Recommended Schools

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Background:</p>

<p>(I'm very sorry about the very long post.)</p>

<p>Hi, I'm a rising senior who has only recently started to seriously search for colleges and universities to attend. I would greatly appreciate any advice or recommendations for schools, especially with an eye towards safeties and matches.</p>

<p>Statistics:</p>

<p>Miscallenous</p>

<p>I live in California. As such, most of the UC's are already on my list. </p>

<p>My parents have agreed to pay the full cost of my college education, and can "afford" any college whose sticker price is under $60,000. Because my family obviously will not be receiving much in the way of financial aid, I would ideally like to attend a college where my parents won't have to take out more than $30,000 in loans per year (even though the sticker price may be more). Even then, I am open to suggestions of schools at which I might be granted significant merit aid as long as these schools are more or less in line with my academic criteria. </p>

<p>Academics</p>

<p>GPA (UW): 4.0
GPA (W): 4.7
Class Rank: 2/~800</p>

<p>SAT I: 2320 (730 CR, 800 M, 790 W)
SAT II: Math II - 800, Physics - 800, US History - 760</p>

<p>AP's (Score): Biology (5), Chemistry (5), Physics C: Mechanics (5), Physics C: Electricity & Magnetism (5), Calculus BC (5), Statistics (5), Computer Science A (5), European History (5), United States History (5), United States Government (5), Language & Composition (5), Literature & Composition (5), Art History (3)</p>

<p>I will also have taken some advanced math courses (Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations) at my local community college by the end of my senior year. </p>

<p>Awards</p>

<p>National Merit Commended
National AP Scholar
AMC 12 School Winner
Various School Awards</p>

<p>Extracurricular Activities</p>

<p>Math Club: 9-12 (President)
MATHCOUNTS Coach at Local Middle School: 10-12
Volunteer at Reuben H. Fleet Science Center: 10-12
Tutor: 10-12
Mayor's Youth Council: 12
CSF: 10-12 (President)
NHS: 11-12 (Treasurer)</p>

<p>I also enjoy studying advanced math and physics in my leisure, but I have not won much in the way of competitons. I have taken a number of Art of Problem Solving courses online, though. </p>

<p>I will also be attending a semi-prestigious summer math and science program this summer. </p>

<p>Criteria:</p>

<p>I realize that many of the characteristics I describe below are more often than not found in the most selective universities (i.e., HYPSM) and liberal arts colleges (i.e., Amherst, Swarthmore). However, I do not believe that my "stats" are adequate enough to ensure me a significant chance of admission at such institutions. As listed above, my EC's are clearly not up to par with those of many other students that wiil apply to these universities and colleges. I would therefore be grateful if anyone could refer me to match or safety schools that satisfy most of my desired criteria. </p>

<p>I do not yet know exactly what major I would like to pursue, but my heart is currently fixated on Physics. However, I have a deep interest in Math, Computer Science, and Mechanical Engineering (as a path to a job in the aerospace engineering) as well. For this reason, an ideal college should have a highly reknowned and rigorous program in each of these four subjects if possible. In addition, such a college should be flexible enough as to allow me to explore my interest in these disciplines and should not force me to submit to one from the very beginning. This essentially means that the school should not admit by major/department or that it should be lenient in allowing students to transfer from the College of Engineering to the College of Arts & Sciences (or vice-versa) if they wish to do so. </p>

<p>My greatest dilemma at the moment is whether or not I would like to become a scientist (in other words, a researcher) or an engineer. In either case, I hope to attend a top-ranked graduate school (MIT, Stanford, etc.) for a Masters and/or Ph.D. and therefore desire to attend an institution that has a history of sending its graduates to such graduate schools. </p>

<p>In this same vein, the college should have excellent research opportunities (ones that I may preferably start to take advantage of as soon as my freshman year). Opportunities for quality internships would be a plus as well. </p>

<p>Although this may conflict with the points noted above, I also desire to attend an institution that emphasizes undergraduate teaching. In other words, I would like to have accessible professors that care about teaching and a low student to faculty ratio (in the particular department and not necessarily in the university or college as a whole).</p>

<p>With regards to the social aspects (which I am much more flexible with than the academic ones), I would most likely thrive in an urban or suburban environment with at least a decent level of quality of life and safety. I would also highly prefer that there not be an abnormal party scene, drug presence, or influence of greek life on campus. Because I also consider myself somewhat introverted, an intellectual/introverted student body would be an additional benefit. At the same time, however, I would much rather prefer collaborative and somewhat laid-back peers than competitive and excessively stressed-out ones. (In other words, a university like UC Berkeley is almost certainly out of the picture.)</p>

