Chance for: CMU, Penn M&T, MIT, Cal EECS, Dartmouth, GT, UIUC, NYU CAS (CS+Econ). Recommend: Schools to ED to as well as to apply for in general. Also, how much would a B in BC Calculus hurt me?
The suggestions above about confirming with your parents how much per year they can afford to spend are totally spot on. For example, let’s say your household income is $200k/year, but that might not necessarily mean that they can afford $70k/year for college for 4 years.
So until you know what you and your parents can afford to pay, then you absolutely should not apply ED to ANYWHERE.
Once you know what your parents can afford to pay per year, THEN the next step is to go to the websites of each of the schools you’re interested and plug in your family’s financial #s in the NPC (Net Price Calculator). If the NPC ends up greater than what you can afford to pay per year, then you should probably cross that school off of the list. Pay attention to whether the school’s NPC states that a bunch of your family’s financial aid would be in the form of loans, though…you might not want, for example, $50,000/year of student & parent loans ($200,000 at the end of 4 years…that’s a mortgage payment each month).
A true “safety” school, in my opinion is one in which: (a) you know that you’re a shoe in to get admitted to; (b) you & your family can afford; and (c) a school which you could see yourself spending 4 years of your life at.
Let’s say you’re a shoe in to get admitted to School A, but you later find out that you really can’t afford it. Then it’s not a safety school.
Consider, instead, University of Alabama - Huntsville. Let’s say that your parents tell you that they can afford $25-30k/year…thus leaving you thinking, “OMG, I’m not going to be able to afford any Top 20 schools!” I would encourage you to, in that situation, think outside the box a little bit. Bear with me for a sec while I explain…
UAH is a STEM-focused university. In the engineering world, it has a good reputation. They don’t call Huntsville “Rocket City” for nothing. LOTS of tech companies love to hire engineering grads from UAH. There are a LOT of opportunities for internships at defense industry companies through UAH…many engineering students end up doing a 1-semester “coop” internship at one of those local companies (places like Northrup, Lockheed, etc., etc.). OOS cost of attendance for tuition, room & board is about $32,000. Let’s say your parents said, “Hey, we can pay $25k, but not $32k.”
Given your stats, though, you’d qualify for one of their top OOS merit scholarships → UAH - Admission & Aid - Scholarships. This could result in your tuition, room & board cost being $0 - ~$14k-$16k.
That’s a heck of a lot better than paying $78,000/year.
If you were my kid and you told me that you wanted to work on exciting cutting edge stuff in engineering AND if there were cost constraints to college, I’d be telling you to go apply there as well.