<p>Daughter is leaning towards Chemical or Biomedical Engineering or possibly Appled Math. Any suggestions on good to great Engineering schools that ar recruiting women through merit aid enticements. She is open to attend anywhere in the country other than west coast. Here are the stats:</p>
<ul>
<li>ACT Composite of 36 (one and only sitting)-will use this, 2250 (one sitting) for SAT (710R/770M/770W)</li>
<li>SAT II Math - 800, Chemistry - 790, Lit 710</li>
<li>National Merit Semifinalist - PSAT score of 230, assume she will make finalist</li>
<li>4.0/4.9 uw/w gpa, I.B. program, all A's for entire high school career, will probably get 40+ points for I.B. diploma, will have 6 years of high school math up to Math HL, in second year of Chemistry HL. </li>
<li>Ranking: 2 out of 500+ in decent I.B program that produces ususally 5-10 HYPSM accepted students a year </li>
<li>Year round gymnast with some National results, but probably not upper D1 level and many top schools do not have sport. Commitment requires 22 hours a week practice with only two weeks off a year</li>
<li>Multiple honor societies, plenty of volunteer work, some academic awards, but not hardcore with STEM EC's. Athletics is her stress escape outside of school, but loves her math and science classes and has great relationships with teachers that will be writing recommendations.</li>
</ul>
<p>Honestly, with these credential, I don’t see why she would go to Texas A&M or Colorado. OP’s question is specific for Women in Engineering merit aid. I am sure she will get merit aid from any school that offer that, and she does have an advantage in getting into most engineering school due to her gender. She may simply look for top engineering schools that offer merit aids.</p>
<p>Note that it is for Colorado residents only.</p>
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<p>What’s wrong with those schools? Also, every student needs a safety in the application list, so an automatic for stats or NMF scholarship that is large enough can fulfill that for a student who needs a lot of merit money to attend. Many large merit scholarships are competitive, and the threshold for getting them is often much higher than the threshold for merely being admitted to the school (admission without enough money is equivalent to a rejection).</p>
<p>Yes, these are fine schools and one do need safety schools, but one still needs to be selective. With these credential, safeties would be like Purdue, UT Austin, UMN, WISC, and perhaps UIUC, particularly for ChemE.</p>
<p>Safeties must be affordable. The OP has not mentioned state of residency or actual cost constraints. But the seeking of merit money implies that need-based financial aid will not be sufficient, especially at out-of-state public schools. So only schools with guaranteed-for-stats-or-NM-status large-enough merit scholarships can be safeties (those with competitive merit money may be matches or reaches for the merit money). Others might be safeties for admission only, but won’t be affordable for sure, so they cannot be actual safeties.</p>
<p>Most tippy top schools don’t offer merit scholarships, just need-based FA (Financial Aid). But those stats will be very helpful for getting merit scholarships at the vast majority of schools. </p>
<p>If she likes the idea of experiential learning (co-op program), check into Northeastern in Boston. I think they still have full tuition scholarship for NMF.</p>
<p>I’ve heard anecdotally that women in engineering have better chances for merit aid at tech schools, but I don’t know where you could find actual data for individual schools, since I doubt the merit aid percentages are broken down by gender. </p>
<p>My suggestion is to look for colleges that offer a lot of merit aid. You can determine the average award amount and % of students that receive merit aid from public sources (such as NCES College Navigator). Then, also look for schools where the male/female ratio leans male, and where women have a higher acceptance rate then men. </p>
<p>RPI comes to mind, since I know they offer merit aid.</p>
<p>Besides A&M, for engineering I would explore USC, Boston University and Georgia Tech for merit scholarships. Also don’t forget Olin and Cooper Union as top choices. Mudd also has very good merit scholarships</p>
<p>Northwestern offers good NMF aid and has strong engineering program. JHU for biomedical engineering. Carnegie Mellon. Lots of good discussion on these boards of full rides at BAMA for NMF and others, does it have good engineering?</p>
<p>Both Alabama and Oklahoma have good ChemE programs. One of the girls in my sorority is an NMF chemical engineering major who’s been more than challenged by OU’s program. Upon graduation, she’ll likely work for one of the big oil companies.</p>
<p>“Mudd also has very good merit scholarships” - As of a few years ago, the highest general merit scholarship at Mudd was $10K/yr. That’s better than nada, but it doesn’t put much dent in $60K/yr expenses. There were also a few higher awards, but highly competitive.</p>
<p>2prepMom, My memory is that JHU and CMU did not offer large merit based scholarships. I cant remember if NU offered any merit scholarships other than the couple of thousand or so to NMFs. </p>
<p>I think Engineering program at BAMA is okay but nationally not as strong in some key measures as A&M.</p>
<p>coloradomom, you are right there are just 8 full tuition President scholarships at Mudd that are very competitive, but OP’s daughter has a 36 on the ACT and 4.0 GPA with nearly perfect SAT Subject Test scores, so could make it. </p>