Should son apply to more schools?

Parents Forum
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<p>Could anyone advise if my son would need to apply to more universities or if he needs to look at other universities when he applies for college in the fall?
He wants to take up engineering (chemical or biomedical) and has come up with the following universities to apply to:</p>

<p>Reach: CMU, Lehigh
Match: Pitt, Penn State
Safety: University of Alabama (qualified for presidential scholarship)</p>

<p>his stats: 2040 SAT I (730 CR/670 M/640 W); SAT 2 Physics (660)
3.93 unweighted GPA (his school doesn't weigh or rank);
He will re-take SAT I and II and take ACT in the fall to increase his scores.</p>

<p>We cannot afford to pay more than $2000/yr for college for him since my husband got laid off from his job. Our family income (~$75000) will probably qualify him for need based aid from CMU and Lehigh but not from the public universities. We are based in PA and he will get up to $40,000/4 yrs scholarship if he applies to any PA university so PA schools are preferred. My son thinks that these 5 colleges are enough for him since he would rather not write too many essays. But I worry that he might need to widen his college search.</p>

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<p>If you’re looking for merit money I think you should widen your search to have the most options. One school you may want to consider is Miami University-Ohio. With your son’s stats he qualifies for half to full tuition . Check out the thread on automatic merit scholarships as well.</p>

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<p>I’d agree with him if he is absolutely happy with his safety.</p>

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<p>

If he is happy with UA as his safety … which is great option … why do you feel he should apply to more schools?</p>

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<p>If he is sure that he’d be happy to go to Bama, then I think his list is fine.</p>

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<p>Thank you for the responses. We will be visiting UA this summer to see if it is a good fit for him. His dad wants him to apply to more schools possibly top 50 schools in engineering- but I am more concerned with the cost. I am okay with the list although I wanted him to included other PA schools like Drexel or Lafayette. I just have this worry that he will get rejected in the 4 PA schools, although my son said that UA will be fine with him.</p>

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<p>The cc mantra is love thy safety – in your case, on the off chance ds gets rejected from the PA schools and UA is the only choice come next spring. I don’t think it would hurt to add schools, but as long as he can picture himself at UA and you can afford it, then it’s not necessary.</p>

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<p>I’d be concerned due to the $2000/year max you have that you can pay. UA will cost more than that for room & board, won’t it? Middle son had their max scholarship and UA still ended up more expensive for him than Pitt and U Rochester due to the latter giving him much better need based aid and merit aid. Pitt’s scholarship and lower cost + the state grant also came in lower.</p>

<p>I’d go to the college search function on here, put in his majors and scores checking the box for merit aid. Then I’d play with NPCs on some of those sites to see what would come up in the affordability range. </p>

<p>Clarkson U in NY comes to mind as one I’ve seen that was good with aid for at least some students.</p>

<p>I actually don’t think he’ll be rejected at Pitt or Penn St and obviously he’s in at UA. I’d be concerned about the $$.</p>

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<p>Don’t bother having him apply to schools just to have more choices. He can only attend one school and if he is happy with your flagship- great. The only reason to apply to more is that they have much better engineering and he can go there more cheaply.</p>

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<p>If that family income is 75k after the lay offs, your family is going to be expected to contribute more than $2000. You probably will qualify for need-based aid at the private schools, but not enough, and the direct loans are included in the package, so son can’t borrow to cover the gap between 2k and your family contribution unless you are wiling to cosign private loans. </p>

<p>You need huge merit, the kind that covers more than tuition because 2k hardly covers books and personal expenses. If you widen the search, rather than looking at top 50 schools, take a look at the sticky on the fin aid forum for schools that offer guaranteed merit.</p>

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<p>If there is a financial aid calculator on those schools’ pages, use it and see how much financial aid you will get. </p>

<p>For Pitt: the bar for merit scholarships has been moving higher and it is even tougher for in-state students to get the full tuition merit scholarships. It seems they prefer to pull in the OOS students with the full tuition offers. I would check the Pitt board for the most current info on the stats. </p>

<p>Penn State: is not known for giving out large amounts of merit scholarships especially full tuition scholarships.</p>

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<p>I like to have two safeties just so that if worst comes to worst come spring a kid has more than one choice, but if he likes Alabama it’s really not necessary.</p>

