Where can I get in, I am so lost ... though no Ivies since that is unreasonable for me

Ok, so I really need to be able to get a full ride, since without it I can’t hope to afford college.

@firstgencollege You should be aware that many full ride scholarships come with GPA requirements to maintain them after your freshman year. A college GPA of, say, 3.5 is much more difficult to maintain than a high school 3.5 GPA, especially in a STEM area. Please reread Post #98.

Let’s regroup…lots of questions coming!

So far you have applied to Rutgers (honors), Rowan, TCNJ, Ramapo, NJIT, Stevens, RPI, and Northeastern (EA), correct?

You have been accepted to NJIT. Did you apply to their honors college yet?

Have you run the NPCs on the schools you have applied to? If not, do that today.

Have you completed FAFSA yet and sent to the schools you have applied to? What was your EFC? None of the schools can send you a fin aid package until you complete and send FAFSA…some schools will also require the CSS Profile. Here are NJIT’s fin aid directions: https://www5.njit.edu/financialaid/howtoapply.php

Did you apply ED anywhere? If not, please consider applying ED to a school with a Nov 15th deadline. Also consider an EDII school, and others with EA. Make sure to check the fee waiver box everywhere you apply.

Have you sent your essays to @myos1634 for review?

Other schools you are/should be considering (some engineering, some physics):

Princeton (Regular)
Swarthmore (not sure about this one, seems good, Regular)
Lehigh (Regular)
Lafayette (Regular)
Case Western Reserve (maybe)
Skidmore
Bates
Haverford
Davidson
Hamilton
Colgate
Tufts
Any more?

Non-east coast schools:
St Olaf
Grinnell
Macalester
Carleton
Any more?

Run the NPCs on all the schools on your list, today. Do not apply anywhere that does not look to be affordable.

Deadlines will start coming quickly, please create a spreadsheet that has application, school-based scholarship, financial aid, EOF, and honors college deadlines. Let us know if you need help, you can PM me if you want.

Because OP has an EFC near 0, he should be looking at meet-full need schools only…need based aid does not typically have GPA requirements (aside from school wide mins to remain in good academic standing) as merit aid does.

If you’re willing to travel a little farther from home, think about Vanderbilt for ED 2. It’s worth considering for affordability, the majors in which you are interested and many other attributes. It’s a fairly diverse school in many ways.

Meet full need colleges are better bets than colleges with merit scholarships for a high-stats, first gen, EFC0 student.
There’s also no reason to travel to PVAMU when he got admitted to NJIT (as long as he applies to Honors/replies to the Honors invitation) and is likely to be admitted to Rowan with a substantial scholarship too. Between potential full rides in NJ and a university to commute to, OP is covered in terms of “safeties”.
Running the NPC on meet need colleges to find those that offer full financial aid packages without loans is a first step in determining where OP should apply beside these in-state options.
Applying ED to one of those - and I agree that looking for one with a November 15 deadline would be good as the NOV 1 deadline was rushed although it’s the most common - would seriously up @firstgencollege’s chances. I’m not sure he’s taken in how big of an advantage ED would be at a full-need/no loans college.

The problem is that admission to those schools with sufficient need-based FA tends to be more competitive (i.e. these schools are unlikely to be safeties).

I tried the NPCs for Rutgers, Rowan, and NJIT using a hypothetical low income family in NJ. Rowan came out to $3k, but Rutgers and NJIT came out to $16k or some such.

The OP should do the NPCs for his/her specific family situation to see what the numbers come out to be on the NJ publics and any other college under consideration.

Of course, once any suitable college delivers admission with an affordable FA or scholarship offer (probably means net price of $5k or less preferred; $10k would be an outer-limits stretch budget requiring both federal direct loan and some work earnings), that becomes a safety. As it is now, the OP is waiting for NJIT’s FA and scholarship offer – admission alone is not sufficient for any student needing to get net price below a specific threshold.

@firstgencollege

You will NOT be able to work a full time job at any of these more selective colleges. It won’t be allowed, and your hours are restricted to maybe ten a week if you are lucky. Eight hours is common. There is a reason for this. You will be working your bottom off as an engineering major. Your first priority in any college must be grades. If you MUST work to continue to support your family, then I am sorry to say that you might have to consider going to college part time. The problem with that is that part time students are not going to be offered the kind of money that full time students are offered.
To clarify, virtually all the very selective colleges do not have part time students.

