I see a few issues with your school list. You prefer an urban school but Michigan Tech is quite rural and isolated in the upper peninsula. You might want to add Michigan State to your list which is a good in-state school and a likely target given your stats. Lansing is also a better place to spend 4 years than Flint and Houghton. Furthermore, your list is a bit short: what about Western/Central Michigan, Grand Valley State, and Oakland U? Lastly, although the chance is low, it doesn’t hurt to take a flyer with Michigan assuming that you can improve your EC and write great essays.
I never stated I wished for an urban, rather “rural or urban”. I’m essentially trying to avoid places like Oakland University or Grand Valley State University where they’re situated in the center of unwalkable suburbs.
Regarding your suggestions:
Michigan State: I know some people who are attending and they describe it as a for-profit non-profit. They state students are generally treated as just means to get paid.
Western: Campus tour guide suggested I shouldn’t attend for computer science, told me I’d be better off elsewhere.
Central Michigan + University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: No real interest in either, they’re good schools but have pretty miserable students.
I did forget to include a couple of other schools I liked, though.
Would you qualify for enough financial aid, at schools that meet need, to get down to your 25K budget? Or do you need to meet your budget based on sticker price minus merit?
If you’re not sure about financial aid eligibility, try running the Net Price Calculators for a few representative schools and see what you get. For a best-case-scenario, look at, for example, MIT Estimate your cost | MIT Student Financial Services . (Not saying MIT is realistic admissions-wise, but if a school like this isn’t affordable with need aid, more attainable schools really won’t be.) If your net price at those looks good, then try schools like St. Olaf, Grinnell, Hamilton, URochester, Northeastern, and BU. (They all have NPC calculators on their admissions websites.) Could you afford these schools with the need-based financial aid you would receive?
For financial safeties, check out U of Minnesota Morris and Truman State (MO). Both are more rural than a lot of student want, but since you don’t mind rural, they could work, and they’d be guaranteed to meet your budget. If you’d like a rural STEM specialty school, SD Mines would be a good financial safety too.
Plenty of places to go merit-hunting with your stats, too. But if you clarify your situation a bit more (and also preferences re: school size and the kind of college environment you’d prefer - larger university vs. LAC-with-good-CS vs. STEM-focused), it will help folks to give you good leads.
Didn’t know if you knew about this, but Grand Valley has a Grand Rapids campus in downtown Grand Rapids, which is where you would have most of your classes as a computer science student. Also, there is a bus that connects to the two campuses and more for free.
No schools are perfect, and anecdotes are just that — they are anecdotes. For every person who tells you a certain school is bad in a certain way, there may be several others who have good/great things to say, who you just have yet to meet. For example, you mentioned EMU and NMU in your reply. Now what if I tell you both schools have much smaller CS departments than MSU, which led to far fewer CS courses being offered each semester? Are you going to cross EMU and NMU off your list just because someone said so?
Of course not. I’m at best just a data point. In my case, though, the statement is easily verifiable by visiting each departmental website and count the CS faculty there (when a department is too small, it often combines professors from different areas into one larger group, at least on its website, so as to look “better”), or count the courses offered if such info happens to be available. Furthermore, EMU and NMU generally have students of lower caliber than MSU, and likely much lower caliber than you. As a result, professors there may cover less material, make the tests easier, etc., to cater to a weaker student body. You may not find your academic experience there to be satisfying.
I would not rule out Michigan state Honors program. Forget what you heard since it’s just not factual. Go visit, meet with professors and make your own judgement. Same with Michigan - AA. But what might be interesting is Wayne State. Look at their course load and now people like living downtown.
Another school but might be on the edge of your limit is Iowa State university. They give a lot of merit and you might get financial aid as well. Might be worth a look.
I think you may qualify for National Recognition Scholar --rural scholar status, so I suggest you apply if you haven’t already:
There are a few schools that give scholarships for this. Alabama, for example, gives 4 years full tuition scholarship plus 1st year room and board for free.
Please reconsider your list. Pretty much all colleges have some type of profit motive. There are only so many resources to go around.
You can always turn down an acceptance. You can’t get an application do-over.
Do your own research. Form your own opinion. There’s always a group of people who are disgruntled no matter what.
MSU plus Honors sounds good. Throw an app to Michigan. You basically have a public Ivy in your backyard. Be the oddball happy kid to attend Michigan. Good luck.
Do you qualify for financial aid? RIT has a great program. We know a couple of students that got great internships in cybersecurity and secured jobs before they even left school. Not sure what the financials would look like.