The Florida schools (UF, UCF, FSU, USF and the others but these have the best engineering programs) are also free (including books and r&B) to NMF.
@twoinanddone Uh oh. @121IllinoisDad 's head is now going to explode. Lol.
Auburn was always the top engineering program in Alabama, not Tuscaloosa.
If he wants an MBA, that edge for engineering skills may not matter, but if he wants a better engineering education, stay in the midwest, UIUC or Purdue, or choose GaTech, given that you have plenty of money saved. He can save for his own MBA, with the higher starting salary after his engineering degree, or do an executive MBA later. Tuscaloosa is not connected to jobs on the west coast or midwest the way UIUC, Purdue, or GaTech are. Tuscaloosa graduates can get jobs in Atlanta or Washington DC, pretty readily, as well as stay in Alabama.
Is he ready and can he adjust to what life in Alabama is like? Its not much like Chicago… Many Colorado students bounce back from Alabama, and become raving liberals. :-0 !! Its a different lifestyle down in the deep south. Some students can ignore all that, others cannot adjust or make any friends. Football culture in important at Tuscaloosa, for a social life.
Tufts has quirky admissions. They want to feel that you understand them and that you are a good fit. Too many people think they are just a safety for Harvard and MIT.
Personally, I would not go to Alabama for political reasons right now.
My head just deflated a bit. I just called my son and he said he scored a 1420 on the PSAT which is going to be below 221. From what I see 1480 correlates to 221. So no NMSF for my son. Got ahead of my skis for a few minutes there.
Make sure you look at your Big State U. That will be the most cost effective. Any ABET accredited Engineering school will be fine.
Agree about being careful about pushing an Alabama agenda for the merit angle if he does not see himself there. Where does HE see himself at? I did ask one of my kids if he wanted to consider Pitt because he had a good chance of merit there and we also had family in Pittsburgh. He said no , would rather go to state flagship, so case closed on going after merit . We are not wealthy but were always prepared to pay for his instate choice. If we could truly not have paid for that, we would have had to have him pursue merit aid more. Any graduate school (if ever wanted or needed), is on them! Good luck!
We had 11 kids get into Tufts this year (school in MA).
@collegemom9 (and our little side conversation about Tufts) - you’re in Tufts’ backyard. They know kids will matriculate. They have a history from your high school. I’m just telling it like it is out here at our school. No joke - kids with 35s/36s or 1550 plus SAT and lots of rigor and ECs get into all kinds of elite schools. Not Tufts. We also seem to always be waitlisted at Lehigh and that’s for all kinds of kids - high stat or otherwise. I think the OP has moved on from this idea but it shows what I always seem to go back to. The best way to see where your child will get in is to look at your own school’s history. I saw a Naviance chart from a NY high school today and every student over a 3.8 uW gpa and a 34 got into Midd. Every single one of our kids got waitlisted except for one recruited athlete who went ED. And our school is very well regarded. You’d think East coast schools want kids from all over but they also want to be sure the kids will go. Some mostly just take the midwestern kids who go ED or maybe the URMs via Questbridge or the legacies. It is what it is.
Now back to big state school talk!
@homerdog I agree with you. They clearly have a history of decent yield with us and accept a lot of kids because of this. They’re very smart kids but no smarter than the rest of the really smart kid 
“But now I’m thinking, if he is really smart he’d go to Alabama for free…, use our 529 for his MBA instead and still have grandpa’s money for a nest egg. The kid prefers a big school so its not like I’d be forcing him to Alabama over Carlton or Oberlin.”
So just allow him to keep the money and decide for himself how to spend it. Undergrad, MBA, house down payment are all good. It’s a good teaching moment for a kid to be responsible with money. I find it hard to comprehend why many parents will only give their kids money if they spend it on an expensive college, but will keep it for themselves if they don’t.
Definitely get past the money and look at the academics and college culture.
So to keep this all straight when you narrow down your choices then an excel spreadsheet works wonders.
In Illinois, Tufts and a lot of Massachusetts schools are are tough admits. GT is very tough for Illinois. They like their AP classes and college classes. Many have like 12 APs taken. Yes there are a good amount of kids going there but changes in the last couple years have swayed to more instate kids. They went through the same thing we did with UIUC. They only upped their instate acceptance like 3 years ago. Just because people know several people that got accepted doesn’t mean it’s an easy admit for Illinois kids. Our local Chicago school sends 25 kids to University of Chicago and Northwestern each year but like 1 kid to GT. You can say the same for the Ivys and Illinois. Just tough admits over the last like ten years.
The one thing we didn’t like about UIUC was the cut throat attitude coming from their own department. We know plenty that went there that didn’t make it past year 2 in engineering. When we went to the open house they literally said “look to the left. Look to the right” Good chance 2 of you won’t be here by junior year… Seemed like they wore that on their sleeves. They also started a pre engineering program for kids that didn’t get accepted right into engineering. Hearing very mixed things about it.
At other schools it didn’t seem that cut throat. Michigan as an example Engineering is 3.93 GPA avg with 34 act avg. No need for honors anything … Engineering is hard enough. This was a driving force for my son since he wanted to be around kids that challenged him like his high school. . At Purdue Michigan, Illinois etc most big ten engineering is rough. It’s not something you want to go into if you don’t have the drive and interest. Your GPA will lower right away and you have to have the internal strength to succeed.
