first post…but read A LOT here. so thankful for all the information people contribute.
my oldest son is a Jr so he is in the throes of the college decisions and applications and he and I are not clear on which schools he might actually have a chance at attending. His grades are perfect (never less than a 96 in any HS class ever) and he takes the hardest level classes available at his small private school. he is in an “engineering STEM” track at his school which he loves. he wants to study nuclear engineering as either a major or a concentration.
SAT: 1550
ACT 34 but taking again to get higher MATH sub score
Varsity Basketball 4years
president of several clubs
loves creative writing
NHS
over 100 hours community service
works as a tutor for younger kids
several state science awards
bla bla bla he doesn’t really have any kind of a “hook” since both of parents went to college/grad school and we don’t have struggles.
he is just a super smart fearless kid who wants to excel at everything and enjoys learning beyond belief.
my question is: can he get into a school like Cornell or MIT? or is he the same as most other kids and should stick to state schools (we live in NC). he wants to apply to : naval academy, MIT, Cornell, Rensselaer, Penn State GaTech. I am nervous about that list because it seems like all reach schools. I don’t want him to not get in anywhere LOL
his dream is the service academy, but we know that is a long shot since the nominations are few and far between. just trying to plan for him to go somewhere challenging with the program he is interested in.
Your son definitely has a shot but as you said, the academy, MIT, and Cornell are reaches, not just for your son, but for everyone. Ga Tech, low reach. I would say RPI, and Penn State, are matches. Have you considered Purdue (I would say match)? Look for some safeties in state, especially with rolling admission, just to have an early offer in hand. Good luck!
If he wants a military environment, how about ROTC at Virginia Tech & Texas A&M…both schools have a corps of cadets that offers an environment similar to the service academies.
Also throw an application to NC State as a safety.
RPI and Penn State would be matches. Also, he might want to add University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. There are many out of state students and they have a very strong engineering program as well as many offerings in other academic areas. I think you’re very wise to be realistic with choices!
An in-state public university safety school is the foundation of most college lists, then branch out from there.
Many schools offer full-tuition ROTC scholarships. Most kids applying to service academies are also doing the ROTC scholarship process at the same time. It's a great back-up plan.
Start with the finances – run the Net Price Calculator on a few schools of interest, including your instate schools and some of the out of state schools like Ga Tech, Penn State and Purdue. See if the projected Expected Family Contribution is manageable for your family. If not, then spend some time on the Financial Aid and Scholarships board to learn more about merit aid, stacking of merit and financial aid (uncommon), and read the thread on automatic full tuition awards.
Then, build the list starting from safety/likely, match and reach, keeping finances part of the equation – if a school is only feasible if student wins a competitive, non-automatic scholarship, then even if it is a “safety” for admissions, it is still a reach because of the competitiveness of the scholarship process.
For a full pay family which doesn’t feel like they can manage full pay, OOS publics can offer somewhat lower costs, such as Purdue, Wisconsin. We know a nuclear engineering grad from UW who had a phenomenal experience and many successful Purdue grads, though I don’t recall any nuclear engineers that we know, specifically, from Purdue.
For us, with similar stats but slightly lower SAT, the safeties were our in-state public flagship and schools in Canada. You are a lot further from Canada than we are, but you have an in-state safety which is very good. I am almost sure that when I was in graduate school at a very highly ranked university one of my good friends had done their undergrad at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I don’t know what it has for nuclear engineering but from what I have heard it is overall quite good.
Otherwise admissions seems to have become very highly unpredictable at the top US universities. We didn’t look at schools as far south as GT but I would certainly look at it with your stats and location. I would think that your son has some chance at MIT, but it would be a high reach for pretty much anyone.
Before studying nuclear engineering I would be nervous about the extent to which politics impact nuclear energy, but there are of course a lot of other very attractive forms of engineering.
I agree with the comment above about always running the NPC, unless you are fine with full pay at over $70k per year.
All the ivy, MIT,Stanford etc are of course all reaches for all. However, if you can afford it then I’d suggest applying ED to Cornell as it increases the chances of getting in. Also look at Carnegie Mellon, and other schools like GT. Having just gone thru this I can tell you the process is frustrating but my son picked a decent LAC as he was waitlisted at Cornell, Harvard and Georgetown which were all his reach schools. With our next kid our strategy will be different. No ivy apps are going out.
A lot of kids with high stats like your son don’t think of applying to liberal arts colleges but probably should. It can be easier to get into a top 25 LAC than a top 25 university sometimes, and many LACs have good financial aid (even somewhat lower ranked ones).
However, with a field like nuclear engineering, you’d have to find an LAC where that would be possible. It might be an LAC that has an agreement with a university for something like a 3 year/2 year engineering degree. So you could look into smaller schools where something like that is possible.
NC State, University of South Carolina, University of Florida and University of Pittsburgh- would give him some match/safeties. I don’t necessarily think NC State is a safety for a male Engineering major.
Davidson has a 3+2 engineering track with Columbia and WashU – I don’t know if those two universities have nuclear engineering, however. Doing a transfer engineering program would give your son chance to do more liberal arts courses that feed the non STEM part of his brain. Many traditional engineering programs don’t have a lot of room for many other classes.
Duke engineering is another school where the engineers take more non-engineering courses, I’ve heard.
My niece went to Purdue for engineering and it’s top notch.
His stats and ECs will allow him to be competitive anywhere. Essays and teacher recs will carry him the rest of the way. My biggest advice is to have a very solid Common App essay in the bag by end of summer. Authentic, personal and shows who he is. . . .
Someone mentioned UPitt. They have Nuclear engineering. It has Rolling Admissions meaning you can apply in September and know 6 weeks or so later if he’s in and they start giving out merit in November. If he likes it he can eliminate some of the other safeties on his list.
BTW it’s a great school in a great location. SAT 1550/ACT 34 puts him in range for merit.
