Where to Start? Colleges for Undecided Engineering

College Search & Selection
1

Hello! I’m going to be a senior this upcoming year and need help deciding where to apply.

I’m a white female coming from a household with a single mom (elementary school teacher, 45k salary), two children (my sister is already in college), and will be choosing colleges heavily based on the number/amount of scholarships and aid awarded. We live in Missouri, so I’ve been looking into S&T (Rolla) due to its cheap in-state tuition, closeness to home, and emphasis on engineering.

Testing:
I have a 35 Composite on my ACT (35 Math, 35 English, 33 Reading, 35 Science, 7 Writing).
My current weighted GPA is a 4.133, unweighted GPA is a 4.0

Coursework:
-Note, up until sophomore year, I attended a very small school with a graduating class of 40. There were very few classes offered there, so I decided to switch to a larger school with a graduating class of around 250-300.

Freshman:
American Government
Band
Geometry
Algebra II
Health / Gym
Language Arts I
Multimedia
Physical Science

Sophomore:
Biology
English II
Intro to Engineering Design
Micro Computer Applications / ACT Prep
*Pre-Calculus
Spanish I
World History

Junior:
*Advanced Composition / Critical Writing
American Studies
*AP Calculus
Chemistry
Civil Engineering and Architecture
Physics
Spanish II

Senior:
Engineering Design and Development (Capstone Engineering)

  • Calculus II and Calculus III (at a nearby community college)
  • AP Chemistry
  • AP Literature
  • AP Statistics
    Personal Finance / Gym
    Study Hall

Extracurriculars and Leadership:
Representative to the Board of Education (attends BOE meetings for my school and gives student input on certain issues)
National Honor Society - Treasurer (senior)
FBLA - Treasurer (junior)
Pretty in Pajamas - President (junior), VP of Service (senior) [All female volunteer organization]
Technology Student Association - Secretary (junior)
Mu Alpha Theta - Vice President (junior), President (senior) [Math Honor Society]
Spanish Club - Secretary (sophomore, junior)

I have also volunteered full time every summer in my mother’s classroom for summer school. 35 hours a week, 4 weeks a year, for 8 years. (Every summer since 4th grade)
I also get a lot of volunteer work done in National Honor Society. I’m located in a very misfortunate area- there are little to no independent volunteer opportunities within an hour drive.

Interests/Other:
I’m very interested in engineering because I have a love for math and science (STEM all the way!!!)
I would prefer schools that I would feel important at; I don’t want to be just another person in a large sea of students.
I would also prefer to do undergraduate research (learning hands-on is the way to go).

I’ve been looking at Missouri S&T (Rolla) because they’re a small school, have low tuition, etc., but I’m worried that I may be thinking too small for what I can accomplish. (Does the college you attend even matter, anyways?)
Other colleges that I have looked into are Illinois Institute of Technology, Urbana-Champaign (but it’s a big school), Purdue, Minnesota Twin Cities, and Ann Arbor.

Thank you everyone for the help!

2

For engineering, the school doesn’t actually matter too much, as long as you get good grades and have internships. Missouri S&T isn’t ranked that bad (although there are probably some better ranked schools nearby). However, since you mentioned your mom is 45k income with three kids, I would advise sticking to a cheap school like Missouri S&T (where you will also probably get scholarships). While Purdue and the like are very good engineering schools, it doesn’t make sense to go into debt for engineering undergrad.

What can you/your mom honestly afford? How much in scholarships will you probably have and how much debt do you estimate you would have if you were to attend a different school?.

3

–Sounds like Missouri S&T may be a good fit for you.

–If you’d consider going further south, you can look at UAlabama and UAlabama-Huntsville and the scholarships they offer.
–You should be sure that all schools you consider are ABET accredited college for engineering.

4

How is your PSAT? Your list looks reasonable except that UIUC is likely not affordable to you. You may be able to get scholarships at Purdue and UMN-TC if you are NMSF. For UMich, hey give quite generous financial aid to low income students from OOS now. Their merit scholarship is very competitive though.

5

Look into Questbridge and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation scholarships. Think Big-Work Hard-Achieve

6

Check the net price calculator on each school’s web site to see what it may cost after financial aid.

Be careful of schools which require the non-custodial parent information for financial aid, if your father is alive but will be uncooperative with financial aid forms or paying if he has significant income.

Your stats also make large merit scholarships a possibility. These lists may have some ideas, but check school web sites since some have changed:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/

If you are undecided in engineering, check carefully whether the school’s engineering majors are competitive admission to the major, requiring a high GPA or some such to declare or change into.

7

http://sfa.mst.edu/calculator/ suggests that with your stats and financial information, your net cost at Missouri S&T would be $9,376 after $9,000 of merit scholarships, $4,470 of Pell grant, and $1,500 of state grant subtracted from a list price of $24,346 (on-campus, in-state).

It appears that mechanical engineering is a selective major at Missouri S&T, though it is not that selective (college GPA thresholds of around 2.5 to declare the major; see http://mae.mst.edu/mechanicalengineering/mechanicalengineeringundergraduate/maeadmissionrequirements/ ). You may want to check the department web sites of other majors of interest to see if they are selective majors and how selective they are.

8

If your family income is less than 60k (as someone posted, your dad’s income may need to be included) , you can get good financial aid from private schools, I would really expand the search to a few private schools. Public schools like UIUC need money and charge full tuition for OOS and international students. Private schools that are close by like Northwestern, Vanderbilt have a lot more money to give out and I would consider a couple of them, see if you get admitted and evaluate the FA package. You have a 35/4.0 and are taking a rigorous curriculum with strong ECs in a single parent household, you’re an excellent applicant, don’t sell yourself short, think bigger, much bigger than you are now. Your safety should be S&T and another state school, then UIUC, Minnesota, Purdue, UM as targets, with NW, Vanderbilt, Duke as reaches. If your school uses Naviance, you can see the data on previous applicants from your school at the reaches, and if very few people applied, don’t let that deter you. Good luck!