If you must have engineering as an option, you are better off sticking with the colleges suggested earlier. Lafayette, Lehigh, etc…

Again, as @MYOS1634 has stated, you should strongly consider, and we mean REALLY REALLY REALLY STRONGLY consider, applying ED to a college like Lafayette. One, it’s not a plane ride away. Two, you will be able to easily study other stuff as well, if you want. Three, they would probably admit you. Four, LACs foster early professor access and you will get to know them more quickly than at a bigger U. Knowing profs is important. Five, their grads are very successful. Six, they would meet your full financial need if they accept you.

If you don’t have to have engineering but would be happy with physics, mathematics and similar, the world is your oyster. You can rest assured that all of the colleges listed in post #102 are excellent and you have a good shot at acceptance.

I know, but I’m not ready to commit, I’m worried that I apply ED and get accepted and then find myself accepted somewhere better, and then feel regretful.

@firstgencollege ED is worthwhile if you are positive a college is your first choice, or if you would love to go to more than one college equally and want to boost your chances of acceptance.

For instance, suppose Student A and Student B were equally tickled to attend any of Northwestern, Wake Forest and Virginia.
Student A might apply RD to all three, because they cannot choose.

Student B might say, well I cannot choose, but how can I increase my chances that at least 2 of the 3 will accept me? Student B might apply ED to Northwestern, ED2 to Wake Forest (since WF offers ED2) and Virginia RD, if they felt they had a higher chance of acceptance ED and ED2 than RD at the former two institutions.

Ok, you aren’t ready to commit today, but I suggest you do your very best to try for ED.

What is your goal? If it’s to go to a great college that will give you the money you need, you really should apply ED, because that is, by far, the best chance you have of getting money.

Did you look at Niche to see what students think of their schools? These colleges have very high retention rates for a reason: kids are happy. Do a little research on Lafayette and Lehigh and some of the others. Look at the clubs, the campus vibe, or even call the admissions office. Say you wonder if a student can get in touch with you so you can ask questions about the vibe, etc…

You can apply ED1 and ED2 at a lot of schools now. Seriously consider this. Your stats are good, but not super exceptional, and you have a lot going for you, but you also have a lot of competition. The early bird catches the worm. Being blunt, you are risking your chances by waiting.

In this circumstance, I would say that ED is best for either people who have the luxury of choosing a school they like over all others, or for people who really need the boost that ED offers. @firstgencollege , I’d say you are in the second category.

Also, if you apply ED and get accepted, you will never know if you could have got in somewhere “better” than one of these excellent colleges. All other apps will be withdrawn if you can afford the school. Will you regret it more if you don’t get in anywhere with the money you need?

@firstgenstudent I suggest you reach out to the regional reps of these universities/colleges you’re interested in and ask them for more guidance as well. For example, here’s the web page for Lafayette’s regional reps. They’re broken down by counties for NJ:
https://admissions.lafayette.edu/meet-our-team/

You can google similar staff for other universities

@Lindagaf is correct about the working part. The students at my not-so-rigorous university with many first gen students find it difficult to manage 20-30 hours of work with a full time load of 12 hours (needed for Pell grant or loans). Many of them rely on mass transit, adding extra time to the standard commuting time. A good portion do make it through and graduate, but many also do not. It’s one of the reasons that regional public universities have poor completion rates. However, numbers-wise, these colleges and universities graduate the majority of the students at the lower end of the SE spectrum .

The usual financial aid expectation for a full time (15-16 credits per semester) student is up to 10 hours per week of paid work during the school year, plus some work earnings during the summer, for an expected student work contribution of about $3k to $5k.

Note that 15-16 credits per semester is the number needed to graduate in 8 semesters (total 120-128 credits), even though 12 credits is the minimum to maintain “full time” status for financial aid eligibility (but taking 12 credits per semester will mean needing 10+ semesters to graduate). Credits are supposed to correspond to workload, with 1 credit corresponding to 3 hours of work per week (including both in-class and out-of-class work), so 15-16 credits is supposed to mean 45-48 hours of school work per week. In practice, many students spend considerably less time, but engineering majors tend to spend more time than those in other majors, due to classes with labs and projects.

“Alos, if you apply ED and get accepted, you will never know if you could have got in somewhere “better” than one of these excellent colleges.”