<p>Thank you for all your help!</p>

2

<p>I don’t understand. If your family has to borrow 30k each year, then 60k school is not affordable. If it is not obvious that you won’t receive much aid if there is that level of borrowing necessary. Did you run the NPC?</p>

<p>I don’t know the ins and outs of all the colleges on all your criteria, I almost never hear of one where it is as easy to move into engineering as out, but Brown fits about every single point you mention.</p>

3

<p>Harvey Mudd??</p>

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<p>If Harvey Mudd, why not Cal Tech? CIT has a lot of physics majors, as well as engineering, with ‘a lot’ meaning in proportion the undergrad total because it only has ~ 1,000 undergrads.</p>

5

<p>I was going to suggest Mudd, too. I think it is more collaborative in nature than CalTech, although certainly the academics are very intense (but it is more “students against the work” intensity, not students against each other). And my kid is on campus doing research there right now after finishing her freshman year (and so are her 3 best friends from freshman year).</p>

<p>However, I am concerned about your cost comments. It is not reasonable at all to expect your parents to take out loans to cover the majority of your college costs. Do your parents have savings for your college expenses? Do you know what their income & asset situation is? (that would help in figure out if you are eligible for need based aid). You should work with them to run the net price calculators for various colleges to see what your financial aid situation might be like at each one. Although if your parents have a small business, rental real estate, or are divorced, the calculators will make it look like you will get more aid than you probably actually will get.</p>

<p>You personally can only borrow a total of $27,000 over four years ($5,500 freshman year, $6,500 sophomore year, and $7,500 junior and senior year). You need a cosigner or your parents have to borrow themselves over that amount, and they need to qualify for the loans (the lender needs to be convinced that they have the income and/or assets to pay off the loans as planned).</p>

<p>We see a fair number of students out here whose parents SAY they can cover the full cost, then realize in spring of senior year (when it is too late to apply to cheaper options) that they can’t really cover it after all. Don’t forget that your parents should be saving for retirement, and if you have younger siblings they also will likely be going to college. If I were you I would really push your parents to run those net price calculators to confirm that they understand the cost of everyplace you are applying. Some of the UCs are likely to be your most cost-effective options.</p>

<p>Other schools to consider:

  • Lawrence is decent in physics and would give you very good merit aid. No engineering, though.
  • I am not sure about the ability to transfer between schools within the university, but University of Minnesota is relatively inexpensive for out of state students.<br>
  • Rose-Hulman might give you good merit aid.</p>

<p>However, I am not sure any of these is a better choice than your UC options.</p>

6

<p>Tiny small tech colleges like Harvey Mudd and CIT would be more of the ‘students against the work intensity.’ So I probably wouldn’t classify CIT students as being ‘anti-collaborative,’ either. They have a tough first year, but they’re probably the most naturally gifted science students in the country, so I imagine they’re less competitive.</p>

7

<p>I don’t know of any school where it is as easy to move INTO engineering as out. There are too many baseline classes to take. You should look at Alabama as a safety (full tuition + scholarship for your stats). Large flagship Us in general will have good math/engineering/CS depts. You should also have good chances at UCB and UCLA.</p>

8

<p>Sorry for the late reply. Thank you to everyone who replied to my original post!</p>

<p>@BrownParent‌
@intparent‌</p>

<p>My parents have saved for my college tuition and expenses for over a decade, and are well-aware of the costs involved (they have personally used the net price calculators for a number of colleges). I do not wish to divulge specific details about my family’s income level and assets, but I can say that we will not be eligible for much financial aid. The most financial need that any net price calculator so far has deemed my family to have is around $15,000; of course, this amount may be met by the college through loans or grants/scholarships depending on that instituion’s specific policies. </p>

<p>The point is that my parents have agreed to pay for my college, even if the expense turns out to be ~$60,000/year as it very well may at a few colleges. I completely agree that it is unreasonable for me to expect my parents to pay a significant amount for college, and that is why I asked for names of colleges where my family would not have to take out more than $30,000 in loans per year (an amount that my parents would have absolutely no qualms about paying compared to $60,000). Even then, considering that $30,000 is still a great deal of money, I am open to colleges that are good fits for me and that may award me significant merit aid.</p>

9

<p>How about Olin College? They give a half tuition scholarship to every student that gets in, great engineering department, located by Boston, but I don’t know if it offers non-engineering majors. I think University of Rochester is also a great school all-around and you should qualify for merit aid. </p>

