@NateandAllisMom Have you discussed your concerns with the college counselors at your son’s school?
As the other posters have noted, merit aid (even for academic superstars) is extremely rare at the sort of schools you’re aiming for - schools where your son’s current stats - and even your projected improved stats - make admission, let alone merit aid, very uncertain.
I’m usually not at all a fan of college consultants, but I think one might be helpful in your situation.
Apply early action…NOT early decision. Spend the rest of junior year studying for and taking the ACT.
Applying to a few schools that are in the top 25 is fine…but I would not expect merit. Merit to these schools is highly, highly competitive. As noted above, it’s even competitive for superstars. Your son might not get in…Kids with higher scores, much higher gpa etc often don’t get accepted. Apply…but keep expectations in check.
Your focus should be at schools that are lower in the rankings. Building from the bottom up is good advice. With the right list your son should have many great options.
You need to stop fixating on T25 schools. For a student serious about CS in New England the CS programs at Northeastern, Boston University and UMass Amherst are very highly regarded. All three offer merit aid of up to around $30,000/year.
We have chased merit and most T25 schools don’t offer it. A couple top LACs do – I’m thinking of Grinnell and Kenyon. But these are few and far between.
If you look at some lower ranked private schools they will have discount pricing for high achieving students. Think Butler or Elon, for example. Not sure how they would be for CS, though.
Highly ranked publics will not give merit aid to OOS except to very tippy top students. They look to these students to help fill the coffers.
However, there are good big publics that will have tuition discounts based on stats – look at Miami of Ohio, University of Utah, University of Alabama, etc.
Rather than focus on an overall top 25 school, you could focus on the schools that are good for computer science if he is certain he wants to major in CS. Utah is a good example, and merit will be easier to come by.
Until he has a real SAT or ACT score, this is all guessing!
I agree…how are CU Boulder and U Washington going to be affordable? These are public universities and their first mission is to provide help to the students in their states whose parents pay taxes in those states. Boulder will be thrilled to accept him as a full pay student…there are lots of OOS full pay students there. Washington isn’t a slam dunk even for admissions to CS.
Boulder does not have guaranteed merit aid. Neither does Washington.
Santa Clara does offer merit aid, but I doubt he would get it with his current practice scores (my kid is a SCU grad).
So are we correct in assuming his 529 can cover about $30,000 a year (the cost of CA instate publics)? If so, you are looking for a school that will give him quite a bit of merit aid.
Tufts, Middlebury and Dartmouth don’t give merit aid. At all. It’s all need based aid. Do you qualify for need based aid? If not, how would these be affordable? Plus admissions isn’t a slam dunk…even if he gets much higher ACT or SAT scores.
As noted above, CS is a more competitive major for admissions, and certainly merit aid at schools that give merit aid.
I would caution you about loans. Remember, you will be taking them for 4 years…so if you need $40,000 a year to cover the difference…you will have $160,000 plus interest in loans to repay.
I think you need to go back to the drawing board. It seems to me that the UCs or CSUs would be your safeties because you have 529 money that can cover them. @gumbymom might be able to help with which CA publics might be accessible for your kid for CS.
Look at other schools offering this major…as well as others because kids do change their minds.
The east coast schools will be costly.
Minnesota and Wisconsin will also likely come in with net costs over $30,000 a year.
@mom2collegekids would Alabama be affordable for this family? Assuming his ACT or SAT score reaches a certain bar!
@WayOutWestMom what about New Mexico if he gets the Amigo? Seems like that would be $30,000 a year…or less.
@twoinanddone what other colleges do you know where the net cost might be $30,000 or less per year?
@NateandAllisMom have you run the net price calculators on each of these college websites? That would give you a much better indication of your net costs than any third party site that estimates net costs. If you are not divorced, don’t own a business, aren’t self employed, don’t own real estate other than your primary residence…then these NPCs should give you a good estimate of your net costs at each school. Right now the NPCs are set for students starting in Fall 2020 so these should be viewed as estimates only as policies do change.
Adding…maybe something on this thread will be a good choice.
Do you younger children that you need to plan for?
If costs are an issue, then the UC’s and CSU’s are a great option for CS. He does not have to go to a “top” school to get a great paying job post graduation. CS also happens to be a very “hot” major, so the competition is fierce.
UCSB and UCSD are excellent options but they still have a large student population. I would look at Cal Poly SLO since they have a top CS program, smaller student population, great post graduation job placement and in a small town.
Another school to consider would be Arizona State and aim for the Barrett’s Honor college which makes ASU into a smaller, more intimate campus. If he has the stats, good merit scholarships are available which could end up being less than the in-state CA options.
He definitely needs to aim for an ACT of 33+ and do not forget about the SAT subject tests usually Math 2 and another science.
Best of luck.
You might want to take a look as this discussion about a high performing student from CA looking for merit: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2154331-looking-for-advice-in-merit-aid-for-a-top-1-student.html
Hi everyone and thank you, thank you! I just stumbled on to these amazing forums and posted probably a bit prematurely and with some red herrings. We meet with the counselor in a week so just trying to figure out our priorities and scope of the first list. I greatly appreciate all of the feedback and the reality check. The replies have helped me shape what research we still need to do. I’ve only ran a couple of EFC calculations - it’s basically full price. We live in one of the most expensive cities in California, so between taxes, housing, higher prices on just about everything, and aggressive retirement savings it’s a middle class lifestyle on really expensive dirt - until we downsize and sell out to a tech family wanting our public school. We don’t have businesses or other assets so I will run more of those EFCs.
