I’d like to expert advice from the CC collective.
My D1 (a rising junior) and I have been researching schools that will award merit of full tuition (or full tuition plus), either through automatic merit awards or a competitive scholarship. We went through ABET lists looking for the availability of engineering majors that interest her, eliminated some schools based on location and other criteria, then compared the remaining schools to the auto-merit and scholarship lists.
She already has some wonderful options. UMBC and UMD both offer full tuition remission to our family, and she’s eligible for merit aid as well. UAH and UA are both auto-merit schools to which she plans to apply.
She has an ACT of 34 (two sittings) with a superscore of 36, UGPA of 3.9, WGPA of 4.5 +, around 10 honors classes and 6 APs by the end of next year, 150 + hours of volunteer service, pretty good ECs in both breath and depth (e.g., 8 years of band with a leadership position), and she is an experienced swim instructor.
We want to figure out which of the following schools would either be too far out of her reach (while realizing that Princeton and MIT are a reach for everyone), have super time-consuming / complex applications, or have extremely small chances of her winning a large merit scholarship. She’s willing to put in the time on apps but she is also severely anemic and in the midst of multiple tests to diagnose what is likely an autoimmune disease. I want to help her make the best use of her limited energy as she navigates a summer of work and other commitments while undergoing multiple medical tests.
Here are the schools:
Princeton
MIT
Case Western Reserve
North Carolina State
Tuskeegee U
UVA
University of South Carolina
Georgia Tech
IIT
Ohio State University
Your help is appreciated!
MIT and Princeton have no merit, although their need based is excellent. Have you run NPCs to see if they’re affordable?
I don’t think GA Tech is generous with merit, but someone else would have to confirm. Same with UVA, but it also meets need - have you run the NPC?
Are you MD residents?
We live in Illinois now, but my H worked for one of the MD campuses for 26 years. Yes, we’ve run the NPCs for MIT and Princeton. They would cost us more but we could handle it.
As for the others on the list, we haven’t yet done the NPCs because she has four financial safeties already. I will do that for the others after we narrow the list a bit.
For Georgia Tech and UVA (and the others on her list, except for Tuskeegee) it’s a question of how difficult it is to complete an application, including the scholarship applications, and how competitive the scholarships really are. I’ll look at the common data sets this weekend for additional info.
Correction: D2 is a rising senior. Also, please pardon the strange first sentence. (It’s been a long week.)
Your D would be likely to be nominated for a Camras Scholarship and invited to Interview weekend at Illinois Tech.
Howard offers competitive full ride merit scholarships for those stats.
Thanks to both of you! If possible, we’d also like feedback on the schools she listed, since many other engineering schools don’t have aerospace and that’s her current top choice.
Tuskegee on your list would be an automatic full ride (but 3.5 college GPA to renew):
http://www.tuskegee.edu/scholarships/freshman_scholarships.aspx
Ouch! I knew about the full-ride, but not the renewal. That’s a pretty high requirement for someone going into engineering.
Yes, investigate the renewal requirements of large merit scholarships.
The South Carolina application for Honors and therefore the full ride scholarship is very long and time consuming. My DD is a rising senior at USC and when she applied it was 8 essays.
UMD will be tough to beat.
I hung around the GT threads most of this past year (son applied there) and I had the impression that the big scholarships were very competitive.
Last year GT was on Common App and had some GT-specific questions. It took my son some time to do because it was his only common App school.
I can’t remember if the scholarship apps were additional essays (son didn’t apply for those - I just remember reading some of the posts here of other students who were in the running).
You might want to peruse some of the school forums here and see if you can pick up how time-consuming and how competitive the scholarship apps are.
You are wise to pick your battles and set a strategy this summer.
Thanks, everyone. I’ll try to verify that the South Carolina honors app still requires that much effort; if so, she’ll probably drop it. I also think Tuskeegee will go because of the high GPA requirement to maintain the scholarship. It sounds like Illinois Tech is worth further investigation.
@“Erin’s Dad” – That’s the site you had recommended a few months ago, and it’s been invaluable. It’s one of the tools we used to come up with this list!
Thanks – this all helps!
Also, since I mentioned aerospace engineering, I should say that we eliminated Purdue because of poor merit and UIUC (my alma mater and 1 hour away) because, even though it’s in the best financial shape of the state schools, we have every confidence that Rauner and Madigan will find a way to screw them over as well.
I checked the common data set for Illinois Tech. If she could deal with the small school size, there are two scholarships that are full tuition or better, and she’s significantly above the 75th percentile in stats. Thanks, @xraymancs, for pointing out the Camras scholarship!
University of Alabama would give her an automatic full tuition
Olin College gives everyone half off tuition.