From my D’s search, as a MechE major, I’d toss in Purdue, Virginia Tech, Penn State, Ohio State, Maryland.
Purdue/VT may not be as “safety” as the others, but I’d put admission chances very, very high. Stats are certainly much higher than my OOS D, and she’s about the middle of her Purdue class and was accepted three weeks after applying, during rolling admission.
(For context, CC probably would have screamed “you have no safeties” at my D and she got in to 6 of 7 schools)
I agree with @RichInPitt my son also was accepted to every school he applied to for CS, which included Ga Tech, UIUC, UofM, UMD, and McGill which would not have been considered a safety on the CC list as they all have less than 50% acceptance rate (and much lower for OOS applicants). Your daughter should be able to get into many of those on the list she applies to. Maybe not the Dukes and Rices of the world but many of the others.
I also think that she will have a “hook” per se, being a female STEM student.
However, here are some good true CC Safeties I’d consider.
RIT (I really liked this school when we toured it, my son not so much)
Mich. Tech (If you want to live somewhere exotic, it doesn’t get more so than the UP of Michigan and they still get “real snow” measured in Feet.
Not a safety, but I’ve been impressed by Drexel engineering graduates. Don’t be shocked by the sticker price. I know absolutely nobody who pays more than 50% of it. I think your daughter would get in there.
I still argue that undergraduate engineering curricula is pretty standard everywhere, especially in the ME space. Auburn and some of the other SEC schools (I know a couple of Kentucky engineers who are quality).
I think in a space like ME and Design you want a big engineering school with lots of club options. You go to a smaller school, you won’t have the breadth of ECs to try your hand at. That’s just me, but a school like Ga Tech, Purdue, Va Tech, that is both a State Flagship and a focused engineering school is going to give you all the options in the world in engineering. Ga Tech and Purdue are both ranked in the top 10 for ME and I would argue there is absolutely zero difference in the engineering degree you’d get there vs. Stanford or MIT (In fact, I think when I looked at the USNWR rankings of engineering schools, Public schools outnumbered Privates, probably one of the few disciplines where this is true, maybe Agriculture related studies could be the other). Maybe you won’t bump into a famous person as often, or rub elbows with rich students as much, but the quality of the education will be absolutely the same. Plus the bigger the school, the better chance you’ll find a group of like minded students.
Utah would be a good “true safety” for a kid from Washington state. In particular I think the “maker space” dorm (https://lassonde.utah.edu/studios/) might appeal. I don’t see the need to pay a lot more for second tier east coast schools.
@Rivet2000 post # 16:“I think she can reach her objectives at several schools…”
Perhaps OP might benefit if you list those schools you were referring to.
WRT Stanford, I presume bioengineering majors take organic chemistry, and other courses many premeds also take. Do they take different sections of these courses than the premeds do?
The reason I ask is some years ago advice of Stanford premed advising was posted, which suggested students should consider taking organic chemistry someplace other than Stanford.
I can’t find that right now, just the following:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/231800-pre-med-questions-ask-here-p1.html (#5)
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/06/03/the-pre-med-drop-out/
@Rivet2000 Thanks for the feedback. I think a lot of kids from this area apply to Stanford just because it’s Stanford, but in my daughter’s case, I actually think it would be a really good fit, regardless of the prestige. Alas, it is extremely hard to get in, so I’m hoping to find some schools that offer similar things that Stanford does but that she’d be nearly guaranteed to get into. If she gets into Stanford REA, she can always decide if she still wants to apply to a few other top schools.
@BrianBoiler We read through the Fiske guide for Purdue, and my daughter couldn’t get past the first sentence which read something like, “Any top school in Indiana should have 3 things: basketball, a conservative student body, and a great agriculture program–and Purdue has all 3.” She just kind of rolled her eyes and said “Next!” :lol:
If your daughter becomes a National Merit Semi-Finalist via the PSAT as a Junior, there are a variety of schools that offer full-tuition or full-ride scholarships. Of the top of my head, Texas A & M has a strong engineering program and offers a full-tuition scholarship for OOS (with a competitive full-ride engineering scholarship,) and all of the public state universities in Florida offer full-rides to NM (although this is based on the state legislature’s budget, and could potentially change in a year or two, however, some schools like UCF and FSU have said that they will support the scholarship even if funding is pulled.)
