Hello! I am here to describe my situation to fellow forum members, and hopefully get some feedback. I will be headed to undergraduate school in fall 2016, and as I qualify as a National Hispanic Scholar, I know that I will receive a full ride from several schools, including USF, UCF, and OOS schools such as UK. I would like to major in either engineering or business. I live in Florida, and have both Florida Prepaid and Bright Futures.
According to my math, if I was to receive a full ride in state, I would get $6000 per year from Prepaid and $3000 per year from bright futures which would leave me with a bank account of $36,000 upon graduation, which I would like to put towards graduate school.
My question is: would it be better to:
Attend UCF or USF and get the extra money for later on
Attend UF and have to take out loans, or hope for a scholarship
Go OOS and attend a school that will provide me with a full ride
Attempt to get scholarships for other OOS schools that have better programs.
For perspective, my stats:
35 ACT, 4.0 W GPA, 3.4 UW, 14 APs
Other Info: Cuban Hispanic, AP Capstone Scholar, Eagle Scout, Institute of Engineering at my High School, Duke TIP Scholar, FLL State Qualifier and Regional Champion
Please provide me with any feedback or insight you may have, and feel free to correct me if I made any errors in calculations or research.
University of South Carolina has business school with good reputation and you could go there for free. University of NOrth Carolina and University of Virginia have business schools in top 5 if you wanted to go somewhere more renown but you would probably be dependent on need based aid although both have a few merit based scholarships for very highly qualified students that you may want to investigate but do it early. Have early deadlines–early fall. South Carolina’s honors program has very early deadline and extensive application so don’t delay. UNC also sends out special offers to highly qualified applicants right after admission to sweeten the deal like automatic acceptance to business school. Good luck! Buen suerte!!
For engineering, it would be a great plan. Make sure you look at what engineering majors are offered at each school. UCF, for example, has a very strong industrial engineering program (which is a good “engineering” fit for someone who is also interested in business).
For business, they may not be as good a choice as some of your other options below. Still, they should be considered.
I’m assuming you’ve already applied to UF and met the Nov 1’st deadline. You should apply for additional scholarships and if they come through, it is a better option than USF/UCF for engineering and business. Otherwise, if you don’t get the additional scholarships (which are hard to get at UF), then engineering may still be the best option at UCF/USF. However, the additional $ may be worth it for taking Business at UF (which is very selective) over UCF/USF. It’s something to consider.
Sure, this is always an option, especially if the school has a strong engineering or business program. However, keep in mind, that for engineering, UCF and USF have fairly strong programs, possibly stronger than the OOS that offers the full ride scholarship.
Sure, go for it. For example the University of Alabama offers great scholarships (based on merit), and has a strong business school. Just don’t take for granted that an “OOS” school would be better than UCF/USF.
Of course, you may have already missed the admissions deadline for many OOS schools, so you should be focused on looking and applying over the next few days.