<p>Ok.. we've been looking at what some of you suggested earlier. Here is a review of the stats</p>
<p>male, white, junior, homeschooled, 3.9 GPA ( Still think it is kinda funny that the only B's he has made are from me!! All A's on online and dual credit classes!)
AP Stats 5 as 10th grader
APGov and APChem this year w/PA Homeschoolers (accredited, making A's and is feeling very prepared for the exams)
SAT II American history 10th grade 730
ACT 34
PSAT 209
Currently taking Spanish at cc and making A's. He will take freshman English there and Spanish 3 and 4 there next year.
EC's are family mission trips, youth group, heavily involved in worship computer stuff for services and special events including making his own slides/videos</p>
<p>Next year: AP Econ, AP Physics, AP Calc BC
Spanish 3 and 4 Eng I and II at cc for dual credit</p>
<p>He is a conservative Baptist and that is important to him.. ( Honest, I'm not making him go or look anywhere. I'm actually trying to broaden his horizons.) He wants to major in computer science. He could care less about prestige. He wants to get a good education so he can get a good job.</p>
<p>Baylor
TCU
LeTourneau
UT Dallas
Louisiana Tech</p>
<p>Does that sound reasonable? I'm making him apply to UT Dallas/LA Tech as they seem reasonable options. We have quite a few friends that have students at LA Tech and they are enjoying it and have GREAT scholarships.. Several of them are involved in churches. I'm trying to show him that you don't have to go to a Christian university to have faith.</p>
<p>Yes, obviously we won’t know for sure what the packages are until we apply, but looking at the websites;</p>
<p>TCU- is the wild card…Your application is your scholarship app, very vague</p>
<p>Baylor- automatic 15,000 with his scores, has church matching and some other options there. Cost 40,000- so probably get it down to 20,000 a year or so at least</p>
<p>LeTourneau- He would get 11,000 here and could live at home… so it would be around 10,000 a year. </p>
<p>Louisiana Tech- It looks like he would be good for this scholarship:
Presidential Scholarship
Must be an admitted incoming freshmen (all majors).
Requires: GPA: overall 3.0 (on unweighted 4.0 scale), and
• ACT: 32 or SAT: 1400 (CR+M)
•Unlimited awards which pay tuition, fees, and on-campus regular dorm and
meals for four years.</p>
<p>Ut Dallas- I don’t know, but I would think he would get something. It is only 24,000 or so a year anyway.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I could get him that far from home. I’m having to push Louisiana Tech. The only saving grace is that he knows a few kids there. He really doesn’t want to be more than 3 or 4 hours from home. That said, I just looked at the Alabama website and applying doesn’t look hard. I may have him go ahead and do that. He may decide to visit when he sees what he could save.</p>
<p>Just plugged our numbers into the alabama calculator and even with full tuition you are looking at nearly 18,000 a year for room/board, etc. If it does turn out to be 20,000 at Baylor or 18,000 at Alabama, I know he would choose baylor.</p>
<p>How about university of Dallas. It’s a small private catholic college. Don’t know if you have a religious preference. The reason I suggest it is many of their students were home schooled and they seemed very happy there. I also got the feeling they were trying to boost their stats by offering large merit aid scholarships to qualified applicants.</p>
<p>I was thinking of the Academic Elite Scholarship:
$8,500 per year for 4 years
The value of tuition in-state or out-of-state for 4 years
4 years of on-campus housing at regular room rate (based on assignment by Housing and Residential Communities)
iPad</p>
<p>I followed the link to the Alabama scholarship. Did you notice that only 8-10 people get that scholarship out of the 1,000 that qualify. I’m not sure his EC’s are strong enough to be one of the 10!!! </p>
<p>As far as the University of Dallas ( Catholic School), it looks like a pain to apply. Since my homeschool program isn’t “accredited,” I would need to send a list of books and curriculum for every single course I taught. Now I actually have that in rough draft form. But it looks like he would qualify for 18,000 out of 42,000 so more expensive than Baylor. I’m not sure it would be worth the trouble.</p>
<p>How bad would UT/Austin be on the religious front? I ask because their Computer Science program is really, really good, and you’d have in-state rates.</p>
<p>You might take a look at Austin College in Sherman, TX. They’re still affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and are quite a bit friendlier toward religious students than many colleges are these days (they even hold Sunday worship in the campus chapel). At the same time, they’re a secular school and the president is Jewish, so they’re not advancing any particular agenda either. During freshman orientation various local churches provide information to new students who are looking for a church home and for transportation to get there. With his stats and EC’s he should qualify for enough merit aid to bring the price below $20k. AC is also big on providing study abroad opportunities, and with their 3-week Jan Terms, your son can make three trips (sophomore, junior, and senior years) to Spanish-speaking countries for almost no additional cost. (Freshman year Jan Term is spent on campus.)</p>
<p>The big problem with the University of Texas and Alabama is size. They are HUGE!!! Even Baylor is bigger than our entire town. He just doesn’t want something that big…</p>
<p>DS applied to University of Dallas as a homeschool student and got very good merit aid. I had a course description list that I was using for all of the colleges and it worked. I found that a lot of the schools he applied had very specific requirements for documentation for homeschoolers. However, when I sent them a sample of the course descriptions, everyone of them said it would be acceptable. You might send a selection of what you have and see if they accept it. It would more than likely get him out Texas for at least a semester with their Rome program.</p>
