I was wondering if anyone has any personal experience with Michigan State/Ohio State’s merit aid? With Michigan State I’m interested in the professional assistantship program, since it offers paid research experience in addition to lowering tuition rates to in-state tuition (correct me if I’m wrong regarding the tuition). Also, I am considering applying for the Morrill Scholars/Eminence Scholarship programs at OSU.
I’m planning on applying EA to both of these schools. With in-state tuition at ASU, would I be better off just attending ASU if I get rejected to my OOS reach schools? Or would MSU/OSU provide a better undergrad experience?
If you are a competitive candidate for those programs at MSU and tOSU it’s unlikely that you’d be expected to pay full in-state tuition at ASU and you’d be likely to receive admission into Barrett, too.
Apply to all three if those are the schools that interest you and see what your final aid packages and programs (like honors colleges, etc.) look like in April.
Would I be applying to too many safety/match schools? I feel like I should narrow the list down to 2, since I’ll be applying to a bunch of reach schools and I don’t want to spend more money on application fees than is necessary. What is the ideal total number of schools that I should apply to?
My daughter is in state for MSU, and she was offered the Professorial Assistantship. It is only for two years, I think? State is not known for being generous to instate residents but I have no idea about out of state students. She picked U of M instead.
A couple years ago, Michigan State offered my daughter a near full tuition scholarship (would have cost about $4-5k per year). They also offered $10k per year room/board scholarship (but only to extent she lived on campus). Seemed odd to me they would offer a taxable scholarship (room and board) when they were not covering full tuition. Ultimately, I think they were counting on you moving off campus (or not being able to getting into on-campus apartment junior/senior years) and thus forfeiting portion of room and board scholarship. Total cost would have been about $7-8k per year after scholarships. Not sure if that has changed since.
Ohio State has moved away from merit aid in recent years toward need based aid. Various levels of merit scholarships have been reduced $500-1,000 a year. Eminence still offers full cost of attendance. But its given to about 25 kids per year. About 75 get interviews. Very competitive.
Safety schools are really only safety schools, if you are accepted, they are definitely affordable and you would happily attend them.
Reach schools for admission can also be reach schools financially.
You should run net price calculators on the college websites to see if they would be affordable, before you apply.
It seems like Ohio State and Michigan State being OOS schools, would only be affordable if you get a big scholarship, of at least full tuition.
They cannot be considered safety schools for that reason because these are competitive scholarships you are applying to.
If you apply to MSU and tOSU and ASU you should hopefully have at least one good affordable option. Then you can apply to one or two reach schools, provided you qualify for need based aid, because those schools might not give merit at all.
You don’t want to end up like many students, with only one acceptance in April, that you either hate, or is unaffordable.
Should I just apply in-state for my safety schools then? I don’t know if I should spend $150 just to apply to schools that are roughly the same caliber (?) as my state flagship for engineering. I really want to leave my state though, in order to experience new things and move to a bigger, more vibrant city… that is mainly why I want to apply to MSU and OSU but I’m not sure if it’s worth it. I think I am pretty competitive for the professional assistantship program at MSU…
Are there any OOS schools that offer plenty of merit aid that I can use as a safety, besides Alabama??
My son is going to be stuck in his home state. It’s just too much of a cost difference for us to justify and Michigan State is crazy expensive for out of state. Our state is big though, so he can still get far away from home. Have you looked at private schools instead? Milwaukee School of Engineering had a lot of grant/merit aid for DS on their net price calculator.
Otherwise, it’s just 4 years. Do your bachelors in state and keep the cost down as much as you can, then find a job somewhere else in the country.
Safety to me means admission is predictable, guaranteed merit/need aid that brings a school within the family budget and student would be happy to attend. Getting your costs to be competitive with your in-state option is tough.
You stated in your original post that you were interested in MSU because of their undergraduate research opportunities. Your in-state schools (as do most research universities) have undergraduate research opportunities. It’s up to the student to reach out and get those opportunities.
Even without the Eminence or Morrill program at tOSU you’d be likely to get the National Buckeye and Maximus. Together those are worth $16.5k. (And you should put in the effort to apply for Eminence and Morrill - somebody wins those, you might as well throw your hat in the ring, too.)
But, if you stay in-state for college that doesn’t mean you have to spend all four years there. Take advantage of summer undergraduate research opportunities at other schools or do study abroad for a semester.
MSU’s “SROP helps prepare undergraduates for graduate study through intensive research experiences with faculty mentors and enrichment activities.” https://grad.msu.edu/srop
There is a full ride award that MSU gives to designated top 20 freshmen. OOS kids are eligible for this award. One of my youngest’s friends got it a few years ago. Also there is a $15K or so award for out of staters that can be stacked with other scholarships that the school might give. Several kids at my son’s school got the total cost down to $30-40K for MSU, which is not bad for an OOS public school though still more than full price SUNY.