Chance Me (Looking for ChemE schools in Northeast and CA) [NJ resident, 94.2105 / 3.8 GPA, 1350 SAT, <$40k]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US citizen, NJ Resident, Public HS (~1200)
  • State/Location of residency:
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers):
  • Other special factors: (first generation to college, legacy, recruitable athlete, etc.)

Cost Constraints / Budget
Upper-middle class, but will need some FA + loans, no more than 40k per year. I am eligible for tuition exchange on some of my schools

Intended Major(s)

Chemical/Mechanical Engineering or Materials Science (open to minor/double major)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

My school calculates GPA on 100 pt scale, adds 5 extra points on Honors, 10 extra on AP when calculating (ik its weird, I tried to give an estimate for a 4.0 scale).

  • UW94.2105 (a 3.8)
  • W 97.0218 (a 4.25)
  • Honor Roll each semester
  • Class Rank: N/A
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 650 RW 700 M (had an awful first time, retaking at least 2 more times)

List your HS coursework

(Indicate advanced level, such as AP, IB, AICE, A-level, or college, courses as well as specifics in each subject)

These are all the courses I plan to have completed by graduation

  • English: Honors English I & II, AP Lit & Lang
  • Math: Honors Alg II, Honors Precalc, AP Calc AB & BC, AP Stats
  • Science: Honors Bio/Physics/Chem, AP Chem (maybe AP Bio, will decide in fall)
  • History and social studies: AP World, Honors USH I & II (Self studied for APUSH exam, wanted a break my soph year)
  • Language other than English: Spanish I, Adv. Spanish II (dedicated more time to my other electives and took the gamble on 2 years of language)
  • Visual or performing arts: Symphonic Band & Wind Symphony
  • Other academic courses: Media I/II/IV (got approval to skip a year), Honors Robotics III/IV(got approval to skip 2 years)

Awards & Extracurriculars

Just gonna past my HS Resume because I have been procrastinating formatting my activities for the Common App yet

  1. Extracurriculars

  • FIRST Tech Challenge – 2021 - Present

  • Next Genpreneur – 2022 - Present

  • High School Music Ensembles

    • Concert Band (Symphonic Band & Wind Symphony) – 2023 - Present

    • Lab Band – 2024

    • Jazz Band – 2025

    • Marching Band – 2024 - Present

  • Technology Student Association – 2025 - Present

  • Chemistry Club – 2025 - Present

  • Engineering Club – 2025 - Present

  • National Honor Society – 2025 - Present

  • National Social Studies Honor Society – 2025 - Present

  • National Science Honor Society – 2025 - Present

  • Governor’s School of Engineering & Technology – Summer 2026

    • (adding context → Intensive residential research program at Rutgers University, super selective; 62 students made it in this year)
  1. Leadership Roles/Awards

  • FIRST Tech Challenge

    • Captain for 5 years on three different teams

    • Build Connoisseur Award – 2022 and 2025

    • Sparkler Marketer Award – 2024

    • Dean’s List Semifinalist – 2024, 2025

    • “Inspire Me” Awards (Individual Judges Choice) – 2026

    • State & World Championships 2025 & 2026, League Semifinals 2023, League Quarterfinals 2024 & 2025

    • CAD, Programming, and Outreach Initiative Lead on All Teams

      • Designed an interchangeable arm system for a robot, increasing productivity between competitions

      • Led vision pipeline development for autonomous programs

      • Devised a cost management system, saving $2,000 by the end of the season, a 128% increase from last year’s net costs

      • Engaged in the mentorship of 10 teams within the US and globally, impacting 65 students

      • Organized and led a community outreach event aimed at increasing K-12 involvement in local STEM programs, reached 300 individuals

  • Next Genpreneur

    • Visionary Board – 2024 - Present

    • Genpreneur of the Month, Impact Newsletter Feature for software work in Robotics and Mentorship of minority teams in South Jersey – March 2025

  • Marching Band

    • Drum Major 2025-Present
  1. Impactful Volunteer Work

  • Schoolhouse World Tutor – 12 Hours

    • Tutored students globally through Zoom

    • Certified in 3 subjects

  • Church AV Specialist & Musician – 236 Hours

    • Play the electric guitar during services, sound engineer during sermons

    • Children’s Ministry Assistant, organized holiday events and lessons

  • Next Genpreneur Mission Trip – 4 hours

    • Engagement lead at a visit to a children’s orphanage in Nigeria

    • Provided children with Christmas gifts and career inspiration

  • G.E.A.R. (Guiding Educators and Advancing Robotics) Up New Jersey mentor - 20 hours

