School suggestions?

Hi! I am a parent and would love some advice for my rising senior. My son knows about what major he would like to go into- computer engineering or electrical engineering. However, we are clueless on how to help him narrow down what colleges he would like to attend- he is completely open to all types of schools.

When he graduates high school next year he will have an associates in Science degree, but wont be considered a transfer student. His unweighted gpa is 4.0. Class rank- 5/72. AcT composite is 32, Math part 29 because he ran out of time and didnt finish. He will be taking SAT in august, and SAT Math and biology tests in june. We are NC based. Not first gen, he is a minority and I would like it if he went to a school that was minority friendly. We are low income, <50k for family of 5, but I dont want him to look at cost of school as a deterrant, if its a good fit for him, I will try my best to make it happen.

We have gotten so many postcards from all different types of schools, its overwhelming. Thanks in advance for suggestions!

What math and science courses has he taken to date, which did he like and what does he plan to take next year?

I totally disagree with not looking at costs first and foremost! Run the NPC (net price calculator) for all schools that you are considering. If they aren’t affordable, it will just be heartache next spring. You should qualify for need based aid but sometimes there are surprises and what you can afford and what the college thinks you can afford are two different things.

Generally your most affordable options will be instate.

The overall composite for the ACT is good but a sub 30 math score will raise some red flags for an engineering major. Hopefully he can do better with his SAT and SAT II tests, especially for math. (I would have him do lots of practice before the test).

Also, throw out the post cards from colleges. It’s marketing, usually not even from the schools themselves. They mean absolutely nothing in terms of where he’ll be accepted and if he’s even a viable candidate.

He just finished college calculus1. He will be taking calculus 2 next year. He will either take college physics or chemistry next spring.(he can only take 1) He has not taken a HS physics class because his school does not offer it, but he has taken HS earth science, chemistry and biology. He has taken two semesters of college biology.

He liked all his science classes equally. He enjoyed calculus and wants to take it to the highest level he can before graduating.

You and your son should identify a couple of safety schools that you know you can afford. I think you should run the Net Price Calculator for North Carolina State University as a test to find out if this school will be affordable for your family. Your son can take out a total of $27,000 in loans over 4 years.

https://npc.collegeboard.org/app/ncsu

Your son might receive very good financial aid from a private university that meets full need, but the issue is that these schools can be very hard to get into. Your son’s ACT is very good but he needs to boost the math score.

Did your son take the PSAT? How did he do?

@txstella My son and I have talked about Nc state, i will do the net price calculator. Thank you for the suggestions. His PSAT was 1300 680 reading 620 math.

@momofsenior1 i will run npc for schools, thank you. If he does not do well on the SAT, he will retake ACT.

The SAT math tends not to be quite as time-crunched as the ACT so hopefully that will go well for him. Is he using the Khan Academy app to prepare? A high math score will be important for competitive engineering schools.

By minority, do you mean an under-represented minority (African American, Latino, Native American) that will give him an admissions advantage at competitive private U’s, or an over-represented minority (Asian-American) that you’re mentioning by way of caring about diversity but not a “hook” with a few rare exceptions? This will make a difference both in picking realistic reaches that meet full need, and in considering some schools that don’t meet full need for all accepted students but might for a low-income URM.

NC State is indeed a good in-state option. UMichigan meets need for low-income OOS students, so run their NPC and see if it looks potentially affordable. (But UMich might be stingy with transfer credit whereas NC State probably has an articulation agreement with his dual-enrollment college.)

Union in NY is full-need-met and test-optional and has a solid engineering program; if NPC looks good there it could be one to include, especially if test scores don’t improve as much as hoped. URochester, also full-need-met, is test-flexible so if he has other high test scores like SAT subject tests or AP’s, he can submit those in lieu of the ACT/SAT. Depending on scores and “hooks” and extracurriculars, there are quite a few competitive U’s with strong engineering that might come into range for him. But as mentioned above re: UMich, a NC public like NC State or App State may turn out to be much better about honoring his transfer credits.

@aquapt He was gifted an SAT Princeton Review book from family recently and is using that. I will look into the Khan Academy App. URM - he is hispanic and black. But I mentioned it because of diversity, my niece had a horrible experience at her college and although the end result turned out positive, would rather he not have extreme difficulties because of his ethnicity, considering college is already hard.
Thank you for the school suggestions, we will look into them. App state does not have an engineering program though, we found that out on a recent trip up there when he was still undecided on major.

Oops, sorry - I should have verified before suggesting App State. Anyway he should hopefully be good for NCState if he stays on this path!

He can put the free Khan Academy app on his phone - it’s a great resource.

Maybe check out U of Miami - it has some excellent diversity scholarships in addition to pretty good need based aid, and decent Hispanic and black representation, in a very diverse city.

a good mix of safetiess, targets, and reaches.

Check out UIC, it has a well respected engineering school, and it’s a minority serving institution.

I echo the prior comments on in-state options first.

A favorite of mine is Ohio State, an excellent school, and they are heavily encouraging more diversity. Specifically, the Morrill Scholarship. Some are full tuition, some are full cost of attendance. Very competitive, but worth looking at if he is willing to travel that far.

That he wants to go into a math heavy field but literally is not up to speed in math would lead me to look into the smaller schools that offer the CS and engineering courses. I would want small classes and a ulot of attention. Engineering is a major that gets a lot of drops. You want to give him the best chance to succeed.