10

<p>Sorry, your comments are still confusing and disturbing to me. You are still asking your parents to take out $120K in loans for you at a time in their life when they should be making sure their retirement savings are solid and getting their mortgage paid down, etc. You imply that your parents have a lot of assets - then why would they take out loans at all? Or anything beyond having you take out the federal loans (total of $27,000 over 4 years). It would be dumb to take out that large amount in parent loans. They may have stars in their eyes over how important your education is, but taking on this amount of debt isn’t worth it for any school, and certainly not by people your parent’s age.</p>

<p>You should be looking at your in-state public options, there are plenty of good choices in CA.</p>

11

<p>To add to @intparent’s closing suggestion, you could also consider the automatic full ride/full tuition schools. See the financial aid forum for the thread. You already qualify for full tuition at, for instance, at UAlabama. You could also qualify for full tuition at many other schools that don’t offer automatic scholarships. Vandy offers over 150 full tuition scholarships each year, for instance. Get working on those threads over in financial aid. It’s entirely possible to put a large dent in the COA when you have grades like yours. You will have to widen your reach expectations, but you can still attend a great engineering or science program for less than 30K/yr. Then there’s your state unis. There are hundreds of schools for which you are a financial and academic safety, but you still have to find the ones that have your major and that you’ll absolutely go to if none of the other schools pans out.</p>

12

<p>As the mom of a ds that loves physics and was an AoPS kid until he ran out of courses, I can relate to a lot that you posted. </p>

<p>A couple of other things you might want to factor in in your decision making process…AP credit. You have a lot of viable credit. Many schools limit the number of hours you are allowed to bring in or only let you use them for placement purposes. The # of hrs could change how many semesters you need to pay for.</p>

<p>Another thing to consider if you aren’t sure which direction you want to go between engineering and physics is to initially double in EE and physics bc the overlap is significant. If you go somewhere that accepts all your hrs and you love math like my ds, adding a math major is another option. </p>

<p>If you want grad school, access to undergrad research is vital. It was one of the key factors in our ds’s decision. He had doesn’t have parents that are willing to fund his education through loans, so he had far more limited options.</p>

<p>I’m not sure exactly how Case decides their merit money, but based on ds’s experience, you might qualify for $30,000 in scholarship there. </p>

<p>Our ds did decide for go the merit route others have mentioned that is offered at UA. Their CBHP program guarantees access to research. It is what tipped the scales for ds. It was a school not even on ds’s radar when he first started looking at schools. The admitted students for the 2013 CBHP class had a mean ACT of 33.9 and GPA of 4.2. Here is a blip

</p>

<p>UA offers scholarship stacking. So, for example, you can stack the presidential, the engineering, and a CBHP one if offered (the other 2 are guaranteed based on stats, the latter not so.)</p>

13

<p>Your should absolutely take finances into consideration. There are certainly some good choices among the [url=“&lt;a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”&gt;http://theaitu.org”]AITU[/url</a>] schools which will give you are solid merit aid package and make the whole thing affordable without the need for loans. All of them have physics and engineering and they are all solid schools. If you end up choosing physics and going to graduate school, any one of them will give you the wherewithal to get into a top graduate program. If you choose engineering, they all are ABET accredited (although not all have Aerospace Engineering) and will give you a great chance at a good starting job. A number of these schools have been mentioned by other posters but look at all of them. You can find those which are more research oriented with Ph.D. programs and others which are more focused on undergraduate education. Lots of choices.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>It still is not clear what your (parents’) cost constraints are.</p>

<p>Perhaps you should ask them this question: how much can they contribute without needing any parental loans?</p>

<p>To that amount, you can add about $5,500 per year of federal direct loans and a few thousand per year in work earnings to get an overall price limit. Then compare that with net price calculator results at various colleges.</p>

<p>Note that many LACs have small math and/or CS departments, and many do not have mechanical engineering natively. So you may have to evaluate those departments carefully (check catalogs, schedules, and faculty rosters) to determine which are suitable for your interests. There are, however, more technically oriented small schools, ranging from Caltech and Harvey Mudd at the high end of selectivity; SD Mines, NM Mines, and MO S&T at the low end of selectivity, with others like CO Mines, Rose-Hulman, Stevens, Rensselaer, Worchester, Illinois Tech, etc. in between. However, even some of these may not have as much depth in all of your interests (e.g. some may be more engineering focused, with math departments primarily to support engineering majors).</p>

<p>For schools divided into divisions or which otherwise have internal admissions processes to change major, it is more common for it to be difficult to change into engineering or CS than it is to change into math or other liberal arts and sciences.</p>

15

<p>Note that if UC Riverside is affordable, you can make it a 100% safety by signing up for its guaranteed admission program during June or July, then including it in your regular UC application.
<a href=“http://vcsaweb.ucr.edu/Admissions/WhyUCR/ourGuarantee”>http://vcsaweb.ucr.edu/Admissions/WhyUCR/ourGuarantee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Other potential low cost safeties can be found in the automatic full tuition/ride list at the top of the financial aid and scholarships forum section.</p>

