ASU has automatic merit awards based on stats. You can go on today and in 10 minutes know what they would give her. Also, very good honors college.
However, if Georgia Tech as the “2” school is unaffordable as mentioned by the OP, that means that any 3+2 arrangement with Georgia Tech is unaffordable.
ASU won’t be affordable. She needs to target big merit or big financial aid, which means the HBCUs and private schools with engineering programs with generous financial aid but a tier down from the top privates.
What about University of Ottawa with their bilingual program, or University of Montreal if she’s strong in French or one of the “French campuses” of Canadian universities?
Check that out
http://www.uhearst.ca/
https://laurentian.ca/
http://usudbury.ca/index.php/en/
http://www.glendon.yorku.ca/fr/
With the Canadian dollar weak compared to the US dollar.
Don’t discount Ohio State. She could get the National Buckeye Scholarship …$12,500 - year for an ACT of 29 or higher. And she has a shot at the Morrill which is full tuition or even a full ride possibly. Keep it on the list.
I plan on adding some Private colleges with good FA to our list but will still apply to Pitt, Temple and OSU. Pitt and Temple are our state schools and OSU has provided merit aid to individuals with lesser stats than our D’s. Every school is looking to fill a “class” not just individual slots. As such we are hopeful that our D will find a place to land that she is happy with and meets our needs.
Why would you waste app fees on schools that won’t get you within budget? That’s magical thinking. Pitt is expensive. You won’t get enough to get it down to $9-$10k. Same with Temple. As for OSU, only the Morrill would work, so keep that one. The OOS merit there won’t get you to an affordable, out of pocket.
Auburn has a fantastic engineering program. Your daughter could major in chemical eng and minor in biomedical eng. The engineering school has fantastic departmental scholarships to go along with merit aid. They also have a great intramural sports program and their student center for working out, swimming, yoga (any class you can imagine) is practically brand new and AWESOME.
Could you share the link please? I can’t find it. Thanks.
Have you considered Lehigh and Lafayette? Kind of reachy but both meet full need.
If diversity is a concern, RPI has only 2% AA students.
@AuAlum98 --there will not be enough merit at Auburn. From the website:
Heritage Scholarship
Requires a 31-32 ACT or equivalent SAT score and a minimum 3.5 high school GPA for consideration.
Awarded at $52,000 over four years ($13,000 per year).
MINIMUM 3.5
Even then, that leaves an additional $14,000 in OOS tuition left to be paid at Auburn.
Pitt merit will not happen either with a 3.4 UW GPA–at least it never has historically. The GPA unfortunately is likely to be the deal breaker.
ETA: I would listen closely to the advice of @itsgettingreal17 --she is VERY well versed in merit aid and URM. One can listen wisely to her experiences and create choices or proceed at your own risk.
@itsgettingreal17 You don’t know her finances. If 9-10 is a parents contribution there is always Pell, summer earnings, work study and Stafford loans that could push her into the low 20s. And you can always ask for a fee waiver. Additional plenty of scholarships at the school themselves, local scholarships etc
@gearmom I know only what the OP said. She said she can manage $9k, and $10k would be pushing it. A family with a $9k EFC is unlikely to qualify for Pell, and if they do, it will not be much. I was factoring in work earnings, work study, and loans on top of the $9k and Pitt, Temple, and OSU (except with Morrill) still will be out of reach. Let’s take Pitt at in-state. Tuition + fees + room and board is around $31,000/yr. Please tell me how she would cover the $22,000 short fall when she doesn’t qualify for merit aid there?
Honestly, I’m quite sick of people giving terrible advice to low income URMs. URMs are plagued by higher college-related debt than non-minorities because they are generally ill-advised. They’d be wise to shut out the noise and do their research. There’s been some good advice on this thread. Some of it has been down right awful and negligent.
@itsgettingreal17 I’m sure @Proudmama2 is a smart person who can run the NPCs. She probably already has notes. Yoga breaths.
I agree with the recommendation of WPI: They are very generous with women and URM and it is a wonderful school. As a Lehigh grad, I’d agree she should give it a close look. Check out Mountaintop Program–very unique. And I’ll throw out Rose Hulman as a matchy possibility.
