@tpike12 - I hear you. Our situation is that we are divorced and Dad does well, mom has very limited income. So, for the CSS profile schools, we’re basically limited to merit aid. For the schools that only consider my finances, inability to pay is probably a detriment for admissions. And we are in PA too, so even the cheapest state school option is pretty hefty. At least you know it’s a great school - and she would definitely get in to Penn State engineering. No question. She’ll probably be admitted to Shreyer’s too. My son will apply to the honors college, but he doesn’t have much in the way of service/extracurriculars, so we’ll see.
You could also take a look at Clarkson. I’m not clear on how good their non-engineering curriculum is, but they would offer her a ton of merit aid. And they have amazing job placement.
@Trixy34 - I added Clarkson to my spreadsheet for future research. It is quite ironic that the hardest schools to get into are also the most affordable, or maybe that makes perfect.
At Purdue, one applies to a specific major/school, and it’s typically much harder to switch TO engineering than to switch to a different major FROM engineering.
@momofsenior1 - it is a balancing act. Though it is tough to match straight grants from Swat ($57,000), Duke ($55,000) and Hopkins ($55,000). Interestingly, Swat came in at the lowest total because they were one of the few with packages that did not include a student loan.
In-state versus out-of-state usually makes no difference in the cost of private schools (other than effects on travel costs or if your state offers state aid usable at in-state private schools but not out-of-state private schools). CMU and JHU are both private schools.
@tpike12 If your school has naviance, you can check the stats of students who got into the reach schools on your list and also whether ED played a role. Naviance won’t display any hooks, though. In our local high school, many top kids did well with Hopkins ED . And it looks like the financial aid may work out for you there.
@momprof9904 - my daughter does have access to Naviance, we’ll have to check it out when we get this narrowed down a little bit.
Updated NPC as I forgot to include college savings for our D and my wife says our house is worth more. Also added a few more colleges that used their own NPC. Princeton is the only college that uses 2017 info instead of 2016. Case Western came in pretty low as well. They seemed to take student quality into consideration, I’m not sure about everyone else using the college board npc?
Funny that the “low cost” in-state options at Temple and Penn St don’t look so great before any additional merit.
The EA/ED ticket is kind of up in the air. D had talked about going EA at Princeton, but she probably has a better chance with ED at Hopkins, though that would preclude looking at any other offers if she gets in. It will be a tough decision for her. I feel bad for the kids trying to navigate this college search by themselves on top of everything else they are doing their senior year.
$42,399 University of Virginia
$40,988 Stevens Technical Institute
$39,450 Villanova
$38,450 Ohio University
$38,250 Tufts
$37,925 Georgetown
$37,740 Carnegie Mellon
$37,106 Temple
$35,505 Lehigh
$35,257 Northeastern
$35,068 Penn St
$33,997 Rensselaer
$28,300 Virginia Commonwealth
$26,230 University of Kentucky
$25,482 University of Pittsburgh
$22,300 Duke
$21,222 Case Western Reserve
$19,381 Johns Hopkins
$19,371 Yale
$16,508 Penn
$14,851 Swarthmore
$12,110 Princeton
@tpike - Agreed. It’s too much for the kids. We’re “glancing” at ivys because my son has high stats, but he’s unhooked, so he’d really have to apply ED. He really liked Cornell, but did he like it well enough to make a commitment at full pay and forego the rest of the college hunt process? He’s only 17 and has no idea what he’ll end up doing with his life. Gaaah! I had no idea it would be this complicated and stressful.
@Trixy34 - I have Cornell down as ED, but I think Princeton and Yale are Ivies that are EA rather than ED.
I barely trust my D to drive the car by herself. Is she ready to make a big decision like this? Probably not, but they need to grow up sometime I guess.
Sorry I didn’t read the whole thread thoroughly but she can go ahead and apply to Pitt now and get a decision and has a good chance of hearing back about Merit aid by November. My D knew she was in with a FT scholarship by Nov 7th 2 years ago which was nice as she eliminated a few schools from her list because she knew she’d go to Pitt over them. I think she has a great chance to get a FT scholarship at Pitt with her stats and being in-state.
@Dolemite - that is the plan. She is taking SAT Subject Tests tomorrow, so when that is finished she will move on to applications and Pitt is her first one. Is your D happy at Pitt?
The house value you use isn’t what you’d hope to see for or what the neighbors got. And not the assessed value. It’s “as is,” if you had to sell today.
Your D is likely to get substantial merit at Pitt and Temple (half to full tuition, I’d guess) and Honors is virtually assured at both. Would be surprised if Penn State ended up any lower than $27,000 or so and Schreyer’s can be a toss-up as it’s not strictly stats based. But Pitt and Temple are great safeties since she likes both.
@tpike12 We set up our own version of “shadow an engineer” so my son could get a better idea of the specific engineering disciplines. This might be very helpful for your daughter, as well. We contacted a few local engineering firms and asked if he could spend just one day there seeing what their engineers do. The firms all did a great job; he saw different types of projects, programs and computer modeling, and one firm took him to a job site in the afternoon where he got to meet with construction personnel and see how the engineers collaborate with them. You could ask for your daughter to meet specifically with female engineers. After the visits, he knew which field he wanted and is now in grad school.
@Chercheur - I wish she would do this, she has several different offers from engineers to discuss what an engineer does. So far she hasn’t expressed any interest in even having a talk.
See if its in your area. Sign up is like now. It’s a great weekly program. Different types of engineering. Work one on one with a mentor in groups. Very fun. Looks great on a college application. My son really enjoyed it.