Really. Colleges have hundreds of clubs. You won’t be able do more than a few. As an engineering student, you’ll work and work.
Larger schools will have more clubs.
But which clubs interest you? And which are active ?
Wherever you go you will have more clubs than you know what to do with.
I am interested in doing 1-2 other hobby related clubs and 1-2 engineering related clubs. I think for 1 of the hobby club I would do a gaming club and for the engineering club I would want to do formula SAE.
Then awesome - tons of schools have formula SAE - and to boot, many have ecoCAR teams.
This list isn’t complete - because Rutgers isn’t on it and shows a team - and Rowan shows a team (maybe not Formula SAE) but as you get names in a year, you can vet each school - but I’m guessing most will have or a reasonable subsitute.
Gaming - club or otherwise, this is what college kids do.
I thought you were going to get creative and say a cheese club or Yahtzee club 
You’ll be fine!!
Competing Teams – Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (avtcseries.org)
Rowan has a baja team. That’s fine with me.
Getting back to your original question - you want to know whether a slightly above average student with slightly above average tests can get into colleges, preferably NJ state schools, for Engineering.
I appreciate your concern because you are interested in one of the more competitive majors. From experience, most NJ institutions with engineering have more difficult admissions standards for engineering majors. There are less that 50 NJ public and private colleges. I would phone admissions for each and ask the question very directly. Likely, I would say I want to get into the college as a priority, but like engineering. This will get you the answer you need. And then ask whether it is more challenging to be admitted if you apply into engineering. Good luck. My gut is 75% will be more difficult, but definitely not all.
Thanks for the response.
If your family has already co-signed for loans, then there is a definite chance that they may not be able to co-sign for an equal amount of loans for you because they’ve already put their name on the line for your sibling’s loans. Adults aren’t able to get unlimited amounts of loans. The loan companies will look and see how much income an individual/family has and what their assets are like and make their determination as to how much in loans they think that individual/family could handle. Then they will look at how much they already owe to others, whether a home mortgage, student loans, auto loans, credit card debt, etc. The more loans people have, the less money there is available to them to borrow. And once they hit that cap, then they can’t borrow any more money.
The good news is that you will have options to get an engineering degree, and hopefully without any debt.
Agree 100%. The best thing a prospective engineer can do is to learn to use facts and data to make decisions. And assuming that just because your family was able to borrow for your older sibling they can still borrow for you is not a fact-based decision.
You can invest an hour (google is your friend) in learning about how debt works.
Okay, the main thing to focus on is doing your best academically, getting involved in activities that interest you, and taking care of your own mental and emotional health. But if you’re wanting some additional schools to investigate beyond the SUNYs, your state schools, and U. of Louisville (which I think are all great options), these are some additional ones you may want to consider:
Central Michigan: About 10k undergrads at this school with an SAE team. There’s no price differential for out-of-state students, so the sticker price is around $27k, not including any potential merit awards. It’s ABET-accredited for your fields of interest, as well as a couple of engineering technology ones.
Kansas State: About 15k undergrads here where there’s an SAE team. Using the scholarship estimator, you’d probably receive about $10k/year based on a 3.5 GPA/1300 SAT, but they allow students to use weighted GPAs here, so your amount could be more. The sticker price is around $40k, so with at least $10k off, you’re looking at a price of $30k or under.
Mississippi State: About 18k undergrads and an Ecocar you’d get about $15k in merit here. With a sticker price of about $40k/year, that means this school would cost around $25k.
U. of Cincinnati (OH): Has a heavy-coop culture, so you can get a lot of on-the-job experience which 1) helps you earn money in college, 2) gives you insight into whether you would like to do that kind of work as a career, and 3) gives you lots of great information to put on your resume and make it easier to find a job. There are about 30k undergrads here and there’s an electric vehicle SAE team, per @tsbna44’s link. Sticker is close to $43k, but you might get enough merit aid to bring it within the (unknown) budget. It’s ABET-accredited in many engineering disciplines, including electrical engineering technology should that become a pathway of interest.
