Long time lurker. Looking for help as my Indian daughter is a junior who is very math/science oriented. Wondering what to do at this point to help her. Thanks
Us citizen and we live in NY.
As a parent, you need to check your financial plan to determine what you can contribute to her college costs. You and she need to know this information when you and she search for colleges and run net price calculators on college web sites.
I will do so, thanks. Meanwhile, @ucbalumnus does any of these things helps:
She attends a very good public school. She has taken hardest course load. She has excelled in all subjects and maintain top 2 to 3% in school She is advance in math, only a junior who is enrolled in BC calculus and doing well in it. Scored 770 in SAT in 7th grade in math. Will qualify for NMSF based on PSAT scores. Next year will be taking Multi variable Calculus. Family income is around 100K. We are located in NY. Looking for suggestions for Indian girl.
Daughter has published math papers in junior high. Extracurricular activities are great. Lots of research experience in summer @ universities or attended summer math camps. Multiple Leaderships positions in school. In addition she has won few major recognition’s on state level in STEM field.
Is there any advantages in any college admission if you are a math/science focus female student?
Stony Brook (one of the SUNYs) has a good reputation for math, science, and engineering.
If she has top-end academic record, test scores, extracurriculars, essays, and recommendations, then she can certainly consider the super-selective schools. But check their affordability in their net price calculators first.
Are you eligible for either the Excelsior or STEM scholarships to attend SUNY schools? You say your income is around $100,000…if it’s at a certain level, you would qualify for the Excelsior.
Could you explain this better…as well as the STEM scholarship?
I do not know other kids scores or grades, but the guidance department indicated to us that she is doing exceptionally well.
Hi @thumper1 thanks. The cut for Excelsior is 100 K for this year. Our projected income is 104K this year.
My daughter was at the same level in jr year. She is a freshman in college. It is not as unique as to be a hook. She was waitlisted at her reaches, (came off one) accepted at her matches and given lots of merit money at her safeties.Pretty much what one would expect.
Has she visited different types of schools? Research universities (state and private), LACs, technical focused colleges like RPI?
Has she determined if she wants to major in engineering? That can affect the school list – some schools don’t offer it as a major. If she isn’t sure, she might consider applying to some kind of engineering summer program for this summer to see what she thinks. My STEM D did that – decided she did NOT want to major in engineering, which helped with developing her list.
Do you have geographic preferences?
If you run net price calculators on various schools, does it look like you can pay the amount shown? If not, then how much can you pay? That is a big driver for many students.
Sounds like the only thing you can do to help at this point besides finances is to make sure she gets enough sleep.
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There are some very good summer programs for girls interested in science and math, for example - Girlswhocode.
As a female applying to Cornell Engineering School (not Arts & Science) would give her a great advantage, especially if she applies ED. It would probably also be the case for Columbia Engineering. Both of those schools would give you very good FA, which is preferable than merit aid, reason being most of the time you would need to go next tier down to get merit aid. One difference between Cornell and Columbia Engineering is it is not difficult to transfer out of Cornell Engineering to other Cornell schools, but it is the case for Columbia Engineering. In general, as a woman applying to engineering school would give her a leg up. It is not the case at highly competitive liberal arts school.
Full disclosure, both of my girls went to Cornell. They were in A&S. They very much enjoyed their 4 years there and are doing well post graduate.
Some Cornell schools are land grant schools, which means as a NY resident you would be paying a lower tuition. In your case, since you will be eligible for FA, you will pay the same no matter what, I wouldn’t apply to those schools for the cost.
Your D is an over represented minority and her ECs look very typical for an Asian person. I would make sure she does a lot of volunteer work, especially leadership role in volunteer work. If she excels in some sort of performing arts then Princeton may be a good choice. Does she do any EC that’s not as typical for an Asian girl? (My kids are half Asian).
Its difficult to lend a hand without knowing how much your college budget is and what location/size of school your D might want. As a first step to helping your daughter, my suggestion to you would be to work on the parameters of the potential list.
Call me nuts, but I think the best thing to do to help her is make sure she’s having some fun; some kind of fulfilling social life, apart.from writing her math papers.
You can also help her start thinking about what kind of schools and fields may interest her (eg what she would want to do, actually with her math/science interests, as well as her other interests) and look into where you might get sufficient financial aid. This will help inform her efforts come senior year. And make sure she’s taken/ will schedule to take all the standardized tests various places of potential interest want. Every year some people come to the sub-forum of my alma mater with the sad tale that they did not take one of the required standardized tests.
My guess is the comments about female admissions “bump” for engineering schools probably pertains to a lot or most engineering schools & programs, but just not all of them talk about it or publish data.
Also it should be noted that many “engineering” schools offer more majors than just “engineering”. In particular, a number of them also offer various “applied science” majors.
While it’s true that at my alma mater, Cornell, one can switch colleges, my impression from back in the day was the engineering school does not like to give up female engineering students. That impression was based on one such student in my era who wanted to transfer to CAS. The engineering college put a lot of pressure on her to stay, and wound up accommodating her interests somehow so she stayed. Not that they wouldn’t have let her transfer, at the end of the day, but they weren’t giving her up so easily. Whereas, they didn’t say squat to me/couldn’t care less when I transferred colleges. She was also a top student. I wasn’t.
( got timed out, didn’t finish…)
I personally would be reluctant to exercise an admissions “bump” to enter a program of studies that was not really the one I wanted. I would not want to have to take courses I didn’t want to take, prior to the time I could transfer. I think your daughter would be best served going to a program that wants her that best matches her interests, both now and as they may evolve. Though that may well be an engineering school, or an “engineering and applied science” school.
I hate to generalize, but I will…so many Asian parents want their kids to go into engineering or medicine, and not always the case with kids, and that’s why I didn’t recommend 100% engineering school like CalTech/RPI. It is good to have options for this young lady. She may go into STEM (per her parents’ wishes), but may want to switch out after a year or two.
There’s a huge difference between going to an engineering school within a comprehensive university (e.g., Cornell) and going to a school that is 100% or almost 100% tech.
At a place like Cornell, a student who starts in engineering but discovers that it isn’t a good match for her can transfer to another program within the same university, staying on the same campus with the same friends and activities. Students at tech schools who discover that they have the same problem need to transfer to different colleges.
The rationale for starting out in engineering if you’re at all interested in it is that the engineering curriculum is highly structured and sequential – much more so than for most other majors. If you start out in engineering and then switch to something else (for example, a common choice is economics), you can almost always complete your degree in 8 semesters. If you start out in something else (say, economics) and try to transfer to engineering, you will almost certainly discover that you need to complete (and pay for) extra semesters.
[Full disclosure: I’m a Cornell graduate and so are my daughter and son-in-law. And my husband got his doctorate at Cornell.]