If your parental contribution is very little, you may have to relax the geographic restriction to open up more large (full tuition to full ride) merit scholarship possibilities.
So you can afford $18k per year for each child for the 2 overlapping years? How much of this $36k is loans (are you already factoring in the loans the students can take in that $36k)?
Lots of Minnesota kids at Michigan Tech. They do have merit aid and with her stats and gender she might be eligible for more. I’m not sure though, how that works now, it’s been a while for us.
@deb922 I did the calculations on the NPC and it looks like the OP would be expected to pay about $20,000 a year.
If your EFC is around $18K and that’s what you’re looking to pay, you should be looking at schools that meet full need, because they’re the ones that will keep your out-of-pocket costs to $18K. There are exceptions, but most schools that meet full need don’t give a lot of merit aid, and most schools that give a lot of merit aid don’t meet full need. For example, Carleton meets full need; it gave out $33.6 million in institutional need-based aid last year, but only $377K in merit aid. Similarly, Macalester meets full need and gave out $44.6 million in need-based aid next year, but only $2.2 million in merit aid. Grinnell also meets full need, and gave $40.3 million in need-based aid and a bit more than the others, $5.3 million, in merit, but the merit figure still pales in comparison to the need-based figure.
In contrast, a school like Case Western, known for giving generous merit aid–to the tune of $34 million in 2014-15–doesn’t meet full need, meeting on average only 84% of need for students with demonstrated need; even so, it gave more need-based ($65.6 million) than merit aid.
Many LACs have excellent math and sciences, Carleton and Grinnell among them. But there aren’t many small schools in the Midwest that offer engineering. The best, in order of how their engineering programs are rated, would be Rose-Hulman (Terre Haute, IN), Milwaukee School of Engineering, Valparaiso (Valparaiso, IN), Bradley (Peoria, IL), and University of St. Thomas (St. Paul); I’ve included a couple of Indiana schools here because they’re just ever so slightly east of Chicago, but didn’t go any farther east than that. Among slightly larger schools, there’s Notre Dame, Wash U, Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago), MUST (Rolla, MO), and Michigan Tech (Houghton, MI). Of course, many of the top engineering programs in the country are in the Midwest: Illinois, Michigan, and Purdue are all ranked in the top 10 nationally for engineering, and Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are in the top 25, but those are all very large schools so I assume they’re out on those grounds.
Sorry $29000 before work study and loans.
If the OP’s EFC will be paid with loans (that’s what it sounded like) remember that most need based packages will come with the standard menu of federal loans as part of the need package. Grinnell limits loans but in our experience the calculated out of pocket was higher than StO so it all came out in the wash. You may need to have a good selections of schools with lower tuition and higher guaranteed merit aid. A state school with merit should come in much lower.
D was awarded $25k from CWRU, $15k from Kenyon. Did not apply to Grinnell but she should have. You will probably need to include smaller schools to maximize merit aid.
One of my sons was offered 23k or so from CWRU, and my other was offered very close to a full ride, including room and board, from Miami Ohio. Both OOS for us. Neither of them picked those schools, but I would have been happy with those choices. CWRU was 2012 HS grad, and they may not be as generous any longer. Miami Ohio was HS class of 2014. Good luck.
I’d run some net price calculators at the school web sites suggested here and see what you get.
If your EFC is $18K it may remain $18K next year - not per kid but total (so maybe $9K each, not that all colleges will necessarily make that happen). It depends a lot on the school. My D will be a college frosh and the final net price at schools she was accepted to this year varied by more than $20K per year.
Just as a data point, with a similar EFC, my D’15 had $16k in merit included in her financial aid package from Grinnell. The total out of pocket cost to us would have been similar though a little higher than her other meets-need admissions.
@twincitiesjbj - Your D would likely be in the pool for the Illinois Tech [Camras Scholarship](Camras Scholars Program | Illinois Institute of Technology) since they invite the top 25% of the applicant pool for Interview weekend. Other private universities may have similar opportunities.
Perhaps the OP can clarify what amount s/he can contribute to the kid’s school costs without parent loans or parent-cosigned student loans. That, plus the federal direct loan that the student can get without a cosigner ($5,500) plus a few thousand dollars of student work earnings, would likely be the upper limit on the net price.
"We are hoping our daughter can attend school for about what my son is paying (borrowing) - about $18,000. "-
So, she does not want to attend tuition free or full ride? Why not? She would have several Merit offers like that if she applies smartly. She most likely is thinking about grad. school anyway, students of this caliber always do, Why spend money on college?
OK everyone, please don’t judge my ignorance :-)…
@bclintonk - How is “full need” defined? I have been confused by that since we started looking. Does it mean no gap between your EFC and the school’s contribution of loans and grants?
@Madison85 and @ucbalumnus - the $18,000 that I mentioned is mostly loans. We only have a few thousand per kid in the bank, due to some unexpected hardship in previous years. I did not know if we could do better as far as what we were required to come up with, so that’s why I arrived at $18,000.
@MiamiDAP - YES we would love for her to have a free or nearly free ride! I have heard she can get a tuition-free deal at University of Alabama and Utah State, but she does not want to attend either of those. You said, “she would have several Merit offers like that if she applies smartly.” Can you be specific in what you mean (I am feeling like we are in the dark about doing anything smartly!)
@OHMomof2, I hope you are right about the EFC staying at 18K for two kids! For some reason I imagined it would become $18K per kid, or 36K. Thank you for pointing that out.
I did some net price calculators as many of you suggested, and things may be more hopeful than I thought. St. Olaf came out at about $13K. I am planning to do more of them.
All of this advice and your questions are so helpful. I appreciate the knowledge this group has to share!
St. Olaf does meet full need as they calculate your EFC (I’ve found it to be pretty close to FAFSA EFC even though they are Profile) They stack all merit including Buntrock and other academic, service, leadership and arts. They include the standard federal student loans and work study as part of that need award. In our experience they were generous with grants. Smaller departmental and other named scholarships are available to stack in later years. They do not leave a gap between institutional aid, EFC and COA. (unless things have changed)
A few thousand per kid plus what the kid can self-fund through federal direct loan and work earnings is probably between $10,000 and $15,000 total net price (after grants and/or scholarships) that you need to find. If net price calculators show need-based aid giving that kind of net price, then schools with good enough need-based aid are viable candidates. Otherwise, the application list needs to be merit-seeking.
First task for the application list is for the kid to find a safety that she likes that will have a cost below that. http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ lists a number that will fit the cost limit based on her stats, but most of them will be out of the region.
Is CMU a potential option?
Chicago meets full need without loans and also offers merit scholarships. However, those merit scholarships are determined by a faculty committee and there is no separate application process. How many there are and how much is offered in any given year is hard to determine, but with those stats it’s certainly worth an application.
“You said, “she would have several Merit offers like that if she applies smartly.” Can you be specific in what you mean (I am feeling like we are in the dark about doing anything smartly!)”
-I mean AFTER doing research of which colleges would offer her a substantial Merit award. In addition. only you and your child knows if she is ready to attend at the place where she does not like currently to attend. the best strategy to eliminate these unwanted colleges and to create list of clear criteria with the weights attached to each criteria and compile the list of college that meet them. Then you can research the colleges on the list to see which ones would offer full tuition / free ride. Also, everything is required certain patience, without it, you will miss out. You cannot be in a dark when you have such a smart and hard working kid, she apparently knows what she wants.
I do not know any more than what we did. Again, the most important here is a clear cut in stone criteria that is developed by a kid. There is no reason to research the colleges that are outside of this criteria list, she is not going to choose them no matter what, so why waste time?