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<p>@intparent‌:
@jkeil911‌:
@xraymancs‌:</p>

<p>You two have interesting points. I don’t completely disagree with them, but I am somewhat hesitant about choosing many of the colleges that would give me significant merit aid packages since I’m under the impression that they may not have the necessary resources for me to accomplish my future goals. Granted, I do not consider myself to be very knowledgeable about what those “resources” exactly are or to what degree they may be present at such colleges. It’s just that the best research opportunities (in both availability and quality), strength of curriculum, strength of major (including the name of the college, which I’ve heard plays a role in graduate school admissions?), etc. seem to me to be located in selective colleges rather than those that are not. </p>

<p>I know I’m most likely harboring wrong ideas about the entire situation, so I’d be grateful if you could possibly touch upon these issues. </p>

<p>@Mom2aphysicsgeek‌:</p>

<p>Thanks for your insight! I had neither heard about UA’s CBHP program nor had I considered double majoring in EE.</p>

<p>@ucbalumnus‌:</p>

<p>If my college education had to be financed without the use of parental loans, I would estimate that my family could contribute $15,000-20,000 per year (including parental contribution without loans, federal direct loans, and work study). </p>

<p>What exactly do you mean by “evaluate [LAC] departments carefully” in order to determine whether they match my inetersts? How exactly would I do that? I’ve noticed you state in other posts that LAC’s may have limited course offerings in math, physics, and/or computer science. However, I’m not sure what courses a school should offer to make that determination. </p>

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</p>

<p>Meaning $15,000 to $20,000 per year includes both your parents’ contribution and your contribution (federal direct loans and work earnings)? This means that, when you run the net price calculators, you need to see a net price below that number. Do this on some UCs’ web sites to see what you get. If UCs are too expensive, you need to remake your application list to emphasize large merit scholarships (at least full tuition, like those listed at <a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #286 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-p20.html&lt;/a&gt; and <a href=“Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums; ).</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>For CS, look for the following advanced CS courses offered at reasonable frequency:

  • theory: algorithms and complexity, theory of computation, languages, and automata
  • software: operating systems, compilers, networks, databases, security and cryptography, software engineering or project course or projects in other courses, optional electives like artificial intelligence and graphics
  • hardware: digital systems, computer architecture</p>

<p>For physics, the major’s core courses typically consist of the following courses:

  • frosh/soph level calculus based introductory physics
  • analytic mechanics
  • electromagnetism (often 2 semesters)
  • quantum mechanics (often 2 semesters)
  • advanced lab (often 2 semesters)
  • statistical and thermal physics
    In addition, advanced electives in physics and astronomy may be offered.</p>

<p>Math is a broad subject, both in pure and applied areas. You can see the breadth at a large research university:
<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/applied”>http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/applied&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/pure”>http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/pure&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/teaching”>http://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/major/teaching&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/course-descriptions”>http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/course-descriptions&lt;/a&gt;
A smaller math department may not cover all areas, but you may want to check the catalogs, schedules, and faculty rosters to find out if it covers the areas that you are most interested in.</p>

<p>For “reasonable frequency”, the minimum for advanced courses that are central to the major is once every two years, although that can make scheduling your eight semesters somewhat inflexible. More desirable is if most courses are offered at least yearly, and courses that are important in sequences of prerequisites are offered every semester.</p>

18

<p>How about USC?</p>

19

<p>Might try Holy Cross-top25 LAC with good physics department. HC has no greek life and meets 100% of demonstrated financial aid. Holy Cross(don’t have to be religious) has nice campus 1 hour from Boston and the school has fantastic alumni network.</p>

20

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<p>I assume one of your future goals is to NOT have to support your parents in their old age. Not kidding about this, too. You are expecting your parents to take on the equivalent of a mortgage for YOUR education when they are likely in their 50s. That will cramp their ability to continue to save for their retirement, and very possibly will not be paid off when they want to retire. Do you really want them paying from their social security checks on your loan? </p>

<p>You should find someplace where you can go to college using the following resources: summer full time/college year part time work earnings, any savings you have amassed for college yourself ahead of time or that your parents have saved for you, whatever your parents can contribute WITHOUT taking out parent loans, the amount of federal loans you are eligible for, and whatever need based grants or merit aid you would get from a college that do not need to be paid back.</p>

<p>Your future goals should not be achieved at the cost of your parents’ financial security. If you are good, you will do very well as an undergraduate wherever you go (even 2 years at CC and 2 years at a public university in California) and get admission to a strong graduate program. </p>