@3scoutsmom thanks for the great background info on UT Dallas!
@bjd16 No student with 1600 should be paying $80k+ per year for school.
Thanks for the sentiment, but unfortunately my grades, skills, effort, or how well I can perform once admitted wont matter here, the schools dictate depending on parent asset or income that I should pay $80k+ per year x 4 = 320k+ regardless.
I am only considering this because I might have a shot at earning back this money within 10 yrs purely because of my major (still a big strain), otherwise I would never consider this. I do wonder what is the real cost of educating someone like me in a 4yr college, vs this sticker price.
Adding a couple more lower cost programs with decent CS to look at.
University of Nebraska offers a full tuition scholarship for NMF. You would be very competitive to enter the Raikes School- a business / CS small-cohort Honors College focused on software engineering startups. As I understand it, usually Raikes School acceptance also comes with free room and board, so a potential free ride to a good program.
The other one is Michigan State. NMF gets free room and board there. They award their big scholarships - called Alumni Distinguished Scholarships, or ADS - via a test administered one weekend. You seem to test well and would seem to be competitive for their full ride or full tuition ADS.
You have an excellent academic profile and will be competitive everywhere. Of course, the reach schools you have listed are reaches for everyone, although I think you have a better than typical chance at them. A challenge for you will be to overcome the financial hurdle - like others I don’t think a $300k debt load for an undergraduate degree is a good financial choice. I think some loans in excess of the $28k federal limit can be worth it for the right school, but $300k is just too much, IMO. It could be really life limiting in terms of jobs you can take, where you can live, whether or not you can qualify for other borrowing (car, house etc.).
Schools that provide need based aid only like Yale and MIT will not care if someone has received merit at another school (like Ga Tech STAMPS)… they will not discount COA for a student with no financial need. If you know people who say they did receive non-need based aid from these schools they either are 1) not telling the truth or 2) did have financial need (as calculated by they school.)
I agree with others that you should seek to minimize loans. You can take out $27K over the 4 years of undergrad ($5.5K first year, $6.5K/$7.5K/$7.5K). I agree with others that taking more loans may not make sense. These excess loans will be on your parents…either directly or as a co-signer. It will affect their credit rating, and their ability to take on other debt, say a mortgage or car payment. Then, when you graduating and have a large debt payment…roughly $1000-$1200 per month for every $100K in debt…it will impact what jobs you can take, where you might live, your ability to take other debt, and even who might date you. Go somewhere affordable for undergrad and look to attend grad school for free/low cost.
Can you clarify this? It does not seem to be the case per their website:
And schools that offer rare but big scholarships (like Stamps) are doing so to lure top candidates away from the likes of MIT and Yale. Not the other way around.
Limited number is key, unlike the guaranteed for all NMF options that others have already posted. Plus it doesn’t seem full OOS tuition less $4k would be affordable for OP.
I worked my entire career in high tech working alongside coworkers who graduated from a very wide range of universities, including U.Mass, Rutgers, San Jose State, various IIT’s (in India), UBC, U.of Alberta, a seminary school, any of the UC’s (whether California or Colorado), MIT, Stanford, and a wide range of other universities. In the vast majority of cases , no one cares where anyone got their degree. In most cases you will not even know where someone got their degree unless it comes up over beer or over dinner – which mostly happens if someone’s kids are applying to universities or are attending university. One of the best bosses that I ever had was a Rutgers graduate. Another was a U.Alberta graduate. Another graduated from seminary school but then decided to get married instead of becoming a priest. And yes, at least one more did graduate from a highly ranked school (Harvey Mudd College, which I had not heard of until I had a boss who had graduated from there).
The point that I am trying to make is that you can attend any of a very wide range of universities and do very well in a career with a degree in some combination of mathematics, computer science, AI, ML, or electrical and computer engineering. You can afford to look for schools that will give you merit aid, or which otherwise will be affordable.
Your great results in high school might or might not get you accepted to a famous or highly ranked university. However, your great results from high school might also get you some solid merit aid at a very good university. The very strong effort that you have put in during high school is going to help you a lot in terms of being prepared to do very well when you get to university, and this will help you at any one of at least a couple of hundred different universities.
Famous schools such as MIT and Stanford and Ivy League schools give good need based aid, but this is based on need as they define it. Whether this meets need as you define it will vary from one family to another. Students whose parents are divorced, or own a small business, or own rental property often just cannot afford to attend the most famous universities. If you want to be an investment banker this might be an issue. However, if you want to go into high tech then you really can afford to pick the affordable university over the famous university.
And of course coming from California you have a very wide range of excellent in-state public universities, including the CSU’s.
And I am a bit jealous of your SAT score. Having been a math major at MIT, 800 on the math SAT is sort of “yah, duh”, but also getting 800 in the English/reading part is impressive. The highest score I have seen on the English part from someone I know well was 790, they did not get 800 on the math part, and I have worked with a lot of very smart people.
At least not unless their parents can easily afford it.
@FrankBlack I think that you should apply to a range of universities, apply to some that have good merit aid, do not apply ED anywhere, and see what sort of offers you get. I would expect you to get some good offers. I would expect you to also get into some very good in-state public universities. If you want to, you could also consider some WUE / WICHE schools (WUE being the undergraduate part of WICHE). Given that you have completed a number of community college courses, it seems likely that you might get enough credit to shorten your time in university. This might (?) be more likely if you attend a public university in California which is used to dealing with credit for courses from California community colleges.
One more thing that might be worth adding: Back in the 1980’s I worked for companies that were hiring a lot of MIT and Stanford graduates. Now I am seeing the same or similar companies hiring a lot of U.Mass and San Jose State and IIT graduates (along with graduates from a wide range of other schools). The reason is that we are seeing a lot of very strong candidates coming from these schools. I am not sure how much of this is because the most famous schools have gotten so expensive, versus because that is where very strong students get accepted, versus something else. However, it at least looks to me from my vantage point as if the hiring managers in high tech companies have figured out that very strong candidates come from a very wide range of universities. I think that the high cost of attendance at the most famous universities is a significant part of this.
In the limited number of private school examples with which I am familiar, the real cost is higher than the sticker price. That is, even full-pay students are subsidized by generous alumni or other sources of supplemental funding.
My S25 is probably heading to Utah in the fall. We won’t find out about merit for a few weeks, but he will get in-state tuition all four years because I am a veteran. Utah gives kids of veterans in-state from day 1.
Thanks so much for coming back and updating us! You have lots of great acceptances, and UT-Dallas is a financial win as well. Are there any schools amongst your current acceptances that are in the lead compared to the others?
I wonder how challenging are the courses offered exclusively to CS^2 students? Would the challenge and quality of the courses be comparable or come close to corresponding courses in top level CS programs like UCB, CMU, MIT, or even next tier, like uiuc, ucla, ucsd, Caltech, etc.?
If so, then it can allay concerns of a student around missing out on more challenging core CS courses if attending UTD, relative to one of other top CS schools they are admitted to. Would make UTD full ride more attractive for National merit students.
Both my son’s were in CS^2 program at UTD, the classes are more challenging than regular classes and have more theory than the regular versions of the same classes. The CS^2 class are also smaller, I think they are capped at 25 students per class. It was a great experiemce for may boys!
Wow, great line up of options! Given your interested major, I would suggest you attend the Open House at UCSB on April 12th. Just saying, you might find a fit there. UCSB Math '90