As far as using engineering as a tool to go into Business. Many take this path. Critical thinking and analytics is in demand by just about any company. With Industrial engineering and similar making a company run better, cheaper and more efficient can save a company millions of dollars. Many go into start-up, etc and just about any branch of business.
But I would look to the schools you choose to see if the school has the ability to support this with clubs, activities, grants, etc We found Michigan excelled in this area and my sons first two years he greatly took advantage of it.
Tufts generally a tough admit but great admissions blog. . (same with GT)
So you got a lot of great advice so far. With my son pro /cons lists actually helped.
Not to throw a wrench in the works, but I wouldn’t recommend studying engineering if he isn’t excited by it. There are plenty of ways to end up in business without spending 4 years studying something he doesn’t like. There are also small schools for fun, social students who want engineering (Union, NY, which also offers merit, Bucknell, Lehigh). Just saying that the choice of engineering is dictating a subset of schools that may be limiting you if it’s not really what interests him.
As for honors colleges, they vary from school to school. At many, they have dedicated housing as well. But they can make a bigger school feel smaller.
I have PTSD from being an engineering major at Northwestern. Yes, it was 30 years ago, but I was a very good high school STEM student. I had a 5 on BC Calc. All As in honors sciences. (Our school didn’t have AP science.) I advanced placed where suggested in Calc and started from scratch in chem. Holy cow I was lost. Calc teacher was grad student who didn’t speak English well. I can still hear his voice. Chem was 300 kids big and the median on tests always seemed to hover around 45 percent. I tried office hours and studying with friends but gave up. I was so glad that S19 didn’t want engineering even though he’s going into college thinking math or physics major. If I had a child looking at engineering, I would definitely be looking at the support system for that major and talk to the departments about the weeding out. Remember that the premed kids are in the crazy hard science classes as well. I’d find out how many kids switch out of engineering at each school. Of course, NU graduates a bunch of engineers but, of the engineering majors I knew well freshman year (maybe 15?), one stayed chem E and two switched to IE and everyone else graduated with a non-STEM degree. Many of us scrambling to get our GPA up to a decent spot so we would be allowed to interview through the placement center senior year. Many companies had minimum GPAs for who they would interview. So…like @Knowsstuff said above…do your homework. I didn’t hear that info about Illinois but I believe it. I personally know kids at Michigan and Purdue who seem to be well supported.
I don’t think GT is any more difficult for Chicagoland students than it is for states other than Georgia. Yes, OOS entry is more difficult to most state schools as it should be. It’s just that there are fewer people with GT connections and fewer applicants from Chicago, than say, the south or even East coast. Midwest aspiring engineers tend to look at Purdue , Michigan and other schools in the area. Most parents like their kids no more than a few hours driving distance away
A lot of out of state students end up at Alabama because they give great merit aid and lots of these kids love the idea of going to an SEC school with a great football program. We live in Alabama, and my daughter just finished her first year at University of Florida. She went out of state because no state school offered an undergrad statistics program or Arabic, which she is majoring and minoring in. Her top choice was Purdue, but the OOS tuition was just too costly. Their honors college is fantastic. Like someone else mentioned, I’d focus on the engineering program, not the honors college. FWIW, the top kids at our very competitive high school go to Auburn for engineering, not Alabama.
That was the point (in post #33) I was trying to make. I would have my son look at graduation requirements and job placement (locations/salaries/companies).
https://ise.illinois.edu/undergraduate/industrial-engineering-degree/industrial-engineering-curriculum-map-2018.html
Looking at AP credit may be helpful.
https://admissions.illinois.edu/Apply/Freshman/college-credit-AP
Also I’ve noticed posts referring to support. I would agree that if your son wants/needs ‘support’, research what you can expect in terms of level of support.
In my opinion if your son is able to self-advocate, he’ll be fine at U of I. If he expects a lot of hand-holding he’ll be disappointed.
Then there’s ‘support’ in the form personal and professional growth opportunities. At UIUC there are many wonderful RSOs (registered student organizations) from which to choose. However students are expected to seek them out if they want to participate. Taking initiative and time management skills are necessary.
@12illinoisdad
Another school to look at is Miami University(OH). Your son would get plenty of merit aid there. They also take plenty of AP credits. My D19 is heading there for BioChem. Because of the AP credits she won’t have to take many classes that don’t count toward a major or minor. I just can’t speak to the eng dept as I didn’t research that. It is a nice classic campus. Off campus housing(houses mainly) are close enough to walk to campus. 4-5 hours from Chicago depending where you live.
If your kid is unsure of what to major, I would go to a college that has strong programs in several departments in which your kid might be interested in. Usually, Honors Colleges market based on a single strong program. But it’s always a good idea to apply to one Honors College so you have an option of attending there. I also went through this issue for my non-STEM interested kid, and one of the reasons that persuaded me to NOT attend Honors College was my kid’s uncertainty about what he’s interested in majoring made him choose a college that has strong programs across the board.