<p>DS would like to study engineering, but will need great financial aid/merit scholarships and I'm looking for suggestions.</p>
<p>Stats:
4.0 unweighted
Ranked 2/154
Will take all the AP courses available (3!) at our rural school, but no scores available yet
SAT I 780 M/ 680 CR/ 680 W
SAT II 780 Chemistry 770 Math 1 800 US History
Good EC but nothing like Intel Finalist or anything ;) ; lots of volunteer hours, will be 4 year varsity track, 4 year varsity football, conference all star in football, band, jazz band, heavily involved in school musicals including the lead last year, honors choruses etc.</p>
<p>The money available from savings and our family will be around $5000 per year, on an income of < $40,000 per year. </p>
<p>He isn't interested in a purely technical school because he would like to get a little music etc. on the side, even if it's not in coursework. He is getting letters from Ivy League football coaches, but has no interest in continuing football in college. We are in the Northeast but he would be happy to go far away. In fact, he would LOVE to go to California but my understanding is that California schools don't have FA for OOS students, except Stanford which seems like a very far reach, maybe too far.</p>
<p>We're looking at Cornell ED, and Binghamton as a safety. Does anyone have more suggestions? Thanks so much!</p>
<p>for a financial safety, Alabama would give him free tuition, plus 2500 per year as an engg major. with a Pell grant, your $5k, and a small loan, he would have his costs covered. </p>
<p>the total award in merit would be about 110k.</p>
<p>I’ll add it to the list, thanks mom2collegekids . Fredjan, being recruited by the Ivies is a far cry from being recruited at Stanford, lol. But if we end up wanting a far reach, maybe he could give it a shot. I don’t know if we’ll qualify for fee waivers this year, though, and if we don’t, it will be pretty tough to pay the application fees for a lot of schools. We’d have to decide what is being hopeful and what is being wasteful.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, I just went to your link for the computer-based honors program. This sound very promising, thank you! </p>
<p>The Ivies will be most generous with aid, probably netting down to a few thousand per year. Always a crapshoot for admission, but he’s certainly qualified. The Ivies are not renowned for their engineering (aside from Cornell), but they are still decent and accredited, with strong recruiting. Plenty of music options as well. With their unbeatable aid for high need, one of them will probably be your best bargain. If he can get in.</p>
<p>For other schools, check the net price calculator at each school for a need-based aid estimate, especially if ED application is under consideration.</p>
<p>Despite its name, MIT has good offerings (and relatively heavy requirements) in humanities and social studies, although only about a sixth of students major in them.</p>
<p>If you are looking at SUNYs (New York resident?), consider Stony Brook and Buffalo as well as Binghamton.</p>
<p>However, even if he is not recruited at a given school or is not interested in continuing the sport, being of recruitable quality in the sport is probably a more impressive EC to college admissions readers than most high school ECs (including sports at a typical high school level).</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, he has decided not to do football at all, so no punting/kicking. This may limit his options a little, I suppose; I think his chances at the ivies would be very high if the football were in the picture. But I can’t help but be glad that he won’t be so beaten up all the time. I think he’ll enjoy college without football much more, even if he ends up at a less prestigious school. And as Chardo pointed out, most of the ivies aren’t ranked very high in engineering anyway!</p>
<p>How would one express that he was being recruited in football, but didn’t pursue that route? In essays, or does that show up somewhere else?</p>
<p>I have suggested Buffalo and Stony Brook to him as well. Binghamton is in commuting distance, though, so it’s very cheap for people here and definitely on the list.</p>
<p>Off to go look through MIT’s freshman statistics . </p>
<p>We’ve never had a winning team, so no there. One of the teams in our division has been state champion for the last three years running; everyone else is small potatoes compared to them! He has been consistently on the all-conference list but I don’t know if that qualifies as a high level award. He has started on both offense and defense since he was a freshman, but there’s not an award for that, other than sheer exhaustion every Saturday through the fall .</p>
<p>does your son have any med school interest?</p>
<p>You are right about the calif UCss…at a MINIMUM, they will expect you to pay $23k PLUS full loans (about $7k stafford + perkins) every year. that is tooo much for you…and not worth it when you have other options.</p>
<p>For CA, USC is a meets full need university and they also have large merit awards (although pretty competitive.) I had a cousin recruited for football there as well as Princeton. Went to P, but only played for a year as it was too difficult with his engineering major. He was also a very top student.</p>
<p>Alabama is an absolutely terrible choice for this top student. This student will get financial aid from great schools and lots of it. I just can’t see Alabama being the place of choice. He can do a lot better. </p>
<p>Cornell ED is a great option. Go meet the football coach. Cornell doesn’t award athletic scholarships and your S can simply choose not to play, or just play intramural. All money is based on financial need. If he gets in ED and they give you a good package, it’s a safety. </p>
