<p>Mizzou (University of Missouri) has a nuclear reactor. One of the Class of 2011 parents had a son who only applied to schools with nuclear reactors. Short and interesting list! He’s now at Mizzou and is apparently doing very well.</p>
<p>Another friend’s child is going to Ohio State next year for engineering, and will be paying significantly less than they’d pay here in state for UC or Cal Poly because of merit aid. There’s some (though not as much) merit aid at Purdue. I like Pitt, especially because of their rolling acceptances and merit aid which could give your son an acceptance in hand by October. </p>
<p>OP, I’ll reiterate what happymom said–it’s your son who is going to college, not your wife. You wrote “But wife wants to apply to all these schools even if they are reaches” and “She wants to apply to”. She’s not the one applying. Why not suggest that she come here to CC and hang out around the parents forum? That way she has an outlet for all of her hopes and dreams and stress, and she’ll also learn a lot about the process and the money and all the rest of it. </p>
<p>OK, I see you just posted “We did get notification to send our scores to two schools.” Your family did not get this notification about your family’s scores. Your son got notification to send HIS scores.</p>
<p>Wife is korean fyi. They are so into education and prestige etc. It’s nuts. Anyways I keep telling her applying to certain schools is a waste of time and money. sigh hard to convince her. =(</p>
<p>Well, since you live in Calif, you probably come into contact with lots of professionals (STEM or whatever). I’m confident that many of them have undergrad degrees from non-elite schools. When I worked in aerospace in Southern Cal, the engineers had degrees ranging from CSUs to UCs to mid-level privates to elites…made no difference.</p>
<p>Your doctors may have their undergrads from non-elite schools. My son’s orthopedic surgeon went to a low-level Florida public for undergrad, then went to Duke SOM, and then Mayo for residency.</p>
<p>I recently received a PM from a MechE engineer whose son will be a MechE major in the fall. I got his permission to post his words when this subject comes up:</p>
<p>*I manage a team of 100+ engineers from Universities all over the world. It is interesting to see the correlation between the “quality” of the University they attended and on-the-job performance. There isn’t one, laziness seems to be the common denominator for bad engineers. Every few years we recruit high-tier university engineer graduates and they rarely do very well, certainly not any better than engineers from traditional universities. Interesting…</p>
<p>I had dinner last night with one of my geologists that attended Colby College in Maine. He said he went there because his parents could afford it and they would be “laughed at” if they had sent their child to a public university. He said he was raised (in Vermont) to believe that ALL public universities are party schools and to be avoided at all costs…ridiculous*
*</p>
<p>Two things to remember when talking this over with the Korean mom:</p>
<p>1) Her family and friends back in Korea only have heard of a handful of colleges/universities in the US, and assume that those are the only ones that are any good. </p>
<p>2) In Korea, it is possible that where the kid goes to college can lock that person into a certain career track which will determine the rest of their lives. </p>
<p>This means that the Korean family and friends are likely to equate Name-We-Know-U with a good future for your child, and Name-We-Don’t-Know-U with a bad future for your child. They really, truly can’t understand how things work here, and your poor wife is straddling two cultures and two sets of expectations. I’d encourage her to make friends with some second and third generation people in your area who are of Korean (or other Asian) ancestry who can help her navigate the emotional minefield that she is facing. For example my dentist: her kids all went stress-free to the state U while their first generation pals from the Korean Presbyterian Church were driven nearly mad by their immigrant parents during the application process.</p>
<p>Skyline is missing the “strongly recommended” courses (lower division engineering courses); if these are not taken before transfer, these may have to be taken after transfer, potentially delaying graduation (extra $) or displacing post-transfer electives. However, it is not necessary to take all courses at the same community college; indeed, College of San Mateo, which has all of the “strongly recommended” courses, appears to be a sister CC to Skyline, with all of the same course numbers, so it should be relatively easy administratively to go there when he wants to take the courses missing at Skyline, if he uses Skyline as his main CC.</p>
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<p>It seems common among people in New England states, New York, and New Jersey posting here (both parents and students) to have disdain for all public universities.</p>
<p>However, prestige-seekers in other countries or who are immigrants may have different notions of prestige than the “private is always better than public” attitude that seems to be common in the northeast US. For example, Berkeley seems to have enormous prestige in some other countries and among immigrants from those other countries.</p>
