<p>OP,
here is a link to a USC thread from Jan-Feb of this year where accepted scholarship students posted their stats .The students who are invited to interview for the full tuition scholarships generally receive those invitations and acceptance packets from USC starting in late Jan.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/1278469-usc-fall-2012-stats-only-decisions.html#post13770323[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/1278469-usc-fall-2012-stats-only-decisions.html#post13770323</a></p>
<p>Agree about Rose Hulman. They awarded my son $17,000/year, but with the COA at $55,000, it was still way out of reach for us.</p>
<p>What I meant to say is that although my D did receive many scholarships, they usually took our costs at private college down to our state supported schools. That was just our experience. Her stats were not as high as you D but she was admitted to some great schools</p>
<p>A couple of people had mentioned Pitt. It does offer some nice merit, plus it has additional money for engineers. I do know that there is at least one synagogue just off campus, so I am assuming Hillel. </p>
<p>And Southwest flies into Pittsburgh, which was one of our interests.</p>
<p>These have been mentioned before but Northeastern, Drexel and RIT offer nice merit for stats and better merit for NMF, and all are co-op schools where a student (especially an engineering student) can earn decent money toward their expenses. RIT will match other schools’ offers as well. WPI gives some nice merit too, but their COA is quite high and even a good merit offer leaves a pretty big residual cost. Even worse for Olin – their $20K automatic scholarship still leaves $40K to pay!</p>
<p>Check out the Net Price Calculators at schools like MIT, Cornell, Princeton – you might find that they offer more than you expect (especially while you have multiple kids in college, but then try it with only 1 in college as well to find out what you’ll end up paying when she’s the only one left in school).</p>
<p>There are some schools with COops (Northeastern, for example). Does anyone have any experiences with them and can elaborate what it entails? Does it mean that a bachelor’s degree will take longer?</p>
<p>Often, co-ops make the program five years.</p>
<p>If you do any co-op during the school year (Fall/Spring semester), it pushes back graduation by the amount of time spent on co-op. Normally you do not pay tuition during your co-op rotation but you may have to pay for housing if the company you are working for do not provide it. My older child at Pitt, did a co-op during his Fall semester and it pushed his graduation back a semester.</p>
<p>For Northeastern, if the co-op is in the Boston area (can get to via public transportation), you can stay in the dorms but you have to pay for it. They have a 4 year program but their 5 year program is still more popular. The student guide was very enthusiastic about his co-op experience.</p>
<p>Do students get a stipend or paycheck (even if it’s minimal) when they are doing a co-op? If not, isn’t better to push through the 4 years and then you will be earning an engineering salary that 5th year? I guess my question is what’s the benefit of a co-op? Around us, there are summer internships for engineering students and they can get a lot of exposures if they are at it for the 3 summers during college.</p>
<p>Yes they get paid. One of the strengths of a coop is the paycheck. Some students are able to fund a full year with their pay. Then there is the experience on their resume when they finally graduate.</p>
<p>Usually the co-op programs take 5 years, and include about 24 months of paid work, and are year-round programs (summers are spent either working or at school, some co-op schools give you your first summer off). Students get a paycheck directly from the employer while working. For engineers it is usually not minimal. For some other degrees it can be minimal or even be unpaid. And typically you only pay the school for the quarters/semesters you are taking classes, which is exactly the same as the number of quarters/semesters you’d usually spend taking classes, and just pay a small co-op fee for the terms you are working. Drexel does it differently and you pay for 5 years, at a reduced rate per year. You may be able to work near home and live at home and save money on room and board while you are working, you may work near school and be able to stay in the school housing, or you may need to get an apartment wherever your job is, so that does cut into your earnings (unless you are lucky enough to live at home).</p>
<p>Co-ops typically involve taking a summer plus an adjacent fall or spring term off of school in an extended job or internship (paid, and no tuition to pay at the college, though living expenses at the job location will cost money). This will extend calendar time to graduation, but not the number of terms in school (i.e. a student may take 4.5 to 5 years to graduate, but with only 8 semesters in school; a student who enters advanced might do a co-op and still graduate in 4 years with only 7 semesters of school needed).</p>
<p>While Northeastern and Drexel make the co-ops a central feature, many other colleges have formalized co-op programs as an option. Even when there is not a formalized co-op program at a college, the college should well be aware of students who take a leave of absence to work for an extended length (i.e. longer than a summer) job or internship.</p>
<p>My daughter’s stats were quite similar to those of your daughter. While she received merit aid at almost every school to which she applied, the amounts varied significantly. Some of the schools mentioned by previous posters as generous offered little merit to her, while others noted as offering low merit awards were quite generous.</p>
<p>Our financial goal was for D to attend a “good” college where total cost of attendance would be less than $25,000 annually. She applied to seven schools. With merit aid offers, five of the seven met our cost constraints.</p>
<p>Your daughter should – happily – have lots of options.</p>
<p>A couple benefits of a formal co-op program are that the school has infrastructure in place to help students land the co-op jobs, and also that “everyone” does it, so you don’t end up out of sync with your friends and classmates by taking a semester off to do an extended internship. </p>
<p>University of Waterloo in Canada (west of Toronto) is another outstanding co-op school with a very strong engineering program.</p>
<p>I co-oped at Case Western Reserve 30 years ago, and even though it was a very small program (few students participated) the school had plenty of job opportunities for us. I did lose most of my friends who graduated in 4 years while I took 5, so the 5th year for me was a little different. I had some friends around who had failed or withdrawn from earlier classes, plus a few other co-op students. The co-op program was the only way I could pay my tuition.</p>
<p>The movement of friends in/out of school is a drawback to the Co-op program at Northeastern. The guide mentioned how after the first year, his friends started their Co-op rotations so you would see some and not others depending on their schedule and yours.</p>
<p>In my experience with co-op schools (I was a co-op student myself), you tend to make your closest friends on the same rotation as you. Yes, you meet some people first year who you won’t see again due to being “off-stream” from their co-op rotations, but you will also be on a consistent rotation with a lot of people with whom you’ll get close over the years.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the insights. Lots to think about and discuss… Co-op schools look to be a different experience than the regular engineering programs at USC, Maryland, and the likes but the kids that are at the co-ops are experiencing real “work” at an earlier point, right?
Marlene, I sent you a private message.</p>
<p>Wayne State University in Detroit has a strong engineering program and a fencing team - plus full scholarships that include summer study abroad: [Scholarships</a> - University Scholarship](<a href=“Scholarships - Wayne State University”>Scholarships - Wayne State University) and [Irvin</a> D. Reid Honors College - Scholarships](<a href=“Irvin D. Reid Honors College - Wayne State University”>http://honors.wayne.edu/scholarships/index.php).</p>
<p>Vanderbilt has a great engineering program and a fencing club … and merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Co-op kids definitely get more, and often more varied work experiences than a traditional program. Of course non co-op students can still do internships over the summers, even if they stick to the standard traditional school schedule otherwise. My son is in a non-co-op program and ended up getting a nice internship for this summer (after freshman year). So there are certainly alternative ways of getting hands-on experience beside co-op. But co-op does IMO make it easier.</p>
<p>Co-ops are usually longer than internships, and in most cases you will spend 6 to 8 months at one company. Hence, some companies are happier to hire co-ops than summer interns, both because they can have student labor year-round, and also because they don’t invest a bunch of time in training you only to have you leave shortly thereafter. A variety of co-op experiences not only provides great starter material for a resume, it also helps a student narrow down the types of work they do and do not enjoy. Also students coming off co-op tend to get more out of their classes – having “in the field” experiences to pin their new knowledge on can really help.</p>