    • Led August skill development workshops on Java programming and Intro to CAD

    • Created presentations on Competition Advancement

    • Virtual/in-person mentor to 5 teams, providing technical support and team portfolio review

    • Held strategy calls with teams in New Jersey to develop sustainability plans for their organization’s robotics program

Schools I’m already thinking of in CA

USC - would need a scholarship, but its the dream

USD - love the location as well

UCSD, UCB, UCLA (may as well apply to 3 UCs if I’m doing all that work on a whole separate application)

Occidental - with the ideal outcome of doing a 3+2 at Columbia

Schools closer to my area

Rutgers - academically a safety

Drexel - has decent engineering

Villanova - also on TE and prestige

My family are prestige chasers (its a cultural thing), so I would like to balance the two extremes, affordability with a name that can carry itself across the country. My goal is definitely to settle in CA away from them, so going to college there is my best bet. If anyone has some match suggestions in CA or the Northeast I could swap the UCs out with that would be great, because I do feel like my current list has too many <25% . Thank you for taking the time to read and respond!!

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Umaine will match RUTGERS tuition.

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Please have your parents run the net price calculators for each of these colleges to determine your estimated cost. Your budget is going to be the main limiting factor.

Also, note that the UCs will not provide financial aid to you, so you should consider removing them from your list.

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It’s not Northeast, but University of Delaware has an outstanding ChemE program, and should be a match for you both in terms of academics and cost. It’s not prestigious just on it’s name, but it’s very well regarded in the ChemE world (and has strong ties to the DuPont company, which helps fund some of the research and STEM stuff).

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+1 for the University of Delaware. It’s in a nice college town too.

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Super high reach at best to get the uncommon (if there are any) merit scholarships needed to bring the out-of-state price down to $40k or less.

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The only private schools with ABET accredited chemical engineering in California are University of Southern California and California Baptist University. The others are UCs and CSUs that are unlikely to be under $40k.

New Jersey public universities with ABET accredited chemical engineering include NJIT and Rowan as well as Rutgers.

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USC is $100k per year. They have scholarships for athletes, recruited band members and NM winners. These are tough to get. Your current SAT scores won’t make the NM funds.

USD can be stingy if you don’t have the test scores. It’s $78k per year.

The UCs are off the table. Your best bet are the CalStates. SDSU, Long Beach, Cal Poly SLO, Cal Poly Pomona or Humboldt.

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If you don’t live in California, every school there is a reach academically and financially. No $ aid to out of state students.
Villanova is also not generous with money.

Delaware was an A+ recommendation. Academically and financially. SUNY-Buffalo and UMass-Lowell are the engineering specialists in those systems and less than a state flagship school. URI will give merit aid to reduce their price.

The out of state northeast flagships will generally beat privates on price. If you want to look at some private schools, I’ve read that Clarkson and RPI have a lot of scholarship money available. May not be enough.

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U Minnesota is another school that seems to come up a lot when talking about Chem E. It is a well regarded flagship and has rolling admissions at the beginning of the admission season. Their NPC will estimate merit aid for OOS students, so you can go to their web site and see if it might be likely to fit your budget. Sorry it is not in the Northeast or CA.

But really it is hard to beat Delaware here… academically and financially, and from everything I hear, it sounds like they have happy students too!

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OOS UCs would be expected to be far from affordable, yup.

For the CSUs with ABET ChemE, I am seeing Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Long Beach, and San Jose State.

I was curious, so I looked up the CPP OOS COA which is here: $45,430.

For CSULB and SJSU, I didn’t find a quick way to estimate OOS COA, but I’m guessing similar to CPP? I didn’t spend a lot of time looking, but CSULB’s COA page seemed to be more aimed at commuter students, and SJSU’s page does not even mention OOS students… maybe these institutions are not popular enough with OOS to warrant making it easy to find the OOS costs on their web sites (and I doubt the OP is interested in them).

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IF this is really a safety, then it is a very good university where you can get a great education. I would be inclined to also include an application to NJIT. Rutgers and NJIT will be known throughout the country. For various reasons I have worked with, studied with (in graduate school), and otherwise known multiple Rutgers graduates, and they have all made the university look very good.

