those elite engineering schools where the academic climate is exceedingly rigorous even for topflight engineering/CS schools*.
Would she be willing to endure that environment and maintain the academic performance required for keeping one’s merit scholarships is one question to think about.
This is also a key reason why Gtech engineering/CS graduates are highly regarded nationwide.
@ucbalumnus, no college is safety as she will be putting same efforts in each college applications, yes it is acceptable if no merit or need based results in. We have taught kids to work very hard and not worry what future brings as a lot depends on other things that we can not forsee.