DD20 is looking to study some combination of math, stats, cs, data science and possibly business. Probable NMSF (SI 224), SAT 1580, UW GPA 3.85 (school doesn’t rank, but probably top 10-20%) at rigorous private college prep school. EC’s are one sport and a part-time job.
Needs: full tuition scholarship. She has several automatic scholarship colleges that she is going to apply to, so now she is looking for some match/reach options (though, if you want to give advice on auto scholarship colleges, that would be welcome, too). We have some money (not a lot) saved for her college, but she has decided it doesn’t make sense to spend it when there are free choices out there that are acceptable.
Wants: a place that is supportive of women in her area of study, and where the students are more collaborative than competitive. She prefers colleges that are not small and in a city, say 100,000+. Prefers colleges that her friends have heard of :-).
She will qualify for some need based aid; it would have to be very generous for us to afford. We are typical donut hole family. I checked estimated net price calculator at Princeton since I had heard they were generous, and EFC is $20K, which is doable for us.
Case Western Reserve U gives need blind aid and merit in combination. They like NMF, Its in a medium sized city.
Its collaborative, has open door admissions on majors, so she can switch between data science, accounting,
and Cs and it actually offers a data science BS degree where many schools only offer masters degrees in data science so far. https://engineering.case.edu/eecs/academics/undergraduate-program/data-science-and-analytics
@mommdc Alabama is one of the ones on her list, for sure. Along with UF and UTD.
@CT1417 Thanks! I love USC. I had thought Vandy might be too much of a reach for a scholarship. I’ll definitely pass those on.
@Colaradomama I didn’t think Case gave anything close to full tuition. I thought the biggest scholarships were closer to $35K, which would leave too much for us to cover. Did I miss something?
@Knowsstuff that’s a great thought. I will pass that on.
Look at Iowa State university. North Carolina state university. Their scholarships plus what you can spend might get you close. Miami of Ohio also with good merit. Each school has their qualifiers listed.
I would personally forget colleges her friends have heard of. There are a great number of small liberal arts schools that give good money like Beloit in Wisconsin. My daughter is there after transferring from another small lac college.
Many of these college give great merit but are smaller colleges and give indivual support. My daughter loves going out to eat /coffee with a professor to discuss latest project etc. Just a thought.
Mt. Holyoke would be a good fit. It has 1/2 and full tuition merit scholarships and very supportive of women in STEM. I think your D. certainly be a contender – need to show a lot of demonstrated interest, like all LACs.
My D had same ballpark stats (lower comparable ACT but she was also NMF, 4.0 GPA in a top public HS) and perhaps better ECs with a lot of leadership. My D went out of way to interview with admissions person when she was in the area but did not have a chance to visit. She was offered 1/2 tuition merit aid last year.
@Greymeer thanks for mentioning GT. I have a friend who strongly discouraged it when I told him about DD. Says it is very competitive and not collaborative. But obviously many women do well there.
@AlmostThere2018 I love Mt Holyoke for DD. That’s a wonderful suggestion. It misses on a couple of the “want to haves” but a great thought.
@Knowsstuff I’ve looked at Iowa State, but will need to refresh my memory. I don’t remember the merit scholarships being quite good enough. They do have extensive stats classes if I remember correctly. I’ll also check out NC State. (I am making sure the colleges pass the “possibly affordable” test and then DD is looking whether they pass the “DD” test.) I wish I could get her to look past name recognition, but brand is so powerful. I talked to her about Beloit, Lawrence and Centre, but she wasn’t having it.
@nw2this thanks for your opinion of UF. I think it is wonderful, but I don’t know how collaborative it is. And I don’t know whether Benacquisito will still be around for DD20… so the list of reach schools is appreciated!
GT is extremely hard to get into and competitive. Also very little merit for OOS.
Iowa state with merit is usually like $18,000 left for you to pay which is within your budget… Doing this off the top of my head. Great college town. I have several patients families either graduated or going there for engineering. Everyone loves being there. Very high school sprit, great internships and jobs afterwards… If it was in a different town everyone would be going there. Put it on the west coast and you wouldn’t be able to get in… Lol…
@VryCnfsd The further you get in GT the more group project related courses there are. In fact you can fill your schedule with project courses and have no finals. GT is the kind of school that teaches you how to work.
@nw2this TAMU has changed a lot since my days! DD looked and it is now about 51/49 M/F ratio! With NMF, DD would get almost full tuition, which is great!
@Knowsstuff I couldn’t find info on Iowa State’s web page to confirm that 18K amount. Looked closer to 24K, which is out of range. Solid suggestion, though.
I think I’m trusting my other source that Georgia Tech isn’t the place for DD. It ticks off all of the boxes, though, except for collaborative. I appreciate the suggestion and understand it is a great fit for a lot of people.
Yes, regarding NC State and scholarships. It’s got great STEM programs and is near downtown Raleigh which is thriving. It’s always been a good school but I think is getting even better with a lot of resources. I think you typically get admitted and then they invite you to apply for honors program / scholarships. Park Scholars is their big one.
Furman is another suggestion – near downtown Greenville which is a fun, cool small city with a great river walk. They have a lot of merit aid and strong computational science in particular.
@AlmostThere2018 thanks for the follow-up on NC State. It looks like they have either big scholarships or no scholarships for OOS, which is pretty much perfect for us. A medium scholarship wouldn’t really do it.
Furman is an interesting thought. I looked into it, and it looks like a definite possibility. That’s one that hadn’t been on my radar before.