My daughter is a junior and wants to major in chemical engineering. What colleges would offer her money and be a good fit? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
UW GPA: 3.89
W GPA: 4.3
Rank: 112/546
AP classes (at the end of senior year): 10
Dual Enrollment classes (at the end of senior year): 3
ACT: 32
SAT: 1350
By “good fit”, are there any criteria besides having the major and being under a certain price (which is?)?
Where do you live? Often the best merit come from regional universities or instate publics. Look at schools where her stats are above the 75th percentile for test scores/GPA.
We live in Florida
We live in FL. She wants a smaller school. She liked UF but said it felt too big/overwhelming. Not sure she could get in based on her scores anyway. We have FL prepaid and would be able to spend another 10k per year
She should retest
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21089443/#Comment_21089443 may have a few smaller schools with chemical engineering and automatic full tuition or full ride scholarships.
At Florida tech she’d get a merit award of about $25k*, FRAG of $3300, Bright futures of about $7k. You can use the prepaid but it will be calculated for a private school (about what full tuition would be at UF, so about $6500 per year).
- the merit awards seem to change every year and it's hard to keep up with what the current version is. This year they awarded 60 full tuition scholarships to celebrate the 60th year of FL Tech. Next year the awards will be different.
However, nothing will come in cheaper than a Florida Public with BF. BF now covers tuition, fees, and books. You could use prepaid and then use BF for room and board. If she goes to UCF (even bigger than UF), she’d likely get merit and still get to use FPP and BF. USF has chemical engineering.
The state of Florida has 5 ABET accredited programs:
Florida A&M University >Tallahassee, FL, US
Florida Institute of Technology >Melbourne, FL, US
Florida State University >Tallahassee, FL, US
University of Florida >Gainesville, FL, US
University of South Florida >Tampa, FL, US
FIT (see post #7) is the smallest and only private university on the list.
You can expect significant merit aid at the other public universities, with the exception of UF.
For example, at USF, she already qualifies for it’s highest level merit award (without needing to retake any test).
http://www.usf.edu/admissions/freshmen/admissions-scholarships/
She also would likely qualify for USF’s honor college, which also comes with an additional scholarship that stacks with the Presidential award, and may help the school feel “smaller”.
By the way, I would recommend touring FIT and USF (and it’s honor’s program), and perhaps FSU/FAMU. She should apply to UF (it’s still the best program in the state) and a few of the other schools. It’s not uncommon for students to pick USF over UF, simply best on the merit $.
If applying to USF, apply early (they use rolling admissions), while they still have merit $ available (Sept-Nov).