Engineering can also go into the fifth year. So do look at the costs. It’s a long time to be in an austerity regiment and you do not want to borrow if you can at all help it. So you want some schools that will come up with some money. Have you run some FAFSA estimators and some NPCs for some schools? Is there a non Custodial parent, a small business, a home with a lot of equity in the picture? Those factors can affect fin aid.

Look for a school that has all he wants, good likelihood of aid/meri money , good chance of success, likely to take him. I think Manhattan College is a good pick. Also some state schools. Bear in mind, these are likely schools, the safeties, the birds you can have in hand. These are the most important schools on your list and they will likely take the longest to find. They are the hidden gems.

Once you have that very important base covered, you can go to town, with all sorts of possibilities. Aim for the top schools, the ones with great name recognition. Do keep in mind that the curriculum is a tough one, and support should weigh heavily in favor of schools that offer it. I like Swarthmore as a lick. Small LAC, with a small engineering dept , top grade school, good financial aid

He sounds like an excellent candidate for NC State. My S18 is there. Once accepted they have many scholarships he could apply for! I’m not low income but do know another family who had a little over $50k income and less kids and she got a generous package. Definitely run the NPC. Meanwhile head over to the NC State page and ask all your burning computer and electrical engineering questions!

He would also get a lot of college credit for the classes he’s already taken! And Khan Academy has great practice ACT and SAT tests.

University of TN Knoxville also has engineering and frequently offers very good aid to smart NC kids. Run their NPC as well.

Some in-state options (in addition to NC State) include ECU, UNC Charlotte & NC A&T. ECU’s engineering program is small and not as popular as NC State’s but because it’s smaller there may be a better chance for individualized attention. Also ECU is a pretty diverse campus. UNC Charlotte is also diverse and has an up and coming engineering dept. They don’t offer alot of merit aid but do have engineering merit scholarships. Also if your son is open to an HBCU, NC A&T is a fantastic in-state option. It’s one of the top producers of black engineers.

I have run the NPC for some schools, and it amazes me the net price differences among similiar priced schools. I didnt think about home equity when we were thinking about how much we could afford, and should have been.

Originally we had started looking at schools that would accept his AS and give him junior standing, sorta threw that out the window when he said he wanted to have an engineering major, and really hadnt thought of running NPC.(naivete at its best) So thank you everyone for that :). We will still look at all different kind of schools but definitely keeping NPC in mind.

@longwaytogo we were going to schedule campus visits right before the shooting at UNC charlotte and shooter on campus at A&T. So still trying to run my mind around that, even though I know it could have happened many places.
My niece just graduated from ECU, and based on her experiences and recommendations, its not a minority friendly campus so we wont be considering it.

So many tightropes to walk.

To get the absolute best need-based aid (esp. the schools that don’t consider home equity), you have to go uber-competitive. And with the URM-bump, your son may well have a shot at uber-competitive, if he can get his math scores up which is likely quite realistic with some focused prep. (Plus, the most competitive schools are able to be more successful at recruiting a diverse student body than schools that are still excellent but one prestige-tier down.) But, if he scores an uber-competitive admit, there may be a higher risk of getting pushed out of engineering by the steep learning/grading curves in a highly demanding program with an exceedingly well-prepared peer group.

Diversity-wise… there’s a trade-off in terms of URM advantage - the schools that will want him the most badly are of course the schools that struggle to recruit a more diverse student body, and it sounds as if there’s only so far he wants to go in terms of being one of the few tasked with providing the diversity, in return for an admissions/scholarship advantage. Plus, as a Black+Hispanic student, even some diverse-on-paper environments may not be as good a fit as they might seem, depending on how he identifies racially and culturally. My “surrogate kid” who is living with me is Puerto Rican and is attending a highly diverse community college near my home. The most common question he gets is, “What ARE you?” The Hispanic students, who are predominantly Mexican-American, parse him as black and are shocked to discover that he’s a native Spanish-speaker. The black students don’t parse him as black at all, and the professor in his African-American History class even argued with him when he referred to himself as African-American in class. At times he has ended up feeling more excluded than he has in majority-white environments in the past! However, a hypothetical student of similar appearance, with one non-Hispanic African-American parent and one Mexican-American parent, might have quite a different experience in the same environment. This what was in my mind when I suggested UMiami, where one might find a greater black/Hispanic overlap because of the large population from Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries/territories. Plus, there are a fair number of students who take the articulation pathway from Miami-Dade, one of the largest community colleges in the country, so he might have better luck there with his community college credits than at other similarly-elite private U’s that don’t take as many CC transfers. But… the question of where he would feel most at home, diversity-wise, is a very individual one. I can’t imagine my “surrogate kid” fitting in at NC A&T, even though in theory he would love to transfer to an HCBU; but he’s never set foot in NC or any other southern state - it might be ideal for your son who likely has a completely different set of cultural competencies! All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that “diversity” numbers don’t tell the whole story about any given environment; he will need to think about what he’s looking for in terms of community.

The other balancing act is re: how much transfer-credit to seek. On the one hand, you don’t want all that college coursework to go to waste, but on the other hand, trying to place too far ahead will limit what programs are available to him, and perhaps deprive him of some really wonderful educational experiences in terms of lower-division coursework that is different, qualitatively and depth-wise, from what he has gotten in his DE classes. You and he will have to decide where the “sweet spot” lies in that regard. (And of course that question dovetails with the funding issue - spending more time on lower-division classes would be a lot more palatable with full ride than if you’re paying/incurring debt!)

Is he considering applying through Questbridge? He appears to meet the criteria, and the funding would be excellent if he were to “match.”