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<p>You’re fortunate to have good instate options. If he considers large Universities to be a fit, I think the existing list is fine. With his stats, Pitt and Penn State look to be admissions safeties. I don’t know enough about their scholarship policies to know if they are likely to be financial safeties as well.</p>

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<p>Drexel is not going to give enough money. Don’t waste the application fee.</p>

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<p>Thank you again for your responses. I feel reassured that our son’s college list is okay. We have accepted that he would have to take out college loans since full ride scholarships would be very difficult to get. In addition to the PA scholarship and UA’s tuition scholarship, Pitt ($4000) and UA ($2500) provides additional scholarships for engineering students. We have used financial aid calculators in each of these schools to see how much loans/aid he would need to attend. He would need to take out $8000-$14000/yr where surprisingly Lehigh would be the cheapest of the five and not surprisingly CMU the most expensive. We don’t mind applying for parent plus loan to help him pay for college.</p>

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<p>Is he potentially National Merit?</p>

<p>I think he could get good half tuition merit at Drexel. Future Co-ops would earn some money too. If he is potential National Merit, definitely apply to Drexel due to the full tuition merit. If not, and he is happy with Pitt, then I concur with MoWC. </p>

<p>Penn State is the school that I’d expect the least money. Schreyer is difficult to get into. With his stats he should try for it, but not expect it. Schreyer has great perks, but little (I think max $4k) in merit. The satellite campus will be less expensive.</p>

<p>Temple is offering better merit this year and should at least be looked into.</p>

<p>DS will be attending Bama. After the Engineering scholarship, you are still looking at approx $13k/yr if you are conservative. Consider flights cost, shuttle, fees, books and lodging. Once you visit and see the super suites it is difficult to drop down to a lower price lodging. Be sure to set up the tour thru the Honors College.</p>

<p>You should also consider visiting U of Alabama Birmingham (for biomed) when you are visiting Tuscaloosa.</p>

<p>I disagree with your husband’s top 50 strategy. I agree with your strategy and think the money issue should be the biggest concern. </p>

<p>I have heard that WPI and Stevenson offered good grants (on top of merit) this last cycle, but that info came from female students and may have been priority packaging.</p>

<p>If he would be happy at Bama or Pitt and you can find the financing for them, then you are good. </p>

<p>However, I’d push him to write essays in an effort to gain outside scholarships. My son didn’t want to write any more essays; his buddy did and wind up with another $4,000 from 8 different outside scholarships. Mind you, not renewable, but that is a solid amount of money.</p>

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<p>Are you sure about the engineering scholarship from Pitt? Last application cycle, they did not offer many engineering scholarships (in fact, very few were given out based on what was posted on the Pitt board). It is not a guarantee scholarship while UA’s is pretty much guaranteed.</p>

<p>A few years ago, Pitt engineering seemed to award the $4,000 to everyone who was accepted into engineering but they seemed to have cut back. Daughter applied and was admitted to Pitt (engineering major) with a full tuition scholarship but received zero award from Engineering.</p>

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<p>To Longhaul- Unfortunately our son’s PSAT score didn’t qualify for Nat’l Merit when he took it last year as a sophomore. He can still qualify this year to get a better PSAT score since he is technically a junior in high school. He took the option of graduating high school in 3 years instead of 4 anticipating that we may have to relocate because of husband’s job loss. So I don’t know what will happen if he does qualify since he would be in college by the time he finds out if he gets the scholarship. We will try to visit the other UA campuses but it seems that their merit aid is not as generous as the main campus in Tuscaloosa.</p>

<p>To NYCVAI- I think you are right that Pitt may have phased out the Engineering Honors scholarships. I read about them in some threads at CC. Hopefully our son can increase his SAT or ACT score to qualify for the merit scholarship. Thanks for pointing this out.</p>

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<p>UA’s net price after the full tuition + $2,500 automatic scholarship for engineering with his stats is probably around $11,000… which would leave him to come up with $9,000 after your $2,000 contribution. This is kind of stretching it, since it would require both a $5,500 Stafford loan and $3,500 work earnings (which tends to be on the high side of expected student work earnings, especially if he does not get work study eligibility).</p>

<p>He may want to consider adding an automatic full ride school with engineering for another safety, and perhaps competitive full ride schools in addition to or in place of match and reach schools.</p>

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<p>Just a note of interest. My kiddo was accepted at both Lehigh and CMU for engineering but was waitlisted at PITT’s engineering school. I was surprised by that.</p>