<p>Somewhere in another thread, a poster familiar with Ivy League school admissions claimed that a non-hooked applicant would need a rank in the top 2% minimum, top 2 (i.e. 1st or 2nd in class) preferable to have any real chance at such schools. Plus test scores higher than your son’s current ones.</p>
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<p>Voters in California have voted for minimum levels of spending in K-12 and prisons*, which tend to crowd out other things, including postsecondary education, in the budget.</p>
<p>*The “three strikes” law as it is written in California uses prison space very inefficiently.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh has two major scholarships that your son may be able to get but I don’t know how they issue them other than several people on CC have gotten them this year. I can only advise that you apply early.</p>
<ol>
<li> A full tuition scholarship which covers their 24k+ tuition for OOS.</li>
<li> 4k scholarship for engineering students.</li>
</ol>
<p>These two scholarships drop your COA down to 6k or so without personal and travel costs.</p>
<p>Iowa State provides scholarships based on your ACT/SAT and GPA. These can provide discounts of upto 10k based on your numbers but the cost is still about 23k unless you get their Washington Carver scholarship for minorities (Asian is a minority at Iowa State) which covers full tuition.</p>
<p>I do suggest taking ACT again and trying to get to 34 or 35.</p>
<p>ucbalum - Yes the situation is horrible in CA. No idea what they are going to do. But constantly you see people trying to get something on the ballet here. It’s just so hard when the tuition and the room and board are so high. If one or the other was lower it would make a huge difference. If you go back 10 years both tuition and room were cheap. They have just exceeded inflation by leaps and bounds.</p>
<p>texaspg - I’ve heard of Pitt, my son actually loves that school. The idea of going to school at the Cathedral of Learning makes him drool. I have not heard that much about Iowa State, but I do know they are very good for engineering. I get postcards from them every so often. I think if they had scholarships it would be awesome. The note about Asian being a URM there is fantastic! He is trying his hardest to get a 34 on this coming ACT but we can only hope. He has 4 AP test the week before taking the ACT. So hope he doesn’t get burned out.</p>
<p>One other thing your son should do when taking the ACT and AP tests - mark the flags that ask if he would prefer that the colleges contact him directly. </p>
<p>Create a separate email so college contacts go to that mailbox. Make sure this is the email listed on ACT website.</p>
<p>Watch out for any free applications that show up by mail or email and apply to them whether you have heard of the college or not. If they are offering you a free app, it usually implies that you are somewhere at the top of their food chain rather than bottom and they consider you scholarship material.</p>
<p>First, Mom’s list of schools is really not that long … why not have your son apply to those as long as Mom allows him to also have a list of 5-7 schools to which he can apply no questions asked … the obvious downside of this is cost and time to complete a lot of applications.</p>
<p>texaspg - flags??? You mean who he sends the scores too? Not sure about this flag thing. Yes applying to the schools that offer fee waiver sounds smart. Then you only have costs of mailing scores and transcripts. He gets all his stuff sent to his email box and lets me know.</p>
<p>3togo - Yeah I thought about Cornell and knew they had nuclear engineering. Just never heard about how they were with aid. From what I understand the NYC schools were a little on the harder to come by side.</p>
<p>You know when I think about it, there could be the potential my son could be in the top 2%. His class is 450-500 people so that makes it 8-10 people in the top 2% its possible. I have no idea how I would find this information out though. SF moved away from class ranking out right. But I’m sure they have the data somewhere.</p>
<p>When students are taking tests or part of their online registrations, there are questions about whether they would like to be contacted by colleges directly. When the scores meet a certain threshold, the collegeboard and ACT sell the names to colleges that are looking for specific type of students. From what I understand, unless the student chooses the colleges can contact me option, the information will not be given colleges. So I think of it as a yes or no flag on the background information. </p>
<p>It is important to have a separate mailbox for colleges so if a student can’t keep up with responding to requests, a parent can ensure the email is being read and deadlines are being met.</p>
<p>The New York city school that is infamous for poor need-based financial aid is New York University, although it does have (a few) large merit scholarships (but no nuclear engineering).</p>
<p>Santa Clara seemed expensive even with merit aid. Has anyone ever got full tuition there? I was debating it. It’s close and the campus is very nice. I think we’ll try to find out when they have an open house.</p>
<p>ucbalum - Cornell is another reach up there with the rest right. Just more in line with berkeley since they have the specific major. Definitely going to have to research it.</p>
<p>One thing that is very risky is trying to pick a school based on a single major, like nuclear engineering. The chances of your son ultimately graduating with a degree in that field are low (because he will either change his mind or wash out). The chances of him working in nuclear engineering 10 years after graduation are pretty low, because even if he sticks it out and earns a degree in that field, there’s a good chance he’ll change his mind and wind up doing something else (my memory is fuzzy, but didn’t Jimmy Carter have a degree in nuclear enigneering?). 17-year-olds have no idea of the working world, or what jobs in nuclear engineering (or investment banking or accounting or geology) are really like, and are very prone to changing their minds.</p>
<p>You can never tell who’ll get into Princeton or Stanford, but most kids don’t, unfortunately. if those remain on the list, treat them as if he will get turned down, and make sure there are plenty of back ups.</p>
<p>But do you recommend closing the door completely on the student’s desired major, making the chance zero?</p>
<p>Obviously, a school like Berkeley which has a good degree program in the desired major and is good in many other subjects is optimal. However, the cost constraint ($10,000 per year or less desired, while financial aid EFC tends to come out to about $23,000 per year on net price calculators) is a severe one that is extremely limiting even if major is not.</p>
<p>When I saw the title of this thread, I thought husband was concerned about his wife’s overinflated expectations about HER college admissions chances. Then OP goes on to talk about HIS choices. Good grief. The son should be running this process, with input from his parents. Sounds like just the opposite is happening. Feeling a little bad for this kid with two helicopters hovering overhead, each with a different flight plan.</p>