I think we are struggling to reign in the list because geography and money are I think the two biggest ways parents and students do that. We do have a strategy to pay off loans early so cost is not the biggest factor but we do want a good ROI. Again, I think I just wanted to know what kind of numbers we are talking about for the various types of schools, but I’m getting the sense that he would have to go somewhere geographically that we are not currently considering to get merit aid. Geography is important but there are many cities he is willing to go - basically excluding the South, Southwest, and heart of the Midwest. So, that’s still a big list - and as evident from my earlier replies we haven’t yet really explored the NE options.
Regarding CU Boulder, they did tell me on the tour that they have at least one discount for top 25% OOS. I can see him really loving Colorado and staying on. https://www.colorado.edu/scholarships/auto-consider/freshmen
@Gumbymom thank you! Cal Poly is definitely on the list and he will be taking AP Bio and English tests, bio and math subject tests, the SAT and the ACT (perhaps twice each) all in Spring. Oye!
The key is not shooting for the big names. D20 so strongly did not want our in-state schools, she was open minded about looking at some schools she would never have thought of because of their merit aid potential.
She has great offers from Loyola Chicago, Vermont, Goucher, University of Puget Sound and University of Denver. T25? No, but she would be happy at any of these schools, would get a great education and it would be affordable, where we are otherwise full-pay.
She has applied to one Ivy knowing that even if she gets in (very, very unlikely), it’s going to be a tough sell to get us to pay that much with these other offers on the table.
“Geography is important but there are many cities he is willing to go - basically excluding the South, Southwest, and heart of the Midwest.”
Geography is important to getting merit: those colleges that offer merit aid (especially to students who aren’t in the 99th percentile) do it for a reason, and that’s often because they are in locations that otherwise wouldn’t have students rushing to attend. When you exclude “the South, Southwest, and heart of the Midwest” you are further constraining your options. In popular cities you may have to take another step down to lower ranking colleges in order to get any merit, and in many cases it may be impossible to get remotely close to the cost of in-state CA schools.
That being said there are plenty of places in the Mountain West that are much more affordable than Boulder (where your costs will be certainly be at least $50K per year), if you look at the list of WUE schools. Boulder is a beautiful and deservedly popular school, but all the Californian students we know who attended were rich and not particularly bright party kids (who couldn’t get into UCSB).
Why both the ACT and SAT, potentially 2x each? Is he prepping for both? His practice ACT of 31, if from a real Pre-ACT administration, or taken in accurate simulated conditions is much higher than his PSAT. IMO pick one test and prep for it.
The entire testing schedule sounds like it could be too much for spring of junior year… when grades are relatively more important (at least in many college admissions decisions). Perhaps take the subject tests in June, or even later.
What is his unweighted GPA, on a 4 point scale, core courses only?
Yes, taking subjects in June. Hopefully he won’t have to repeat the tests twice and will be done by April. I asked the tutor re focusing on the ACT since math SAT seems to be the weakness but he said there is so much overlap in prep that we should do both. The tutor is very experienced. I plan to talk to the counselor about this. Unweighted GPA is I believe a 3.85, but core courses is a little bit lower.
He’s not a party guy - at least not yet - and is very focused on getting out into the job market. We’re actually looking for a place where it’s easy to make social connections. He is very attracted to the PNW and we think he might enjoy the relative congeniality of the Midwest.
How did the tutor explain different math results between the PSAT and practice ACT? Not sure how closely the math prep overlaps…while subject matter tested is similar, the questions, and timing (questions/minute) are different…thoughts @Lindagaf @homerdog?
No. I gave the tutor all of his practice scores with some details. SAT English was very high and math was only high 80s. He has an excellent memory and is a very fast reader. Struggles with math application but not memorizing concepts. He finished all sections of the practice ACT except the math. So, I do believe he will do best on the ACT but perhaps the tutor thinks he has sufficient time to work on the SAT application problems. Percentile-wise, he did better on the SAT english than ACT english, but we only have the one practice test to go on so far.
I would have your S take an ACT math section with the time constraints and then have him take the SAT math sections with those time constraints. You can find tests online and print them out or get a hard copy book of real tests at a bookstore. Whenever I’ve done this with students, it’s pretty clear which test is better for them. They may score higher on one or the other. You can find conversion charts to compare the SAT and ACT math sections. Even if a student scores similarly on each test, he might prefer one over the other either because of the timing aspect or how the questions are worded.
One warning - definitely stick with the time constraints when taking these practice sections. I’ve made the mistake before thinking that, if a student can do well on ACT math with just a little more time, then that is the test for them. That hasn’t usually worked. If a student cannot work quickly enough to score well on math ACT at the beginning, I think it’s very hard to speed up. SAT questions do test a lot of the same subject matter but you get more time and the questions are trickier. Sometimes, it’s easier to learn how to understand the SAT questions than to speed up for ACT math.
Some of the better known big merit is found in the excluded states like Arizona, New Mexico, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Does he want to leave California? If not, you and he may find that UCs and CSUs offer a wide range of options that fall within your price limit. There may also be Western University Exchange options (for 1.5 times in-state tuition) at less selective public schools in the western region (e.g. mountain west states, Hawaii, and Alaska).
I should clarify that he just started with the tutor.
@homerdog that is SUPER helpful. He said he thought that the ACT math was easier. So I was wondering how much he could get his speed up on that section. Most of the tutor time so far is attacking the SAT math with a process of elimination. He also is explaining the differences between the SAT math and ACT. Since his SAT english was so high, maybe the jury is still out. But, doesn’t the math count for less of the overall score on ACT? He did 37/40 on the science. So, that pulls ACT.