<p>A problem may be that prestige seekers won’t approve of University of New Mexico or College of San Mateo (at least not until he transfers to Berkeley).</p>
<p>It likely will take some digging around the web site or asking on the school-specific forum to figure out how realistic getting a scholarship with such a waiver is (if not National Merit Finalist), although it does not require a very large (otherwise) scholarship.</p>
<p>The heading of this post is “Wife wants to apply to many reaches …”</p>
<p>Well, I guess she should apply to as many reaches as she wants to. However, your child may be a different matter.</p>
<p>Basically – your child should not apply to any school that he or she is not willing to go to. By this I mean ANY school.</p>
<p>Your child should not apply to any school that you cannot afford.</p>
<p>If there is a school that you CAN afford but would not be willing to pay for under all circumstances, your child should know this. (For example, I think it’s legitimate to say that you would pay Private School Tuition for a Harvard, but would want your child to go to a flagship state school over a lesser-ranked private school for cost reasons.)</p>
<p>Other than this – Your child’s list should have safety schools and matches. (maybe 4 or 5 at least). Beyond this – whatever reach schools he wants to apply to are fine. There’s no such thing as too many.</p>
<p>Note that it is possible for a student and parents to have so many constraints that the list of safety schools could be empty. That would not be a good situation to be in.</p>
<p>This is not all that uncommon – prestige seekers (whether students or parents) are likely to be in that situation, because prestige schools are generally not safeties for anyone. But the OP’s cost limit (significantly below financial aid EFC) and the student’s intended major impose severe constraints on school choice, so adding additional preference constraints (such as the OP’s wife’s push for prestige, which may result in unwillingness to pay for schools like UNM) could shrink the safety list to empty.</p>
<p>happymom and m2k - Hehehe well wife isn’t that extreme. But initially when I started this search his sophmore year, she was totally against sending our child out of state. Alabama was a crazy idea I suggested. She came to US when she was 1 year old so she’s totally Americanized and a 3rd grade teacher at a public school. But when I make suggestions like Fresno State and Smittcamp scholarship I get the dirtiest looks in the world. Like I had murdered someone. I don’t know she has the dumb logic on whats acceptable and whats not. She does warm up to things. Lots of times it falls into I’d rather send my kid to Alabama category more. We just fear our overly nerdy child may have a hard time there.</p>
<p>ucb - I’ve been trying to force the son to learn to drive. The city has spoiled him. CSM is a bit of a drive. I personally went to De Anza which was an amazing CC. Texas A&M is amazing at engineering, just affording it or getting a scholarship sounds a little on the harder side.</p>
<p>phanta - I thought the same thing, if you managed so many people how well could you know them personally.</p>
<p>zephyr - You know with the prestige aspect schools like Princeton or Stanford with our income level would be cheaper than Berkeley. They have those much higher caps on income for aid. I know princeton isn’t known for engineering, but the lottery chance at free tuition makes people like my wife salivate. I look more at rankings and offerings. Also afraid of fit. We’ve only been to like 4 schools Berkeley, SFSU, Reed, and drove by Oregon State. I just think it would be dumb to waste money applying to schools that aren’t a good fit and a bit of a pipe dream.</p>
<p>City College of San Francisco has better coverage of Berkeley nuclear engineering prerequisites than Skyline College, and is relatively accessible to public transportation.</p>
<p>Quote:
I manage a team of 100+ engineers from Universities all over the world.
And that tells me he can’t really speak to individual strengths when he’s managing so many.</p>
<p>that’s not true. I have family members who manage that many or more eng’rs and they know their employees.</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree with you more. People have to recognize that to a large degree the Safety School is Plan B or Plan C. There needs to be flexibility in making up the list.</p>
<p>@ Santookie.</p>
<p>Princeton actually has an excellent engineering program. </p>
<p>But to your point – I see absolutely nothing wrong with applying to as many safety schools as you want (so long as the safeties and matches are covered). As far as is it worth the application fee and the time – only you can say that. FWIW, last year, my D applied to 2 True Reaches; 4 Matches (that had <20% acceptance rates); 3 matches (more reasonable acceptance rate) and 1 safety. </p>
<p>However, we were not expecting need-based financial aid … which allowed us to limit our list somewhat more.</p>
<p>Also, if after visiting – your child hates the school, it really dowsn’t make sense to apply.
