As soon as I read your description of your daughter, I immediately thought of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). It’s strong in technology but also in the arts. The other day @zozoty wrote this about it, which I thought was a really great description:
Someone up above mentioned Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and I didn’t want that suggestion to get lost. My son attends there and it could be a good fit for your daughter. They are known for their engineering/comp sci programs as well as their art programs – it’s a weirdly bifurcated student body with half the kids being techy geeks and the other half being artsy geeks. But they do have a solid business program (Saunders College of Business) that they are investing in by building a huge new addition onto the business building. I don’t know a whole lot about the business program but the art facilities and tech facilities are amazing. They offer a lot of creative and specific majors (in the computing college, they don’t just have comp sci, they have software engineering, web and mobile computing, human computer interaction, new media design, etc.) – pretty sure they have the same sorts of specific majors in the business school and a lot of them skew techy (like analytics or information systems). They also have a lot of combined BS/MS or BS/MBA programs. My son is majoring in SE in a combined BS/MS program - he’s hoping for the MS in data science although they don’t actually have that as a combined BS/MS option yet - they said they would by next year. He’s also getting minors in music technology and applied statistics. They have a longstanding coop program that both helps cover the cost of tuititon while in school and ensures that the kids graduate with real life experience - most graduates seem to get great jobs right out of college, often at companies they cooped at. List price of tuition is expensive but they are generous with merit aid and AP credit and being female would probably give her an extra boost. It’s not the typical college experience - the student body skews geeky and there’s no football team or huge parties every weekend. (Hockey is their big --and pretty much only–spectator sport.) But for the students who fit there, they really really fit there – for many, it’s the first time in their lives they are surrounded by people with the same nerdy interests that they have. My son loves it and I honestly don’t think he could have found a better school for him.
96% of students without financial need received merit aid with an average award of $17,264 (source ). Being female would be a plus here and might get some extra money. When merit is considered, this school would be highly likely to fall within your preferred budget.
If you’re willing to go a bit further west, I agree with @tsbna44 ’s suggestion of U. of Cincinnati. It has a lot of co-ops built in, some strong design programming, and tuition is frozen for four years for each entering class.
Will think about some other suggestions, too.
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