Though still vastly more expensive than the UC tuition for full pay families, their typical discount might get you to ~$56K for tuition, room and board vs ~$30K at UCs.
Letās seeā¦ on the final list we have colleges in CT, Mass, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania (Philly), Ontario, New York, Illinois (Chicago), Colorado and Washington state.
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Thanks for reminding about Prompts, kid has already selected what prompts he will answer and thatās what his homework is about (Forgot about this).
Heās also ELC eligible, so Merced should be a safety option. He wants to study Computer Science with some minor (Political Science) if possible.
Our delta was less (Davis and UCSC are closer to $33K), but at least at Santa Clara one can switch your major more easily, register for the classes you need, smaller class sizes and not have to worry about freshman (or possibly later) housing. Also, SCU campus is immaculate and relatively safe.
Also, SCU will give out more merit, especially if you ask for more. And itās likely easier to get accepted to than Davis, UCSC or the top UCās, IMO. The UCās are tough right now to get accepted into.
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Do you know about USC scholarships, itās a good college but not affordable without good merit scholarship?
There are some 1/2 to full scholarships available to the tippy top applicants, but Iād ask your question in the USC forum. Youāll get a better response.
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The only reach CA schools on his list are U of Redlands and U of the Pacific.
Was in Seattle for a week and had forgotten how gorgeous that area is. My kid would love the city, too. But UW gives next to zero aid for OOS, so I turned down an opportunity to do a quick visit and pick up some vibes/brochures for the kid.
His list is long - 20 - and heās applying to all of them. Good mix of reaches (3) and matches. The two safeties are West Chester and Temple, both of which we can afford without merit.
But merit is the intangible I just canāt figure out in this application climate - most of the schools we list as matches are academic safeties but we will need merit to afford them. So I really treat them as reaches in my head.
The good thing is that because theyāre mostly publics, thereās very little essay writing at the beginning; more to come with honors apps, which donāt open for a while.
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Yes ours loved UWash Seattle - one safety (hopefully - who knows) he would be thrilled to go to if the reaches and targets donāt work out. Very far from home, so obviously not the mom voteā¦
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I go out of town for 4 days and you guys go crazy with all the postingā¦
To the person that has 23 that wants to minor in film and possibly adding USC - do you have Carnegie Mellon on your list? CMU loves their techies to have creative minors.
And as a spouse to a College Professor the comment I hear is that even though the new Frosh on average have higher test scores and higher GPAs they canāt āthinkā as well as they could in the past. I believe this is more that their convergent thinking skills have increased but that their divergent thinking skills have decreased. And the āneedā for these Test Scores and GPAs to be high also has made where schools donāt want to challenge these kids to be problem solvers. It even extends somewhat to college where future Med/Law/Future PhD students need that perfect to near perfect GPA so they donāt challenge themselves even if they could be better at what they intend to do in the future.
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Will Santa Clara give decent merit? We wonāt get any need based aid, so our list was limited to school my husband would be willing to pay full boat at. When I asked him what private schools heād pay 70k + for, he said Stanford, Cal tech, and USC. He kind of poopooed Santa Clara and Pepperdine at that price. If they might give some merit Iād give another look. S23 wonāt get into Stanford or Cal Tech, so we werenāt going to apply.
One of my kids is attending USC on a merit scholarship. Are you asking about the process, how competitive the scholarships are or how much USC will give?
Each year, USC awards approximately 100 full-tuition Trustee scholarships. The number of half-tuition Presidential scholarships varies but hovers around 400. That Presidential number includes National Merit Finalists. They also award quarter-tuition Deans scholarships. There are many more smaller merit scholarships that are nice but arenāt likely to make or break a decision to attend.
You might view the 4 page list of scholarships to see what is available.
You can also read more in the 2021-22 freshman profile.
Note: USC moved their Early Action deadline to be considered for merit scholarships to November 1. Previously, it was December 1.
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Thank you for the update, will check scholarship page for USC.
As a college professor, I suspect that your spouse is correct, and that your reasoning on why this is the case is likely correctāand I would underscore that Kā16 students are busily being told, both explicitly and implicitly, by many different sources that they need to play it safe, which leads to less creativity.
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STEM + film was for my S23. Thanks for the CMU recommendation. Will take a look at it along with JHU as suggested upthread.
Try the NPC. I just looked at it. Curiously they ask for SAT score not GPA. It suggested $16.5K of merit for us based on a 1510 SAT. Iād agree that itās hard to justify being full pay there. Opinions may differ on whether itās worth paying $50K+.
S23 rejected it based on the compulsory year of religious studies. I think Utahās looking more likely for him unless he gets into UCSC (Utah is the same cost as UCs with WUE), because his sister had a great four years there and he loves skiing.
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S23 wouldnāt be turned off by the religious studies, but the cost could be a deal breaker. Iāll do a bit of research.
Is UCSC UC Santa Cruz? The California schools are a language of their own. If so we visited and found the campus gorgeous (though wonāt be applying - hard to justify coming there from New England).
Yes, they can. They have 3 merit-based scholarships: Bronco, Deanās and Provost, at least thatās what I remember from the Class of 2025 (HS 2021), which was D21ās year. And the merit amount ranged from $10,000 to 1/2 tuition or even $50,000 for one member that posted.
Ultimately, for those who donāt know here, D21 decided to go with her #1 Cal Poly SLO. But with the Bronco scholarship she received, SCU became competitive $-wise with her UC choices.
Yes.
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