To give an example – after we visited Yale with our D had a visceral reaction – she absolutely hated it. No problem, we crossed it off the list. There is rarely a shortage of reach schools.</p>
<p>Also, my unsolicited advice – if your child wants to go to engineering schools, I wouldn’t apply to a place that doesn’t offer this, no matter how attractive.</p>
<p>IMO when you have 100+ people to manage, it’s just not possible to know your employees well enough to judge each one according to which university they attended. Performance reviews can really only tell you so much, and personal qualities of intelligence, ingenuity, etc. are lost. Every time I hear stories like that, it just makes me think of the classic overgeneralization fallacy - a few cases that agree with their own bias are enough to give them confidence in making grand, sweeping statements. Perhaps if there were a serious attempt to study it (which I doubt has been done in all these stories I hear about), then they might actually see noticeable patterns.</p>
<p>Just for reference, I don’t believe that Stanford or Princeton should be on the list. I don’t think he stands at them even if he gets 2250+ SAT. He ECs seem too limited. However, UCB is a good reach option. He should look at UCs, CSUs, and Cal Polys and some generous privates. I don’t see the point in CC unless you are absolutely stuck on attending UCB></p>
<p>>Note that it is possible for a student and parents to have so many constraints that the list of safety schools could be empty. That would not be a good situation to be in.</p>
<p>This happens a lot. People want safeties to have all the “fit”, financial aid, and qualities of a dream school. When they can find any that meet all their criteria, they don’t apply to any.</p>
<p>If a safety had all the qualities of an elite, it would get so many apps, it would cease being a safety.</p>
<p>ucbalum - Yups he realized that, but then he thought the he would potentially get a master or phd. Who knows children. They’re so frustrating >.< Drexel and Northeastern gave him very good pitches at the college fairs. So who knows. Yups having a Plan B, C and D are always important. Just afraid of making bad choices even in applications.</p>
<p>zephy -thats some really good advise. Did your application process pan out the way you thought it would? Or was it a little on the rougher side.</p>
<p>Imsoambitious - No idea about his ECs being up to snuff. But I didn’t list them all. I can go into detail if you want. But do ECs play that much of a role in the Ivys? Is him being Asian too much of a barrier that he would need near perfect scores and be a valivictorian? I’m pretty sure he’s top 5% in his school. Academic rigor is there for sure. He took AP Chem sophomore year. He’s taken every AP available at his school and if it isn’t AP it’s Honors. He’ll finish with 4 years of cross country for a sport.</p>
<p>m2ck that some sounds reasoning. I learned so much reading your post and you’re invaluable knowledge helps tons. I’m always astounded when people take offense. Yeah if the super school offered everything people wanted it would no longer be a safety. The cat would be out of the bag. You know everyone is always surprised when we say we might send out child to Alabama. They’re like why? constantly. But everytime I watch a video or that dvd they sent us. It just makes me go wow. Why don’t CA schools have that kind of ability to fund the smart overachieving kids. It’s not like we don’t pay enough taxes or anything. In CA we actually pay the most for everything, gas, medical and auto insurance, property tax with sales tax. Atleast in places like Oregon its high property tax but no sales tax.</p>
<p>Once again, nuclear engineering. Berkeley is the only California public that has it.</p>
<p>Also, the cost constraint that is significantly lower than the expected family contribution from financial aid calculations means that most schools, including California publics, are not affordable unless they either (a) are within commuting range (Berkeley, SFSU, SJSU, Stanford, community colleges), or (b) give large merit scholarships (Alabama, UNM for stats; reach ones include NCSU Park, Georgia Tech President’s, Berkeley Drake if he is willing to do mechanical or mechanical/nuclear joint).</p>
He’s now at Mizzou and is apparently doing very well.</p>