Hi!
I’m a California resident and I’m trying to finalize my college list. I’ve heard that with engineering majors (mechanical) it is less important the prestige of the school and more important the internships and job opportunities you get during your four years. Luckily, CA has a pretty extensive public school system with UC’s and CSUs, so I’m applying to almost all UC’s and some CSU’s like Cal Poly SLO and San Jose State that are known to be great for getting internships and job opportunities, and a safety or two for CSU.
However, I wanted to know how this was in other states. I’ve heard some pretty good things about some OOS schools like Colorado School of Mines, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Virginia tech, but i wanted to know how easy/hard it was to get internships at certain schools.
What are some middle tier to difficult-to-get into schools OOS for Engineering? Is it worth it to try for those difficult schools since UC’s are already pretty difficult?
(I generally have little preference with school style, weather, etc but I’ll research any recommendations after)
Some info about me: 3.8 UW gpa, 8 APs Stem based classes like AP physics, ap chem, calc bc, 3 years engineering classes etc. I heavily participate in robotics club (co-pres) and girls who code (vp) and I love dancing, I tutor math and I’m a mathcounts coach NMSQT Semi-Finalist
My son also applied to university of Colorado, Boulder with similar GPA. He had 35 on ACT. He received some merit aid. He also applied to Oregon State, receiving merit aid.
What is your financial situation? That affects whether those other schools are worth looking at. The 3 you listed are very good schools. Have you run the net price calculators on of their websites?
My parents and I are willing to pay roughly 30k ish (including tuition, board, books etc) per year (essentially roughly the cost of attending a UC.) Unfortunately, RPT seems quite expensive, but I only mentioned it as an example of colleges that I’ve heard about. Its one of those colleges that aren’t Ivy level but it is still really difficult to get into nevertheless, so I wanted to know if those level of schools OOS were worth it. Virginia Tech and CS of M work around that price point so I wanted to hear some info about those schools too
You may well find the best available balance of quality and net price at in-state public schools.
What you’re willing to pay isn’t necessarily the same as what private or OOS public schools will expect you to pay. For any schools that interest you, run the online net price calculator to estimate your Expected Family Contribution. If your family income is low enough, some colleges might offer net prices that are competitive with in-state public costs. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-21/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need
Many of these are very selective; many don’t have engineering programs. Some unlisted schools come close to covering 100% of demonstrated need (or so they claim). For any that interest you, you can look up FA statistics in their Common Data Sets, section H. Better yet, run their online NPCs.
You also might find competitive net prices at colleges that automatically offer large merit scholarships for qualifying stats. http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/