In the same boat, AP season is in full swing (not sure if its four or five…has two today). After that, he’s pretty much coasting.
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Good luck to all 23s on continued APs this week. AP Lang today and Music Theory on Friday for my S23!
Has anyone here visited or have experience with University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) or Illinois Inst. of Tech (IIT) in Chicago. DS seems to strongly prefer urban campuses that still have a pretty well defined campus (as opposed to campus buildings intermingled with non-campus buildings). Both of these seem to be in that category. Both also seem to have the possibility for good to great merit aid as well.
Trying to decide if they are worth a separate trip to Chicago this summer or fall. S23 is considering Comp Sci or EE.
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@stencils - my older D looked pretty heavily at ITT for grad school. She really liked it; it ended up her second choice. she thought the kids were active and sharp in her major. She went there once - liked it enough to apply (architecture). She also looked at UIC; but that was dumped from her list later on for grad school because they offered no financial aid!
edited to add: i think she went to a conference once and met ITT kids there; thats what encouraged her to look at it in the first place. again, she liked it!
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He might want to look at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) as well. A very good CS/EE program (CS is in the College of Engineering), great campus in the heart of one of friendliest cities in the country, easy access to good public transportation, rolling admission with good merit for high stats, and an Honors program.
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Re: Music tech. My son would love taking classes but perhaps not as a major. University of North Florida on his list has multiple music options (including music tech/prod) but they also have a certificate in music technology which I could see my son doing while tackling a non music degree (and maybe singing in their acapella group and playing rugby). Loyno has music industry studies which would be a combination of many of my sons interests.
I didnt think Seton Hall had music. (Im always looking up whats new with the Jesuits. I know Xavier has music prod.).
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Seton Hall’s recording tech program is a track within their Visual and Sound Media major (basically what’s more usually called something like Radio, Television, and Film). But yeah, music itself is only available there as a minor.
That’s one of the issues we ran into building D23’s initial list of recording tech programs—they’re often hidden, sometimes in strange places (like under journalism or theater, which just both feel weird and wrong).
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We’ve recently visited IIT and Milwaukee School of Engineering. They are pretty similar schools in several categories. I’ve known people who did undergrad at both and really liked it.
The education at both seemed good, but our kid and us parents alike agreed that MSOE seemed like it would be a more enjoyable undergrad experience. IIT has graduate programs, while MSOE is more focused on undergrad teaching. MSOE has classes in some topics other than STEM/business whereas IIT really doesn’t. For example, you can play the cello and take Spanish at MSOE but not IIT.
Students seem friendly and nerdy at both, but IIT has much more diversity, which was refreshing. I think they both have good merit aid. Overall, based largely on campus vibe and facilities, our kid crossed IIT off his list. MSOE is definitely still on the list, even for my kid who doesn’t love urban. I think he’ll end up at a more traditional school, but he’d still be excited to attend MSOE.
Edited to add that MSOE is in a much more enjoyable part of Milwaukee compared to IIT location in Chicago. As an IIT student, you’d want to hop on the train or a bike to downtown Chicago proper or Hyde Park. The train pass is free and the train literally runs through the campus. The area immediately surrounding IIT is not the best. Also, IIT was eerily quiet, even in the dorms (!) but MSOE was bustling with energy.
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The Twin Cities are wonderful. My friend’s daughter is a freshman in the Honors program and got HUGE merit.
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For the merit chasers in this group - what’s your definition of good/great merit? I’m sure we’re all different in that regard. I’ve personally found universities (at least the ones we’ve looked at) seem to cluster around ranges for their top merit.
I’m basing this as total cost of attendance including room/board, and based on out of state tuition for state schools:
- Set #1, Mediocre Merit: Net Cost of attendance > $40K year after merit
- Set #2, Good Merit: COA 25-30K per year after merit
- Set #3, Great Merit: COA 15-20K per year after merit. This is mostly schools with a full tuition merit option, so you just have room and board expenses. In state public options with their in-state merit usually fall in this range too.
