Just want to share the fact that the suite style housing at UA is $4400/semester this year (so @iamfuniswear underestimated a bit) but the rest of the post was excellent. Some honors courses may not be more difficult as was said. Great job jumping into calc III - some students do it well and some don’t according to what the engineering advisors and Avanti students said during bama bound. Honors courses are not weighted like in high school; if you want the honors designation, you have to complete a certain amount of honors courses.
For families pinching the $$ even with the generous scholarships at UA, they do have a 10 month payment plan that has a small set up fee. It helps with not having a chunk of money going in twice a year - spreading it out to a more comfortable level.
DD and we parents have found UA to be a very positive environment and very friendly. That helps a lot when one is working very hard on challenging curriculum.
ClassicRockerDad is dead on: “Lots of good suggestions, but I suggest that you look at private schools.” Most suggestions here for state schools will, with the exception of rare full ride options, still leave you with considerable debt. The sticker price for private universities may be frightening, but at a school GUARANTEEING TO MEET FULL NEED your out of pocket costs would likely be minimal, considerably less than at seemingly bargain basement publics. I would strongly suggest that you consider these private options. Places like Vanderbilt, USC, Notre Dame, Rice, Northwestern, Hopkins may not immediately come to mind when looking for bargains - think again with your EFC.
I also strongly agree with UCBalumnus about chemistry vs chem e. Job opportunities will likely be much more plentiful coming out of chem e undergrad, and at a much higher salary. Terrible idea to shift to chem simply to expand college choices - the mere selection of engineering will ultimately benefit him waaaaay more.
Claims to “meet full need” are not necessarily reliable, since each such school may define “need” differently. It would be better to use each school’s net price calculator to get a net price estimate.
As noted in reply #1, Tuskegee, Howard, and Louisiana Tech will give almost full rides if the student got SAT and ACT scores reflecting the PSAT and estimates. Forgot to mention back then, but Prairie View A&M is another such school.
If the student likes any of them, they can be very low cost safeties.
I do agree that the student should include some “full need” privates in the mix…depending on what his scores end up being.
As for remaining costs at Alabama (my son was a ChemE major there, graduated 2 years ago, but went to med school…but his ChemE classmates were immediately hired into highly paid positions).
I do think that this student would qualify for some Pell.
a single mom with a $50k income and only one child is getting about $1500 in Pell, so certainly a family of 5 with a lesser income would get more…likely maybe $2500? 3000?
If so, then with the free tuition, the 2500 from eng’g, 2500 from Pell, a stafford loan, possibly some work-study and some summer earnings…costs should be covered.
With an AGI of 45k, family of 5, would expect pretty generous aid. Agree Net Price Calc should be run wherever applications are being considered but, again, guaranteed need schools are a good starting point - should also cross reference US News listings of chem e undergrad and grad programs for general sense of strength of program.
Money will be a major consideration but would strongly warn about falling into trap of penny wise, pound foolish. There will be a measurable difference in job opportunities coming out of programs like CMU, Northwestern, Georgia Tech and Minnesota and programs like Tuskegee, Louisiana Tech, Howard and Prairie View.
^^^
Qualifying for aid because of a modest income does NOT often translate into GETTING lots of need-based aid. Most schools do not have much aid to give. Most publics do not give much need-based aid.
That Pell mom I just mentioned is now quite nervous because she’s learned that although she has a low EFC, her child will be gapped big-time at all of his schools.
Qualifying for aid DOES NOT EQUAL receiving the needed aid
As ucbalumnus and others have pointed out, there can be significant variance in the financial aid offered by the colleges that claim to meet full financial needs. Rice and Vanderbilt seem to be the more generous schools in addition to the Ivies. Vanderbilt has a no loan policy. Rice offers no loan to those with family incomes below $80,000. Vanderbilt offers ED 1 and ED 2, which have a higher admission rate than RD.
For students needing a lot of financial aid, the best FA usually comes from the best private schools. In my experience with the NPC, schools that offer many merit scholarships often don’t offer generous financial aid packages. Their merit money usually is not enough for students of high need.
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. About $21,000 total COA for an out-of-state student. Excellent engineering departments. Good internships and job placement.
I would say that out of state public schools that don’t explicitly lay out scholarship opportunities for bright students are usually the least advantageous route to go. I live in Georgia and although Georgia Tech does have a large out of state population, it still has a large portion of Georgia residents, all or most of whom are probably on a full tuition Hope Scholarship because of their stats. That’s why they are so reluctant to give aid (merit or need based) to students: they have to have at least a few people paying tuition. The best way to pay for school is to be so good that schools want to pay you to go. Many of the best schools (many privates) in the nation are looking for kids like your son, so it’s just a matter of finding those and getting in. I would use the search tools from the comment above. Sounds easy, right?
Tulane has Chemical Engineering and says this on their website—
No-Loan Assistance for Middle-Income Families
Tulane is committed to making a world-class education accessible to all students who qualify to attend, regardless of family income. Tulane offers “no loan” tuition to students whose families have adjusted gross incomes less than $75,000 per year and who complete the two required financial aid application forms (the FAFSA and the CSS Profile) by the suggested deadline of February 15th. For qualifying students, Tulane ensures that the cost of tuition, fees, and transportation will be met with a combination of Tulane scholarship, the family’s institutional expected family contribution (EFC), and certain federal grants and/or ROTC scholarship.
I don’t think anyone has added these two small engineering schools yet: Olin College and Cooper Union. Olin College sounds especially cool to me, but they don’t have Chemical Engineering.