Maybe, maybe not. See the following for the list of 50 percentile scores:
https://www.thoughtco.com/act-scores-for-ivy-league-admissions-788783
A 32 would put the applicant well in the 50 percent range of accepted ACT scores for every Ivy, so the OPD would be competitive there.
If you take the total number of kids enroll in the Ivy League, you get a total population of around 58,700. Of that total 4,755, or 8 percent, identify as black (Columbia has the most with 13.5 percent while Cornell has the lowest percentage with 6.7 percent). Dividing that by four means that the Ivies accept an average of about 1,190 black students per year.
We know that the total number of black students who do well on the ACT is very small. Here is the distribution and cumulative totals from 2013:
36: 4
35: 27 31
34: 68 99
33: 160 259
32: 216 475
31: 409 884
30: 633 1,517
The data is sourced from here:
https://forms.act.org/newsroom/data/2013/pdf/profile/AfricanAmerican.pdf
The total number of students who scored equal or greater than the OPD was 475, while the total number of of blacks who scored more than a 30 was 1,517. To put this in perspective, overall, there were more than 125,205 students who scored a 30 or above on the ACT in 2013.
While not every kid takes the ACT, most high scoring kids who would be applying to the Ivies will probably take it. However, even if only 50 percent of high scorers took the ACT compared to the SAT, there is still a very small population of potential black students who quality for an Ivy type school, and while the OPD’s chances of getting into any one particular Ivy are still relatively low, if they apply to a variety of Ivy type schools at different academics levels, chances are that they would get at least one acceptance, and need based aid and support systems at these types of schools is much better than the other schools mentioned on this thread.
@itsgettingreal17 If the parent contribute is 9.2k (if I understood this cash contribution), $5500 Stafford loan first year ($6500, $7500, $7500 subsequent years), 2k summer earnings, 2k work study and I’d bet she gets at least 1k in local scholarships. She is right about 20k. The gap would start there. So for URI (because we want her!), I think it’s very likely that she gets 15-16k for merit which puts her around 26-27k. Her gap is then 6 to 7k. Scholarships within her major are available. If you could bring that gap to 3 to 4 k, I think they could maybe consider a parent loan, and I usually never say that, but she is a strong student. I also hate to suggest this but if she took a gap year to work, she might be able to fill a small gap herself. You are correct though that some of these suggestions don’t work right now.
Something else to consider,at some places you can work as an RA for free room and sometimes board.
@Zinhead It’s not the test score; it’s the GPA. Many URMs with much higher GPAs and similar test scores don’t get in. I see it every year. A URM with a 32 isn’t guaranteed a spot at an Ivy and has little chance without a top GPA. Come talk to the black and Hispanic kids in my D’s competitive high school ranked in the top 10% (GPA > 4.2) with good test scores who didn’t get into a single one.
^^My daughter is in engineering and on a team. Hits the weight room 3 days a week and practices 5. On her team of 22, I think there are 5 engineers, 3-4 in the hard sciences, a few in forensic psychology, and the others in business or something like that. No slackers. She loves the structure that being an athlete offers her.
Study abroad would have had to be done in the summer or on a Maymester trip to England/Oxford (although if her team makes the playoffs then May’s out). There are also co-ops offered in other countries. It really can be done if that’s what the student wants. It may take going to school during a summer, taking an online class, or taking an extra semester if the student wants more of the ‘traditional’ study abroad program with a lot of foreign language and humanities courses. The student could also do a state university study abroad program and just transfer the credits. Might be cheaper. I know our local university offers a 6 week program this summer for immersion French (all levels) and it’s pretty cheap compared to a semester abroad.
@twoinanddone I think we’re trying to help with a financial safety for biomed engineering. At 5’41/2" (she’s the same height as me. a few more inches and we could have been model material) and mom doesn’t think a recruited athlete for D1 basketball.
Thank you for posting this as I too am concerned that the OP is being offered some overly optimistic advice. I would really like to find the link to the 2016 ACT data as well as similar SAT data, but I agree that a 32 SAT is not a “wow” factor for top colleges and that the gpa is problematic.
@gearmom Wouldn’t it be lot more sensible to target schools that meet full need rather than jumping through all the hoops you suggest?