As your budget is $40k, he can easily go OOS. No point forcing what’s not desired.
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York College of Pennsylvania has ABET-accredited Civil Engineering as well as various business degrees. COA is much lower than many privates and they give merit. May be smaller than your son is looking for (~3000 students) and D3 sports.
Shippensburg University (one of the PASSHE schools) has ABET-accredited Civil Engineering and an AACSB-accredited business school. Out of state tuition is not much more than instate. OOS COA (tuition, fees, room, and board) is ~ $28,000 and merit is available. ~4000 students and D2 sports.
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Thank you. I suggested Boise State and Montanana but so far he is ehhhh and he feels it is in the middle of nowhere. I have visions of the Yellowstone show and mountains, he does not.
At this point I told him we will do what I did with his sister, apply to lots of colleges. Once we start he will know how many he can handle. Just need to pick some solid targets.
Applying is cheaper than visiting all these far away places. And after living through college app season once I know that you never know what the outcome will be. In some cases it’s like throwing darts at a wall. I’m still shocked at some high stats kids who were rejected from every school they applied to, even “shoo-ins.” Save money visiting until after you are accepted esp to far away places. Luckily my DD got in to all but one college (the closest, affordable, but most selective 
) Interestingly enough the school she chose we’d never visited but it immediately felt like home. Saving the travel money to revisit that school and the other contenders multiple times before deciding was the right financial decision for us.
Thank you so much for this link. While not a guaranteed amount it sure does help when guesstimating and calculating cost without loans.
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You might see what the merit looks at University of Denver. Definitely low humidity 
and they have the majors he’s interested in. I think they offer merit pretty widely and you could check their NPC
It’s a great mid-sized school with fun sports (perennial national contender for hockey, lacrosse and soccer
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ODU? Though it’s just on the edge of a bunch of categories. Looks like 17K undergraduate students, still humid - though a little bit north of NC, and the cost without any aid is around $47-49K. And no stone buildings.
But I’ve known a few civil engineers that have come through the program. Several kids from our area go there and have enjoyed it. Not too far from home, and a high acceptance rate. In general, VA publics aren’t known for merit, but I don’t know if that extends to ODU.
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Thank you. Clearly I have to give DS more credit because he also had this University of Denver on his list. Seems he has been accurately researching SCOIR on his own.
My issue is that when I do a sort by price of his list on SCOIR I am left speechless by the cost. There are only four that aren’t over 50K a year just for tuition. omg
Yes it does. Trying to get him to consider that program if he is truly interested in civil engineering.
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Boise and Bozeman are not huge cities, but they’re both very active towns with lots going on (same with Laramie). They both have the largest airports in their states (which isn’t saying much, but it does mean they serve a number of airlines). It’s actually a little harder to get in and out of Laramie – I wonder if students who need to fly choose Denver and then take a bus.
Anyhow, maybe keep them open as options, because they tick a lot of your son’s boxes.
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I’m going to echo some that were mentioned above - University of Maine was insanely generous with my son (his unweighted was only slightly higher than your son’s, although his weighted was higher and he had good rigor and an SAT score, so maybe not exactly comparable, but definitely same ball park) but it was $13K all in after merit (engineering had extra merit). University of Denver came in at $43K after merit. 4+ years ago their NPC included merit, so definitely run it so you can see what it’s showing.
Good luck to you, I hope he finds the right fit!
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Just want to reiterate that there are colleges that do use NPCs for merit aid estimates, not just for financial aid. I particularly love the NPCs that provide an option to say that you don’t want to look at financial aid, just merit, so you don’t even have to deal with any numbers. Alternatively, some will let you choose the option “I know my EFC” and enter it, and I’ll use a number like $100k to ensure that only the merit aid options will be factored in.
Additionally, when doing cost comparisons, I generally only look at tuition & fees plus room & board. Some schools are much more generous than others in terms of allotting allowances for books, personal expenses, etc, so just looking at the fees paid to the school tends to make it easier to compare apples to apples.
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NC resident and not Charlotte metro makes air travel very difficult. People also forget how far east Raleigh is, so not the easiest place to drive to and from with the exception of I-95. Virginia schools are very expensive and favor in-state, so the student will not be able to come home easily.
UA-Huntsville and Missouri S&T are mid-sized engineering schools. If student doesn’t do summers on campus, then the humidity should not be an issue. For the budget, student probably needs to stay in the south or go way out west. Not many schools in the northeast or Ohio valley are budget friendly.
My first thought, which has been mentioned briefly up-thread, was that he really might want to choose a school that has a Construction Engineering/Management program. If he’s interested in both CivE and business, that seems like a natural best-of-both-worlds possibility that would be good to have as an option.