As others have mentioned, the various universities of California will not come even remotely close to your $40,000/year budget. In the unlikely event that you were to get into either UCLA or UCB, you should expect to pay at least twice this and possibly slightly more as an out of state student. I would not bother to apply to any of the UCs.

USC, assuming that you mean Southern California, is a reach. Have you run the NPC for it and does the NPC indicate that it is likely to be affordable? Don’t forget that you would need to pay for multiple flights back and forth if you were to attend university that far from home.

I agree with others that U.Maine, U.Mass Lowell, U.Minnesota, and RPI may be possible options. I do not know Delaware at all, but have heard good things about it.

Your list of ECs is long. This is not a case where the longest list wins. Instead, focus on the ECs that make sense for you. Do what you like to do and what you are good at.

But I think that it may come down to Rutgers or NJIT being the best choice that is within budget. If so, then these are great schools where you can get a very good start on a career in engineering, or on a wide range of other careers.

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I realized that your actual post also lists MechE and Materials as possible majors,

… which would open up some additional schools that do not have ChemE. How important is it that the school has all of these majors?

So, this next suggestion is a really wild one, but since you mentioned ChemE and Materials, and since you said this:

… it occurred to me to suggest the University of Manchester. My S23 mostly applied everywhere for materials science, and he became very interested in Manchester because it is an interesting and dynamic university with strengths in this area. They are highly ranked worldwide for Materials and ChemE, and they have some very cool facilities and interesting research. Yes, Manchester is not in the Northeast or CA… but it is far away from NJ if you really want to get some distance from your parents… and it sounds like your parents might be interested in international rankings. I do not know how much it would cost, you would have to look into that, but it seemed pretty affordable back in 2023 and they had scholarships for students from the US (and seemed to be pretty actively recruiting them).

Anyway, Manchester might not interest you in the least, but this was where my mind went when I read your original post above… :rofl:

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Cost of Attendance | Financial Aid and Scholarship Office says that SJSU is about $38k for non-commuters, plus $14k additional for non-resident tuition (30 units * $471 per unit) for a total of $52k.

https://www.csulb.edu/financial-aid-and-scholarships/undergraduate-costs-0 says that CSULB is $47-55k for non-residents.

Current Undergraduate Costs says that CPP is $45-51k for non-residents.

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Big UDel fan, but oos tuition is close to $60,000, I would guess $5000 a year merit (3 of mine applied, 1 attended). ETA, my UDel graduate also got into Villanova honors, for twice the cost (no merit, no FA).

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I hadn’t considered Maine at all, its certainly farther up North than my parents would consider, but college is only four years after all. I checked out it’s solid, I’ll keep it in consideration!

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Most definitely. I plan to retake the SAT until I can Superscore 1500. My first experience was not the best, testing center closest to me was a little too chaotic so I’m trying different ones.

My main reasons I had USD and USC on the list were because I have a parent that works at a Tuition Exchange school; USC and USC are only feasible options if I earn the TE scholarship. Banking on the fact that USC has a lot more exports than most schools + stronger scores in the future.

I did have some of the CalStates on my list when I was starting my CA search, but I was unsure of how competitive I would be, the term “impacted campus“ is a little confusing

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It’s honestly going to be a struggle to whittle it down to the important stuff. I will admit, most of it is just a really expanded breakdown of my involvement in FTC. All my other clubs can be summed up in one sentence. Its my most intensive activity that I’m engaged in all year, practically no time to even participate in other clubs! I’ll have to fine tune it.

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The school doesn’t necessarily have to have all of them, but I definetly want to pursue something Materials Science related out of undergrad.

Its quite ironic you mention Manchester, I have a family member that is always hyping the schools in the UK! (mainly because it was also affordable for him as an international grad student) UK university sites are impossible to navigate, so I’ll have to do some hunting for their tuition :sweat_smile:

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It is a really interesting Materials department, because the department also offers degrees in fashion! I believe it is the largest Materials department in Europe. They are the home of graphene, and also have strengths in many other research areas. Historically, Manchester was an important city in the industrial revolution, and because of the textile factories, it became a place where innovation happened in textiles, paper, other materials, and even computing. (I guess the history of Manchester as a center for textiles may be why fashion is housed in the same department?) Over time my understanding is that this morphed into strengths in composites, polymers, metals, biomaterials, etc. Materials and some other engineering departments are housed in this really cool giant black building (which makes me think of the monolith in the movie 2001) and the Materials department also has a lot of other labs and research centers. It is definitely worth browsing around on their web site if you are a materials fan…

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