My suggestion is if you like the “better” college more than the other excellent colleges, then that ‘better’ college is obviously your #1 and the one to apply ED to.

If it is your first choice, it is your first choice.

If you have equal first choices, you have equal first choices.

You cannot have equal first choices, but have another different college that is your firstest first choice.

Sometimes you just have to take the best opportunity, and if that’s applying ED to a school which gives a big bump to ED and give a lot of money to its accepted students, then pick that school as your ED.

You are unlikely to find a perfect fit both academically and financially and you may miss out on a good opportunity looking for the perfect school, the one you like best. In the end many schools will work if you give them the chance and don’t hold out for the best (which really doesn’t exist).

“FOMO” is a real and legitimate feeling. It goes both ways, though. There is also the possibility that passing on the ED round could result in ending up at NJIT or Rutgers, struggling with a shortfall in your financial aid relative to what you would have gotten at a school that meets full need.

Here’s the thing about “need-aware” schools like Lafayette: for an EFC0 student like you, the difference between your ED and RD chances is even bigger than it looks on paper. The way it works at these schools is that they start out admitting the students they want, without favoring students who can pay all or most of the cost of attendance. But as they get closer to filling their class and exhausting their financial aid budget, they start to consider ability to pay.

Lafayette admits more than half of its entering class ED. So, if you apply RD, you’re not only competing in a larger pool for a smaller number of spots; you’re also being considered for a dwindling amount of financial aid money. When your application is read, things may well have crossed over into the phase where they’ll choose an equally-qualified full-pay candidate over you, where the reverse would have been true in the ED round.

Not to harp on Lafayette in particular, but it’s a good case study, and a school that you’ve found attractive. Most need-aware/full-need-met schools will follow this same pattern.

Now sure, there are the fabulously-well-endowed need-blind/full-need-met schools like Princeton. But your test scores are in the bottom quartile for those schools, and most students who are accepted to these schools will have significantly more rigorous high school transcripts. An aspiring engineering major at HYPSM/Rice/Duke/etc who has not taken calculus in high school will be very unusual. Even students with high course rigor and high test scores are more likely to be rejected than accepted. And TBH, a “better school” needs to be better FOR YOU - and your odds of happily and successfully continuing in an Engineering major may in fact be better at a school where your level of preparation is in the middle-50% range rather than being noticeably weaker than most of the cohort.

Outside of the super-elites… would you clearly prefer one of your EA schools (i.e. Northeastern or CWRU) to Lafayette? Or are they neck-and-neck, and you’d just prefer to have choices than to commit early?

Not really, I have no real preference. I think that makes it hard for me, I’m not super selective, I simply need to get to a college with good reputation that will accept me and allow me to graduate so I can work straight out of college (internships, co-ops, and the like would be greatly appreciated (I could use connections and things like that since I’m not exactly the open and the happy go lucky kind of person that ends up with connections via friendship). I need this to work out, I sort of feel as if I’m carrying my entire family’s dreams, hopefully I’m not but I am the sort to think that even if it is not true. I would do ED but I don’t want to have to worry that I picked a school not fit for me that won’t give me the aid that I need with the major I want.

Just keep in mind that if for some reason, a school accepts you ED and does not give you the expected and needed amount of aid that the NPC predicted, then the offer is not binding. You can turn down an ED offer if the aid doesn’t live up to the expectations set by the school’s NPC.

And I don’t think any of the schools you’re applying to have barriers to getting into your desired major. At Lafayette you don’t need to declare a major until the end of your sophomore year. Case Western has an “open door policy” - you can major in anything you want, no matter what you said on your application. At Northeastern, you apply to your major but you can easily change, with the exception of a few programs like Nursing and Physical Therapy. (Changing within engineering, computer science, business, econ - there are no real barriers as long as you’re in good academic standing.) Lehigh seems very flexible as well - you may have to show successful completion of some prerequisite courses, to change into a new major, but the option is there as long as you meet the requirements. I don’t think getting shut out of a desired major should be a worry at any of your potential ED schools.

Was there any appreciable difference in the NPC results, among CWRU, NEU, Lafayette and Lehigh?

CWRU: 10.6K net, NEU: 7.747K net, Lafayette: 4.021K net, Lehigh 5.720K net. Ok, so I probably won’t apply to CWRU.