The other thing to consider is that state schools are required to reserve a certain number of slots for their feeder community colleges. The odds for everyone else are a bit lower (how much lower, again, is hard to tell because not as many stats are published).
Sorry if I came off aggressive, I am a New York resident.
re #19::
University of California, at least, provides lots of information for transfers
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major
Maybe some of those other state Us do as well, I don’t know.
As for NYS, SUNY Stony Brook used to have a respected engineering school. Buffalo too. I don’t know where this stands these days.
For Cornell, data that is not broken out by college offers limited insight.
There isn’t much these days, that I can find::
http://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Profile2017-Fall-Transfers.pdf
Here’s some old data from when they were still providing breakdowns, I can’t find this for more recent years
https://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000156.pdf
Your state system schools need to be the foundation of your list. Have you visited SUNY Binghamton, Stony Brook, New Palz, Buffalo, and/or Polytechnic? You should be a pro at spotting what you do and do not want at this point. (These are all the engineering schools in your state, but I did not dive into Mechanical Engineering in particular.)
Once you have some in-state schools as the foundation of your list, add some private schools… Can you go visit Rochester? U of Rochester is transfer-friendly and selective and Rochester Tech has a respected engineering program as well. I agree if you’re in Ithaca already for a coop go talk to Cornell. You really want to see these schools up close before deciding where to finish your degree.
Forget about Madison, UMich, etc. They really aren’t worth the premium out-of-state price tag for someone paying for school with loans! The prestige of the school name is not nearly as important as the jobs you are already racking up on your resume. But, talk to students from private schools when you race your car and see what they say about both the academics and financial aid at their schools. It’s OK to apply to a couple privates further from home as long as you visit after you are accepted to make sure you will stay and finish at the school you transfer to.
I’ve always been curious about aid from public schools and am probably overly optimistic. I recieve a huge amount of aid from SU along with an academic scholarship so I was hoping to recieve maybe not as much from a public school, but at least a significant amount. With public schools, will they only give you a specific maximum amount of aid regardless of your financial situation and if you can’t afford it you just go elsewhere?
And even if my family has an extremely poor financial situation, u shouldn’t expect to see a large amount of aid?
I don’t know much about financial aid.
Maybe ask on CC financial aid subforum.
You can also use each school’s “net price” calculators.
E.g., https://finaid.wisc.edu/award-estimator.php
But i don’t know if these work for transfer students, particularly.
Or if their admissions process is need blind for non-resident transfer students.
(because if it isn’t, they are more likely to reject you if you need a lot of aid)
You could call their admissions departments and ask.
This is another thing that’s hard to predict for transfers. Yes, the raw amount of aid for state schools is generally lower, but the price tag is much lower, too. SU is not known for great aid. They don’t even report their numbers on sites like Big Future.
On big future (from your computer, the mobile site has much more limited data), click on the school, then paying (on the left hand menu bar) and then financial aid by the numbers (on the pink horizontal menu bar). A big green pie is good (more free money in the financial aid package, the blue part is debt), and a higher percentage of need met is also good, obviously.
The worst case for you is places like UW-Madison – lousy aid plus the extra high out of state price tag.
The best case would be privates that meet 100% of need.
Some resources for low income students:
- College scorecard. Click on costs and it will give you the average cost for different income brackets.
- Debt by degrees aggregates the data by state. This is the link in my bookmarks, but it seems to be down right now: https://projects.propublica.org/colleges/states/NY
Some numbers of average prices for the lowest income brackets:
Name Avg. Cost for Low-Income Students
Columbia University in the City of New York $9,142
Cornell University $11,665
Fordham University $24,556
New York University $25,311
Pace University-New York $22,722
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute $24,151
Rochester Institute of Technology $21,570
Stony Brook University $8,770
SUNY at Binghamton $10,585
Syracuse University $18,149
University at Buffalo $10,146
University of Rochester $13,995
As you can see, Syracuse is OK, but there are better schools. Columbia has a ton of financial aid, but the SUNY’s are pretty competitive.
Thank you for that resource, there’s a lot of info on the site. U of M is the ranked #10 on the most generous state school. After completing there net cost estimator my estimated coast was about 12k a year, which is not crazy at all.