- Unicorn Merit: COA near $0 - the small number of schools that offer near full-ride
Set 1 is completely out of the picture for us. $10K merit on a $50K OOS total COA doesn’t even make the list. We’d consider set 2, but set 3 or unicorn merit is where most of our applications are targeting.
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Due to financial constraints, my kids will be chasing FACHEX and Tuition Exchange. Due to the competitiveness of the awards and the fact their GPAs are not up there, this means they may likely have to choose a “lower ranked” school and schools that may not fit everything on their wish list.
FACHEX and TE awards are about 40k each year.
We are told s23 has a higher possibility of getting some merit for music talent as well which could stack depending on school.
Right now the only non FACHEX/TE school on my sons list is U of Louisiana Lafayette because with his ACT score it brings it into the maybe affordable list.
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Based on our recent experience with S22, $25k-$35k per year (your Set #2) is available even at well regarded institutions (e.g., Ohio State). While we were fortunate in that S22 had (and chose) an option with COA ~$10k/yr, getting Set #3 and Set#4 are tough. NMF students may have such options at Alabama and UCF.
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The whole tuition exchange process is a mystery to me, not working in higher ed. I’ve seen it mentioned here before. Are there specific schools that participate, but the seats at any one school for tuition exchange are limited and competitive?
Tuitionexchange.org is open for all to view. It has a list of schools who participate and gives you a loose percentage of TE applicants that get approved. However, due to pandemic, many schools may only have a few awards to give away. Since gpa is most commonly looked at, my kid has little chance but we will try.
I work for a Jesuit and FACHEX is the potential free tuition benefit at jesuits. Again, not guaranteed.
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Our definition is Unicorn.
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I would consider your set 2 to be “great merit”, and full tuition+ to be unicorn. Maybe it’s because I come from a state that doesn’t have an in state merit scholarship like HOPE, Zelle or Bright Futures and our state flagship (depending upon major) can run over $35K in state.
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We are also in your categories 3 or 4. That strategy works for us only because both parents work at different universities, so we’re eligible for free tuition at 2 different places, plus the tuition exchange program at many other schools. Feel free to PM me to discuss engineering/CS programs with good merit aid. I have a decent sense of which schools offer the kind of aid you’re looking for, and there are some good threads here about it too.
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re: merit: we know our D23 can get full tuition at our midwest state flagship; but there’s nothing sexy about the school and she’s not interested at this point. I think your Set #2 is where most of the schools will come in around (schools we’ve identified with merit); and Set #3 is where we’d like to be! With 4 kids, a transfer, grad school = 19 yrs of college; we just can’t do any more than Set #3 without it falling on D23’s shoulders (loans).
i will say, one thing we value as a family is the live- away experience. we’d rather our kids live away at not as highly ranked schools, than to live in the basement and go slightly higher ranked school near us. Life lessons learned in living away.
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Yes, totally agree with the living away. D20 had six months of COVID-induced “basement college” when Temple went mostly remote last year, and this year was sooo much better with in-person classes and living at school for her mental state – and just meeting people!. We all get along just fine at home, but it’s just not the same experience as living at school.
I’m sure some kids do great living at home for college, and it’s a family/affordability decision everyone needs to make based on their unique situation, but for us the “away for college” experience was great for our two older DDs.
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Thanks @ColdWombat – I’ll send you a message!
For us, great merit (assuming high-stats kids, if we didn’t have that the numbers would be different) is something similar to what our D17&19 got. D17 got her (problematically expensive) LAC’s top scholarship and D19 got an automatic merit scholarship at a Southern flagship; in both cases it brought our total net cost of attendance, not including plane flights, down to $17k±3k. (D17 started out at the lower end of that, is ending at the higher end of it—private college tuition inflation was stupid high even before the general inflation of the past year.)
Reasonable merit would be net $20–25k. That would equal our in-state flagship with the automatic scholarship our remaining kids are likely to qualify for. (They would get a further reduction, since I work for a different university in the state and so they’d get up to 12 credits of tuition free each semester. But then again, they’d have to live in Fairbanks, and thus not worth it.
)
We would happily take unicorn merit, but that’s honestly not even in the conversation.
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