9

I think you have a shot at Harvey Mudd as a reach, and it sounds like a fit for you. My daughter just graduated from there, PM me if you want more info.

You know how to run net price calculators on each school website, right? On the financial aid page, you should be running them for each school on your list.

The one thing that could trip you up at some of these schools is if your other biological parent is still living and in any contact with you; their finances (and their spouse’s) would be taken into account by many schools that give good need based aid.

In general, out of state public schools aren’t going to give you the best financial aid. Your list probably needs significant revision due to that. If you want to learn more about IIT, CC user @xraymancs is an excellent resource.

10

With your profile, you should be able to get excellent FA packages from private universities (like MIT, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Rice, Stanford and Princeton) and very generous merit scholarships from public elites (like Michigan-Ann Arbor, Georgia Tech etc…). You obviously want to apply to your in-state safeties as well in order to secure an acceptance you can definitely afford.

11

Rice

12

@Kyliex - Since you mentioned Illinois Tech, I can tell you that with your academic record, test scores, and extracurricular activities, you will most likely be asked to interview for the Camras scholarships and you are competitive for the Duchossois Leadership Scholarship if you apply for it. Just remember that you will need to apply before December 1 to be considered. Feel free to ask any specific questions if you like.

13

It’s important to choose a school with an ABET-accredited mechanical engineering degree. You can search for programs here:

http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx

You might want to take a look at Valparaiso. You would likely qualify for their largest automatic merit award, and would be in good shape for competitive money there as well. Small school, lots of hands-on, nice facilities, solid senior capstone project.

14

Thank you all for the suggestions and help!
For those asking about my father, he is unemployed living across the country (his motor functions are down due to a longtime brain tumor)
I’ll definitely look more into private schools and double check that they’re accredited-- and look at the net price calculators! :slight_smile:

15

@Kyliex Good luck in your search. NPCs are good tools if your family situation isn’t complex (such as owning a business) but they are often better with need-based aid than merit based aid. Especially if a merit scholarship is competitive rather than guaranteed - the stats for students winning competitive scholarships change every year based on the applicant pool.

Look to identify a few schools you are interested where you would be in the top of the applicant pool and therefore could be invited to compete for merit awards. Your stats are great, and schools look to have better gender balance in engineering typically.

Also make sure to understand the rules around merit aid - each school is different. Some schools require you apply by the early action deadline to be considered, so it’s good you’re looking at this now. Some have separate forms for scholarship and Honors programs. I’ve seen schools that require nomination for certain scholarships.

Another smaller school without a lot of name recognition is Bradley. They’re just getting ready to build a new engineering building - the school of engineering there is endowed by Caterpillar. Your stats will get you in to schools with better name recognition, but a school like Bradley could be a good safety for you.

16

A lot of kids with this kind of interest or ability are encouraged to go into engineering. And, for a variety of reasons, 1/2 or more starting college as engineers drop out of the major. I’d guess a percentage is due to finding out that engineering isn’t quite what they thought it would be.

Understand that while the products of engineering (bridges, circuits, you name it) are heavily based on math and science, the actual practice of engineering in most disciplines involves running software programs that do the calculations and follow the physical laws. It is more than a step removed from the things you say you love. I suggest that you talk to some engineers if there are any in your family or adults that your friends know, see if you can set up a day where you shadow an engineer, stuff like that, to see if it is a field you’ll want to work in.

17

Many liberal arts schools have strong STEM programs and the professors depend on undergrads to do research as there are no graduate students. Lots of opportunity there. I would look into Harvey Mudd, as @intparent mentioned, Olin College(psst…free tuition), Rice(Questbridge), Caltech(Questbridge), and Swarthmore(Questbridge). All have excellent engineering programs. MIT is a much larger school, but it has a very strong undergraduate research program and is also a questbridge partner. If you apply through Questbridge be aware that some schools won’t match(accept early action/early decision) students w/out an estimated financial contribution of zero like UPenn.
@billcsho Thanks for the info on Umich! I guess they are trying to change their image.

18

@Hamlon Olin is a great choice for her if she is absolutely sure engineering is what she wants to do. With only 3 majors, all engineering, OP needs to be certain because there are no other options. Also, why are you quoting free tuition? Currently Olin has half tuition guaranteed to all students but they have less money then they would like and even admitted 90 this year to help with the shortfall.

19

@MuggleMom Ah, my info’s a couple years outdated. They had to start charging half tuition a couple of years ago. Before that the school covered all tuition.

20

You have been getting some good advice here. With a 35 ACT and high financial need you can include in your approach need-based aid at selective schools. For example a nice merit package might leave you with only $10,000 to pay…but if admitted to Stanford / MIT / Caltech it might be only around $2,000 a year. Don’t get me wrong, $10,000 is still a great package…but only if your family can afford it! If your household has high expenses or your parent(s) need to save for retirement or if you go to school far away and need travel fare, or a specialized laptop, etc., even a small gap can become a burden. With high stats and low income you might want to consider travelling further afield, because you may be admitted to selective schools with generous fin aid policies.

Run lots and lots of net price calcs (unless as others have stated, the non-custodial parent has income and/or there is a family business). Owning a home can also affect aid differently at different schools since some include equity and others do not. And run them for all four years, because it can change – when your sister graduates, and there is only one in college, will the school still be affordable?

Questbridge opens in August but there are lots of fly-in programs that you can apply to, partly to try out campuses (big/small? rural/urban?) and partly to test your chances and get an idea of where you are a competitive applicant. If you are open to a women’s colelge you could include Smith, which has engineering.