West Virginia: About 19k undergrads and you’d be eligible for anywhere between $8-14k/year based on the Climb Higher scholarship (they use your weighted GPA, not your unweighted…a 3.5 would be $11k). There is also the Innovators Scholarship which is for students who major in certain colleges, including engineering, that provides an additional $2k/year. So with a sticker price of about $41k, the school would have a decent chance of being somewhere south of $30k/year for you. There’s an Ecocar team here, per the link above.
York College (PA ): About 3300 undergrads at this smaller school that also has an SAE team. Its sticker price is much more reasonable than at other schools with a list price of about $43k, and you may well receive merit aid here, too.
This may be true for private loans, but federal parent plus loans do not have credit qualifications. I wish they did, and I wish people took out a lot less in Parent plus loans, but it is likely the parents will get loans.
But please, work with your parents to take out as little as possible. There are plenty of schools, good schools, where you can get an engineering degree without exceeding the student loan level of $27k. One of my kids is an engineer and took out about $15k (and graduated with about $8k of that in her bank). She had grants and scholarships, she worked while in school, she lived cheaply and didn’t go on spring breaks or fly home for parties or to see her friends (she did fly to NJ a few times to escape hurricanes so remember that emergencies do happen).
You can certainly put some schools on your lists that have clubs you want to try or a special program, but in the end finances will control the final choice. Even if a school has the SAE club doesn’t mean you’ll be able to participate. My daughter’s school had a jet car team and only a dozen or so students got to be on the traveling team. A good friend was on the team (and I don’t think she ever drove) and that woman had a perfect 4.0, was president of the MechE society, president of her sorority, and a million other accolades. A real superstar (she also was from a wealthy family that could pay for the club). Getting into the school is just the first step, the clubs may be selective, and may cost a lot of money to participate and have a time commitment that prevents you from working.
So I’m saying don’t get caught up in wanting a club you may not be able to participate in and leaving other schools off your list that would be a good fit that don’t have the club you want. Good idea to make lists and see what you can make work financially. Make a long list and then cut from there.
Yes, getting into engineering is hard and getting what you want is hard and you have to work for it.
Thank you for your reply. WVU and Uni. Of Cincinnati both seem very interesting.
I am honestly fine if a school doesn’t have any sae club, as long as they have some type of engineering club related to my major I can get involved in, or easy access to internships. (schools like drexel and louisville)
Wait, is the WVU automatic scholarship really based on weighted GPA? Because on my schools scale my weighted GPA is 4.2… that seems great
According to WVU’s website:
And the good news is that you don’t have to rush into any decisions about building a college list. So explore the big colleges you think you want, and then maybe look at some smaller ones (like York or SUNY Polytechnic). Investigate the opportunities that are available at schools that have been recommended to you, even if you haven’t “heard” of them before. It may be that you end up really liking the school, or it could be that you don’t care for the school but there’s some appealing characteristic that you really like and would like to find elsewhere. This is a learning process and you have ample time to take full advantage of that.
Must be easy for students from South Carolina to get those WVU scholarships that use weighted high school GPA at face value, due to the state-standardized very heavy weighting: https://ed.sc.gov/tests/tests-files/eocep-files/uniform-grading-policy-february-2018/
This honestly seems like a too good to be true thing, but I will still consider the school and make sure it goes off of weighted gpa by the time I apply.
Once you give us a budget figure (and you’re still a year early), you’ll have lots of choices - WVU is one of many!!! btw - they have ecoCAR and Formula SAE.
I don’t think I will be able to give a budget, atleast for a while. My parents refuse to tell me how much we make, I just know my family is well off enough. And like I said my sibling is going to a school that will be 60k a year out of state, while I know for a fact that’s an extreme, I know my budget isn’t extremely low.
For many families, disclosing their income is a “none of your business” type of situation. Additionally, that’s not really the information you’re seeking. What you need to know is, “What is my budget for college?”
As an example, imagine a family makes a million dollars a year. They could pay for any college in the U.S., regardless of the cost. However, they may choose not to. Perhaps they will choose a budget of $50k/year, or the equivalent of the in-state flagship. Doesn’t matter how much money they have…it matters how much they’re willing to spend.
You have a year and they needn’t discuss their finances.
Your question to them is, without me having to take loans, how much can my college cost (per year)?
You have plenty of time.