<p>Baylor is Baptist, but TCU is Disciples of Christ. LeTourneau is non-denominational Christian.</p>
<p>However, Baptists are common enough that there should be a Baptist community at most reasonable size universities. For example, there are several Baptist churches near UT Dallas (find them with a mapping web site), and its [list</a> of student organizations](<a href=“http://utdallas.orgsync.com/search/]list”>http://utdallas.orgsync.com/search/) includes a Baptist Student Ministry and 11 other Christian student organizations that do not specify a specific denomination (like Catholic, Orthodox, or Disciples of Christ, for which there are also student organizations, as well as Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu).</p>
<p>You may want to point out to him that after graduation, he will likely be working with others of various religious beliefs, except perhaps if he works in a Baptist church. Also, many CS jobs are in major cities or metropolitan areas, so he will likely eventually encounter “bigness”.</p>
<p>It may be worth it for him to apply to UT Austin and Texas A&M anyway; he may change his mind after visiting (possibly after deciding that, once you get to schools as large as Baylor, even bigger does not make that much of a difference).</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Good news about cost
Computer science is one of the very best majors in terms of starting salary. NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) consistently ranks computer science as a top staring salary, in the $60K range right now. Unlike the average art history student, you can afford to take on some debt if that means you can get a better education.</p></li>
<li><p>ACT of 34, PSAT of 209, are very good. I know that my university would try hard to attract him; I expect the same will be true of the other schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Check out Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO. I’ve had a number of talks with their CS dept. chair, Dr. Tim DeClue, and they appear to have a really good program. Get in touch with him. ([Tim</a> DeClue - Computer and Information Science Faculty, Southwest Baptist University](<a href=“http://www.sbuniv.edu/CIS/Faculty/TimDeClue.htm]Tim”>Page Not Found))</p></li>
<li><p>Outside the south, Cedarville (one of our competitors) has a very good program.</p></li>
<li><p>If he would settle for a good Evangelical school that is not Baptist, there are a number of other schools with good computer science programs. Most of them cannot compete on price with a state school’s subsidized tuition, but see earlier comment about CS students being among those who can best afford to take out some loans if necessary. Examples are Messiah, Hope, Calvin, Wheaton, and Taylor (where I teach).</p></li>
<li><p>Financial aid is a funny thing and hard to estimate. The school that you thought would really give you a nice package can turn up dry, and the school that you thought wouldn’t be interested gives you a really nice offer. You just have to try and see what happens.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Southwest Baptist University’s computer science offerings are very limited (e.g. no algorithms course, no compiler course). Cedarville University’s computer science offerings are much more extensive (and it has ABET accreditation in both computer science and computer engineering).</p>
<p>Comparing curricula is tricky. One program might have a much broader curriculum and be a better opportunity to explore the breadth of computer science. But a less broad curriculum can still be excellent.</p>
<p>ABET accreditation is another interesting issue. In computer engineering, it adds real value. In computer science, ABET accreditation is done for three main reasons:
(1) You’re an engineering school that accredits all your accreditable programs, and computer science is part of that (e.g., Berkeley, MIT, Rose-Hulman).
(2) You believe that as you work through the accreditation process, you will improve the quality of your program: this is probably true if you do it well, but has an opportunity cost in terms of time that could be spent on other important things.
(3) You use accreditation as a marketing tool to gain credibility.</p>
<p>A significant number of excellent computer science programs are not ABET-accredited (e.g., Stanford, CMU, Harvard, Rice University). To quote from the Stanford page, “While such accreditation is useful in certain disciplines such as civil engineering, it has no practical significance whatsoever in computer science.” ([Considering</a> CS?](<a href=“Stanford University Undergraduate Major in Computer Science”>Stanford University Undergraduate Major in Computer Science))</p>
<p>Part of the problem with ABET accreditation is that programs with a broad curriculum that does not align with the ABET curriculum would be forced to narrow and retarget their curriculum. Many excellent programs feel this would be a step in the wrong direction. For instance, we (Taylor University) have an ABET-accredited computer engineering program, so our CS courses in the computer engineering program met ABET standards, but we would have to make changes that would radically narrow our offerings in order to become ABET-accredited for CS. </p>
<p>In computer science, ABET accreditation means your program is probably ok, but at present, nothing more can be concluded from ABET accreditation or non-accreditation.</p>
<p>Not having an algorithms course is a pretty big omission for a CS department.</p>
<p>Regarding ABET accreditation in CS, it is useful in a positive sense – ABET accreditation means that it meets a good minimum standard. If it is not present, then the CS degree program may be good (e.g. Stanford) or not (many small schools not well known for CS).</p>
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<p>What would have to be radically narrowed? What I have seen browsing course catalogs is that ABET accredited CS degree programs tend to have a broader range of course offerings in CS than those that do not have ABET accreditation.</p>