U of Maine has also been mentioned; this can be a great OOS school for students who don’t have big-merit-level stats, because of their Flagship Match tuition rate. It’s a small flagship with only about 9000 undergrads, and the engineering school is an even smaller subset. In addition, they have both engineering majors and engineering technology majors, which can be a great option to have as well. Maine has undergrad majors in both CivE and Construction Engineering Technology in the engineering school, and a range of undergrad majors in the business school as well. And it isn’t hot/humid.
SUNY Poly might be worth a look. NC is not one of the states that participate in their Tuition Match agreement, but they may still give enough merit. They have CivE, CivE Technology, and Business.
I am not sure what OOS merit would look like at Central CT State, but I suspect it would be affordable, and they have a very close-knit and supportive engineering school within an 8000-undergrad university. They have CivE, Construction Management, and a range of undergrad business majors.
U of Wyoming is small enough, he’d probably like the mountain west climate, and it’s quite affordable for OOS and gives merit. People often think of it as “middle of nowhere” but in reality it’s only two hours from Denver. The engineering school has both CivE and Construction Management, and there’s also a business school.
He can also try private U’s like Marquette, Milwaukee School of Engineering, and U of Hartford; if he doesn’t aim too high in terms of admissions competitiveness, the combination of enough merit and a strong engineering program may be attainable.
U of Utah is unusual in offering a path to residency after the first year, which helps tremendously with affordability. It has everything he could want academically and in terms of sports fandom (both college and pro)… it’s just a lot bigger than he wants, and getting Honors College to mitigate the size would be a long shot. But it still may be worth a look.
Of the above, does anything stand out as checking the boxes?
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What about University of Dayton or Miami Ohio? Dayton is a huge basketball school and has a beautiful campus as does Miami Ohio. Both give merit. Dayton gives great merit. And both have intramurals and club teams
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If your son become open to slightly bigger schools, he may want to consider U. of Louisville, which I just wrote about here: Colleges w/ Acceptance Rates >20% & Strong Engineering Programs: Schools You Like and Why (NO REPLIES) - #22 by AustenNut. The school has about 16k undergrads, so it’s not huge, but it is bigger than the 11k you originally mentioned. It gives generous merit, is about a 9h drive from NC State, also has some nonstop flights (1h30m), and has lots of sports enthusiasm.
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Oh! If he’s potentially interested in construction management (some CivE type stuff, some business stuff) then he might like SUNY ESF. (SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry). It’s a small school - less than 2000 students - but it’s on the edge of Syracuse University and you can take classes, eat in the dining halls, use the facilities and join clubs at Syracuse. Plus root for the Syracuse sports teams, which might give him some of the sporty vibe he’s looking for. SUNY ESF is less than $40k/year for OOS students. Here’s a link to the construction management program if that’s interesting to you/him. Academic Programs - Construction Management, B.S.
FWIW, my S25 is looking at construction management as a major - I had never heard of this before. But it seems like a good blend of CivE (with less math) and Business and some hands on building and leadership skills. The programs he’s applying to are bigger schools than it sounds like you’re interested in (Clemson, Virginia Tech, UTK) but it’s an interesting major you might want your son to look into. An upside from my point of view is that at every school where we’ve looked into this they’ve noted a 100% job placement rate at graduation, so this seems like an in-demand profession.
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My S22 got top merit from WPI and the COA was going to be in the low 50’s before travel was included. Someone mentioned in another thread that the total cost is now 85K. I think my son got 24K?
It is test blind though, so that is a bonus for you.
Engineering is going to be a beast if he doesn’t have the math background.
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It’s easy to be fooled by sticker prices. The average amount paid by students at WPI for tuition, room, & board is about $45,000 - nowhere near that $82,000 advertised cost of attendance and not far off your target cost.
In addition, WPI has a surprisingly high acceptance rate of 58%, which means that they can’t easily be turning away potential students. Schools like this do everything they can to make themselves affordable - especially to students who fit their profile. I had one admissions rep at a similar New England college tell me recently that they try to make their costs after scholarships & financial aid competitive with state colleges for the average student.
WPI offers a lot which would be beneficial for your son, such as only 3 courses at a time in 7-week terms instead of 15-week semesters and hands on, project based learning.
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This is not reality. This is simply poor planning by these kids.
It’s very easy to pick schools you’ll be admitted to.
And in your case to know which will be cheaper than $40k.
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That is great to hear…i meant they aren’t that big of programs…my kid applied engineering to URI/UVM/UNH and for their engineering major, for one school, there is less than 20 kids graduate with that degree…pretty tiny for a state flagship I thought!
It was about quantity, really, not quality! I was very impressed with all of UNH/UVM/URI.