<p>mom2collegekids: Yes, we are instate for SUNYs, but no med school interest at this time. No farm, no business, no NCP. </p>
<p>Brown Parent, I’ll have him take a look at USC. Thanks! </p>
<p>Classic Rocker Dad: I hope that he’ll get enough scholarship to escape with minimal debt; our goal is an ABET accredited degree with as little debt as possible, perhaps even no debt. Maybe Alabama with its guaranteed scholarships would be a nice safety for a kid who is a little unhappy about our local safeties. But yes, we would definitely shoot higher too. Your list has many great places to check out! Thanks!</p>
<p>I don’t think he will want to meet any football coaches, because he is <em>so</em> burned out on football and he wouldn’t want to get them any idea that he might play for them, just to turn around and say no when he gets there. </p>
<p>The thing with Buffalo and Stony Brook is that they estimate around 6,000 per year in loans, plus all the money that has been set aside for him would get used up so he wouldn’t have any reserves for an MEng if he wanted to do that. Binghamton would be almost free if he commuted from home. Maybe we are too worried about loans? We don’t have any debt ourselves so sending our kids into debt right out of college seems a burden we’d love to be minimized, if possible. But I would like to take him to visit those schools, and if he feels like he would be much happier there, then maybe the extra $44,000 would be worth it. Still, ouch. </p>
<p>Remember that Alabama with the scholarship would still be about $12,000 per year, as the scholarship is full tuition + $2,500, not full ride. However, there are other even bigger merit automatic scholarships at schools with engineering, as well as competitive scholarships.</p>
<p>Loans under the federal direct loan limit are usually considered doable by engineering majors, although some students and parents are more conservative about debt. Students can also typically earn a few thousand dollars per year at part time jobs while in school; if the student gets work-study eligibility, it effectively gives some kinds of employers an incentive to hire a work-study student over another student.</p>
<p>Post-graduate study in engineering is often paid (often by employer for master’s degree study, typically by the school (in exchange for being a TA or research assistant) or external fellowships for PhD study).</p>
<p>CRD has fallen off his rocker again and needs some help up.</p>
<p>alabama “an absolute terrible choice”??? My kids had better stats than this kid. This kid’s stats are very good, and he would certainly be amongst peers in Bama Engineering. My younger son went from Bama Engineering to med school…gee CRD, he’ll likely out-earn you.</p>
<p>I offered Bama as a possible safety. I didn’t say to only apply to bama. </p>
<p>this kid doesn’t want to play college ball so he’s not going to get a bump from an ivy coach if he is not going to join the team. lol</p>
<p>If this student gets into a higher ranked school that he likes with great aid than super…but what if he doesn’t? CRD…are you going to pay his bills??? (mdcmom…ask CRD for his bank routing numbers so that he can pay your child’s tuition.)</p>
<p>CRD…the next time you’re off your rocker, I suggest you crawl on down to Tuscaloosa where you might just get a little educated on how places other than MIT can produce excellent engineers.</p>
<p>He doesn’t actually have to play football all 4 years at an Ivy, you know. If he’s not interested, he’s not interested, but football is a pretty big hook at the Ivies, and since all the aid is financial aid anyway, it’s not like gaining an athletic scholarship in football, where they can pull the scholarship if he stops playing.</p>
<p>Anyway, here are the schools with engineering that say they are need-blind and meet full-need where your son’s stats are around the 75th percentile of the entering class:
U of Miami
U of Rochester
BC
Possibly USC
Possibly Cooper Union
Possibly Emory (especially through Oxford College in GA; they have a 3-2 program with GTech)</p>
<p>As for loans, a rule of thumb people use is that they shouldn’t exceed your first year’s pay.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I’d go that far, but engineers starting out average 60K (or close to it), so anything up to 40K in loans should certainly be doable, IMO.</p>
<p>Don’t be TOO afraid of loans. It’s a comment sentiment on this forum that you generally don’t want to take out more loans than the maximum amount of Stafford loans (I think it’s around $31,000 over 4 years).</p>
<p>Nonetheless, what PurpleTitan said is a pretty good measure, you don’t want more debt than what your first year salary would be. Look at the average starting salaries for occupations of his selected major.</p>
<p>^^^^
since NO ONE really knows what an 18 year old will get his actual degree in, it can be a mistake to take out larger loans based on an income projection for a career that may never happen. Many smart kids start in eng’g and decide it is not for them. To be a successful engineer, academic talent is half the battle. Being able to process info and discover/implement innovative/creative elegant solutions is also necessary. Many very smart people can never be engineers.</p>
<p>we see the same mistake when 18 year olds think that it is ok to take out large loans because they are premed. </p>
. Fredjan, being recruited by the Ivies is a far cry from being recruited at Stanford, lol. But if we end up wanting a far reach, maybe he could give it a shot. I don’t know if we’ll qualify for fee waivers this year, though, and if we don’t, it will be pretty tough to pay the application fees for a lot of schools. We’d have to decide what is being hopeful and what is being wasteful.</p>
.</p>