Lol I have asked this question, my mom basically says no budget while my dad doesn’t say anything explicitly, though I know he disagrees with my mom.
If you can get your unweighted HS GPA to be 3.50 or higher and score a 1260 on the SAT, then you may be able to get this full ride where you can study civil, chemical, electrical, or mechanical engineering. This may be a backstop against your parents saying that they do not have any money in April of your senior year.
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Your sibling has loans. There’s a budget.
You need to find out how much without loans.
Or you’ll apply to wide range of schools at the time.
But again, you’re a bit early. Go enjoy Junior year.
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Perhaps the OP’s parents do not want to admit to the OP that they spent all of the college money on the OP’s sibling, leaving none for the OP?
Seems like total speculation and a mean spirited thing to suggest in the absence of any factual basis for such claims.
Perhaps the kid’s family just wants to keep their finances private and prefers not to share even the slightest detail with a bunch of total strangers. If speculating perhaps we should only offer theories that are not potentially hurtful to a 16/17 year old kid.
Even better maybe just leave the kid alone and do the best you can with the info provided or just don’t post if you don’t have enough info.
Reminder this was the question…
And the kids specific request.
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I don’t believe they would do this, my mom tells me not to worry about the money anyway, saying that I need to find my “best fit” over everything else
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Trust your parents!!!
Thanks for the suggestion, though I don’t think I’d wanna go here either way, I don’t think I would need a full ride at all, and it kinda fits into my example of schools I don’t wanna go to because they aren’t well rounded/particularly good.
Yeah I am, I just don’t want to overspend because the “best fit” school for me could be many. Like a school may seem better than another while being more expensive, but I could have the same exact experience.
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It’s definitely not too early to be thinking about this stuff; it’s great that you are learning more now, about the range of options available to you. People will tell you to get off CC and enjoy high school, but if you showed up here a year from now with an unrealistic list and having to completely re-calibrate, that would be upsetting for you and then people would give you a hard time for being upset. Of course, there’s no need to be on here continuously for the next year, but you know that, and it’s good that you are getting the information and advice you’re getting, at this stage of the process. Hopefully it helps to bring things into focus and clarify the importance of doing well in school this year, if optimizing the “rank” of programs you can get into is important to you.
With a 4.2W, you could add SUNY Buffalo to the list of NY schools to consider. It’s a top-notch for STEM, with EE, CE, and CS all offered in the engineering school. The SAE club has multiple projects including a Baja team and a Clean Snowmobile challenge. SUNY Buff doesn’t participate in the formal flagship match program, but they are pretty generous with merit and often end up at a similar price point to the flagship match schools. SUNY Binghamton, similarly, is a little reachy and is not a flagship match school, but could still be affordable if you get in, and has both an ECE major and multiple SAE racing team options.
It’s obviously unproductive for us to speculate about your family’s financial situation. What would be productive, though, is for you to spend a little time playing with loan amortization calculators. I think a lot of young people are feeling resigned to student debt, and feeling like “debt is debt, what does a little more matter?” If you actually run some numbers, with a tool like this loan simulator, you can get a sense of what the monthly payment burden will really look like, and for how long, when you borrow different amounts. Many borrowers end up surprised, years later, when they discover that the payments they’ve been struggling to make have been mostly interest and have barely made a dent in the remaining balance. Don’t be one of those people; familiarize yourself with what loan repayment looks like, and with what amount of debt burden is manageable without compromising your post-college quality of life. You should have some excellent options that won’t require excessive borrowing, so be clear about what is really worth a bigger financial commitment, and what is not.
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You sound very self aware and responsible. I have know first hand experience in engineering but am impressed by your maturity. Good luck.
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And you are basing your determination of a school not being “particularly good” based on what- your decades of experience hiring engineers? Your years of experience as a faculty member teaching engineers?
You have an interesting way of communicating with people who are trying to help you.
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When I say that I mean if the school is barely advertised, not on any rankings, just not well known in general, it makes me not want to go there. Especially because Texas is far, I do have some family by DFW but it is still really far for a school that isn’t well known.
Prarie View is very well known and is accredited in many fields:
Accreditation
The Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering programs are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org.
The Computer Science program is accredited by the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org.
It’s an HBCU and not everyone wants to attend an HBCU although there are recruiting advantages in attending - and as you noted - it’s in Texas (not the DFW part). I think it was posted to show you that when you get to the year from now and you narrow in, if affordability is an issue, there are possibilities.
I think when you go to build your list once you’ve had more chats with your folks, you’ll be in fine shape.
There will be lots of great schools for you, in lots of locations, and at lots of price points.
Yeah the hbcu part is also a factor I just didn’t want to say it initially. I don’t really want to attend one as I’m white. I guess I’ll keep the school saved in my notes in case I really need that full ride. In general when I say the school isn’t well known I mean most people aren’t going to know it at all
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By the way, the 4.2 weighted GPA I’ve been talking about is based on my freshman and sophomore year, and for my junior year I am taking much more rigorous classes, so assuming I atleast stay at that level my weighted GPA will definitely be higher in a year
Like I said, in a year your gpa will be more cemented and you’ll have a test score. But APs are hard. Try your best and no matter how you finish, a plan can be created.
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My 26 year old applied ED to TCNJ because he had an unweighted 3.4 gpa, 30 act, finance (in state). He makes $100,000+. It’s not always the school you go to, it’s what you do when you get there. He had the lowest stats out of his siblings, none went to a t50 school (although I guess Rutgers is now). They all had/have majors with good employment opportunities (dd21 just finished her junior internship and her job offer is pretty much what her 28 year old sister makes as a cpa, she only applied to safety schools due to finances).
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Here’s an update: I suggested to my mom some of the schools people suggested on this list(uni of Louisville and wvu specifically) and she seemed pretty skeptical about both. She just keeps telling me I need to pick a school I’m happy with, and that happiness to her probably correlates with overall prestige and being well known. So I can probably cross that prairie view school off my list, I don’t think there’s any chance she would let me go there. Besides the 4 schools I listed at the beginning, I’d prob add uni of Louisville, wvu, Arizona State/Iowa State and some suny school to my list (probably Albany). Thanks for all this info u guys have given me.
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It’s great but until you have a gpa and actual test, it’s premature to know what is realistic admission wise.
It might be wise to inform your mom about ABET accreditation.