@Nutella544 - Just apply and see is not good advice. If the NPC’s are not promising, you can wind up with a lot of acceptance letters and no place you can actually afford to attend.
@betaeridani - Your financial foundation schools will be in-state public schools. If you really want to avoid large class sizes, consider doing Running Start or a year or two of community college to get some entry level classes in smaller sections. You can even do four years at a community college campus these days by transferring to a four-year college on the same campus as the community college. For example, WSU is starting to offer some engineering degrees on the campus of Everett community college. If it meets your needs (not sure what type of engineering you want), Western also has smaller class sizes than UW.
Your path to finding other schools, once you have your financial foundation options figured out, starts by understanding your budget. Have a frank and detailed money talk with your parents, and think about whether you are willing to take student loans on top of what your parents can offer. Then start searching for places that might fit that budget. Sometimes you can get better financial aid by looking at schools that only use the FAFSA rather than the Profile (for example, your parents’ home equity does not count on the FAFSA), or by looking for schools where your stats put you at the top of the applicant pool and where a significant portion of students get merit awards.
If the UW class size is an issue, then you can safely strike UC Berkeley off your list,
which is a comparable size.
I second the suggestion of RPI. You may also want to consider Santa Clara U which may give you financial consideration for your stats, as well as Case Western Reserve, which certainly will, as long as you apply under the Early Action option.
Regardless, your hard work will pay off, even if it’s at UW, so keep up the good work and don’t slack off now.
Because Cal, which seems to be one of your “dream” schools, has those small classes with lots of personal attention and a faculty focused on undergrads.
Some people see the glass as half-full, others as half-empty. You seem like the latter kind. You have all the opportunity in the world to get a great engineering education at a price you can afford, but instead of celebrating you are miserable and think all your hard work was for “absolutely nothing”. I don’t think anything that anyone here says is going to change your mind or lift that chip off your shoulder.
I’m not mentioning my exact ACT/SAT for privacy reasons, but my ACT is above a 32. Yes, I am a female. The difference with Cal and UW is that Cal is away from WA and away from my toxic family and it’s more competitive. I’m actually not in the middle of the pack for UW. My GPA is unweighted, but I go to the most competitive school in the state.
btw Cal is NOT my dream school, I don’t know why people are assuming that. I said I WAS interested in Cal and I still kind of am. CMU is the school I’d really like to attend.
I really would prefer not to go to community college since community college classes are considered easier than the regular courses at my school. Not to be rude, but most of the people who “drop out” of my school do running start.
@mikemac Spot on, people call me a pessimist all of the time. I’d actually be fine going in-state, but I kind of worked this hard thinking that it’d get me out of state and somewhere far away from my family.
@AroundHere I am fairly confident I can get merit scholarships for schools like Gonzaga and Seattle U. I asked a couple alumni from my school and they had nearly all of their tuition covered through scholarships. That’s great, but I want to go to a more competitive school and preferably one that’s out of state. The only reason I’m on College Confidential and asking for advice is that I have no idea how college tuition works and neither do my parents.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that you’re bashing your family (“toxic”), yet have no problem taking $140k of their money to fund your education? I second the idea to look at the full-ride schools so you can pay your own way.
This will give you a general estimate of your expected family contribution, or what colleges think your family can pay out of pocket. Most families are shocked at how high their numbers are. When you run Net Price calculators on college websites, they will return prices that more or less, but the range should center around the college board estimator’s numbers.
If you can afford your EFC, then you are looking for schools that are good with need-based aid. The net price should equal or even be less than the EFC at these types of schools. On the other hand, if your EFC is high and you cannot afford it, you are looking for schools with low price tags (those in-state publics you are set against) or those that give merit scholarships.
Merit aid schools are not the highest-prestige schools. They are the schools that are lower ranked, but trying to poach kids from higher ranked schools. If you need merit aid, you need to look at whether a school could provide you with the education you need, but you cannot focus on which is highest in the rankings. The top ranked schools don’t give scholarships to recruit star students because they don’t have to. In fact, families will make sacrifices to send their children to an elite school.
To see if a school gives merit aid, you can go to collegedata.com. Search on your school, then click “Money Matters” to see what percentages of students are getting merit scholarships.
It can be hard to find merit aid for an engineering student: A number of liberal arts schools are good for merit aid and have good science programs but not engineering. Looking at “out of the way” engineering schools like University of Alabama-Huntsville will get you significant money for good grades and scores, but the education is not going to be any better than you could get at the UW.
Before you go on the hunt for out of state and high prestige schools, you need to choose a financial safety option that you know you can afford and that you would be willing to attend.
I’d suggest finding a school you can pay for with merit aid and the federal student loan if you can. You need to be prepared in case they pull the financial rug out from under you. Check [url=<a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/%5Dhere%5B/url”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/]here[/url] to see if there’s anything that interests you.
Oh, and if you can get enough AP credits and do a year of study abroad through one of UIUC’s cheaper study-abroad programs, one of UIUC’s CS+X majors through their LAS college is possible for $150K total ($25K each semester for 5 semesters at UIUC + $25K for a year abroad). You may be able to make that work with their engineering college as well but I haven’t looked in to it.
Thanks guys, I’ll consider applying to some of these schools. When I was interning at a massive tech company I saw engineers from prestigious schools and public universities end up doing the same work anyway. Trying to convince myself that it’ll be okay is kind of difficult though haha. Paying for myself is probably less drama in the long run too.
You said you don’t need a full ride, and that’s great. But most of the schools on the lists you were given aren’t full ride anyway; they are full-tuition schools. You’d still need to cover room and board, books, fees, travel, and incidentals. Getting a scholarship for full (or even partial) tuition would make the cost of these schools fall within your stated budget, so they’re worth a look!