What is your budget?
If you parents are paying half - that’s a big difference if a school is $100K and you are paying $50K and you can’t - or a school is $30K and you are paying $15K - which you still can’t.
Pitt is over $60K. Unless you have $100K saved, how would you attend? That won’t cover you but a part time job or summer job may the rest.
So please get your budget under control - that’s step one. Step two, when you get to college - control your rigor. Yes, engineering is more regimented but it seems like you go too strongly.
I assume you are talking about VCU or GMU as assured. If you wanted EE, you could also look at CNU. So that’s fine.
If you wanted other low cost - but you have to reach out to see if they use weighted or unweighted GPA because they don’t say - but U of Alabama would be low 20s - so you might be able to afford that. It’s an outstanding program. UAH is another that could be low cost and Mississippi State too. WVU uses weighted - and would be high 20s closer to home. Marshall, another WV school, could work. West Carolina has EE and then a regular engineering degree that’s certified and is also mid 20s.
These are low cost. When you have a budget and you haven’ said what it is, but you build for budget. Not name. But if you don’t qualify for aid, well you can take out $5500 in loans the first year and while your parents can co sign for more, any more is too much. So that’s step one.
Step two -
I would say you have no chance at Stanford, MIT, Yale, CMU and Vandy. I’d say you have near zero shot at UVA and Purdue. I’d say - not zero - but not a good shot - at Va Tech. Penn State and GW are both “possible” with Penn State much better odds but how would you afford either? Frankly, they’re substitutional with the schools I listed above - which will cost much less.
For example, for EE, Penn State reports 22 salaries at $80,205. They don’t report a knowledge rate (meaning what % of kids they capture. Alabama shows 46 responses, which they say is 94% of students, at a salary of $86,678. For Mech E, PSU shows $80,842 while Bama shows $81,294.
Where you go for engineering, mainly doesn’t matter short of a few schools.
So unless you’re ok with VCU or GMU, you need to update your list.
But you need to have a discussion with your folks about paying for college. If they say you have more I agree a Lehigh is a reasonable reach. I wouldn’t expect you to get in.
But I think RPI would be a reasonable school with a decent chance of getting in. Syracuse would be a tad easier, similar to Pitt.
For the large public, I don’t think you’d get into an Ohio State and unlikely a UMN but a UMN would be a better bet. They would cost less than PSU but not cheap. But you can go for cheap to substitutional schools. UCF might be another.
It’s all fun to talk about - but until you have a true budget and not a generic statement, it’s hard to know - because it’d be awesome to go to Stanford, but where are you going to come up with $50K a year x 4, etc. Same with GW - which isn’t known for engineering. And Vandy, which you won’t sniff, but local kids actually choose UTK, Auburn or Bama over Vandy if they truly want to be engineers.
But first, you have to be realistic before looking at any out of state schools - but the ones I gave you, with merit, likely will be similar or in some cases less than your in-state publics - for example, UVA is $50K in state for engineering and Bama is less than half out of state if they use weighted GPA (you need a 3.5) so you have to ask them as they don’t list it - so you actually save money going out of state if they do.. WVU would be a bit over half of UVA - so OOS is cheaper than in state, etc. They do use weighted GPA.
Good luck.
