So starting with the Class of 2021, TAMU has decided to raise their OOS fee waivers from scholarships from the school from a $1000 to $4000. Now, I’m not a bad student. But at the same time, I’m not a great student. My GPA is a 3.23 unweighted out of 4. I have a 34 ACT and 2170 SAT. Good ECs that are in the engineering fields. I’ve been accepted to the COE and finished my housing app and all that housekeeping stuff. But the real question is, what is the probability that I can get $4000 from the school, resulting in me paying in-state tuition? TAMU is my number one choice, and I would hate it if I’m forced to go to another school, just cause I can’t afford it.
My daughter is in a similar situation. She is an excellent student with top stats and we still don’t know how common these $4k scholarships will be. She just missed the National Merit cutoff for our State, so that means she is pinning her hopes on one of these $4k scholarships to be able to attend TAMU. It continues to amaze me how one PSAT test can have so much weight compared to 4 years of great high school work and excellent test scores.
She has Alabama as a safety (free tuition there) and is applying to a few other schools, including Stanford, but TAMU is her #1 choice.
Paying OOS tuition is not for the faint of heart, it is very expensive and not something we are willing to fund. She’ll have many other options, but getting her #1 choice would be nice.
@ColoFatherOf3. I like the way Alabama makes its awards, based on alternative tests rather than the junior year PSAT score. Michigan State also uses alternative criteria for its top OOS awards (NMF, or 1500 on the SAT, or 33 on the ACT). MSU is still more expensive than Alabama, but is a great school (spoken by a biased Spartan grad). Miami of Ohio, where my second son goes, is a wonderful college with generous merit aid that’s not just available to NMFs. http://miamioh.edu/admission/merit-grid/ He got $20,000 per year there, which made his net cost pretty competitive with Arizona State (our in-state) which offered in-state tuition plus $8,000 per year. It’s probably too late for class of 2017 applicants, but someone else may appreciate the information.
TAMU is just not that interested in attracting OOS students. With the top 10% admission requirement for Texas residents, there’s just not much room for OOS students. At 3%, I believe that TAMU has the lowest percentage of OOS students of any major university.