The University of Florida in particular has an extremely strong Honors program (albeit with a 13% acceptance rate for Honors) and has your traditional range of engineering programs.
Although not a safety, the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering is very strong and offers an automatic half-tuition merit scholarship to all National Merit Scholars. Make sure to apply by the earlier scholarship deadline of December 1st, as there is also a chance to receive one of the full-tuition scholarships.
Hope this helps! Good luck with admissions!
However, doing that would be visible to medical school admission readers. A Stanford pre-med whose record shows organic chemistry taken at Foothill College might lead a medical school admission reader to think that s/he was trying to find an easier A elsewhere (despite Stanford’s grade inflation).
Texas A&M NMSF is $3k per year; NMF is an additional $7k per year for a total of $10k. Minimum of $4k is needed to get an out-of-state tuition waiver.
https://scholarships.tamu.edu/Scholarship-Programs/National-Scholars#0-NationalMeritScholars
https://scholarships.tamu.edu/Non-Resident-Tuition-Waiver
However, even the NMF award with out-of-state tuition waiver is not “full tuition”, since in-state tuition is $12.7k.
https://financialaid.tamu.edu/Undergraduate/Cost-of-Attendance#0-CollegeStationUndergraduate
Just for the record, Purdue students are typically left leaning. The county votes blue every year. Albeit in a see if red around them. Bloomington where IU is also a blue county.
Basketball is a thing but on a campus so large nothing truly dominates student life.
This will sound offbeat to you but the school of industrial design at GaTech is quite remarkable https://id.gatech.edu/
UConcinnati has a strong Industrial Design program.
@dla26 That’s fine if that is the tool you are using to sort. I really disagree with the assessment, but my post wasn’t really trying to get her to go there.
I can tell you that the Ag part of campus is in one area and unless you really try to find it, you won’t. Basketball is there for those who want it, but for most it is not even a distraction. I can tell you that speakers probably won’t be “protested” off campus there. But, hearing all sides is important in life in America. I don’t know if I’d say Purdue students are left leaning, more than half are from Indiana, a red state. I can tell you I never felt pressured one way or the other. The President of Purdue was at one time the Republican Governor of Indiana, head of Budget for George W. Bush, and a leading candidate to run for President. But, I do know he has done some really great things at Purdue (like held tuition flat for nine straight years.)
Yes, to Univ. of Cinci industrial design!! It’s part of the DAP school – Design, Architecture and Planning. It’s a co-op based program – he did co-ops in Chicago, Berlin and Rhode Island over his 4 years and developed an amazing portfolio.
After graduation, he immediately got a job in Boston with a product design firm that does work for Fortune 100 companies. He was a gifted artist prior to starting the program and now designs amazing things.
@ucbalumnus I meant to say National Merit Scholar, as most students who become a Semi-Finalist go on to Finalist status, and then it’s a matter of being admitted or not to Texas A & M (or any college that sponsors NM scholarships) to become a Scholar.
Scholars receive a $500 merit scholarship as well, which means there is ~2K in tuition not covered by the scholarship. Looking at tuition.tamu.edu, tuition increased by about ~500-1000 dollars for the year, which accounts for part of the deficit. I was under the impression that the NM scholarship covers full-tuition, but I might have been including my own NM scholarship as well when I was considering applying in 2019, which is separate from the Texas A & M $500 amount.
So yes, Texas A & M doesn’t cover exactly full-tuition, but does offer a variety of other freshmen merit scholarships according to the website, which do stack.
@dla26 It’s definitely worth to apply for the engineering full-ride scholarships, but if you want a guaranteed full-ride, then the Florida schools, Alabama etc are the way to go.
@dla26 I’m obviously biased because I’m going here, and it’s not a match/safety, but Brown’s perfect if your daughter wants a collaborative environment that doesn’t stress about grades but about learning (no curves in intro science courses unlike some other schools etc.) It’s also amazing if she wants to explore other interests during college and doesn’t want to have the fear of a bad grade stopping her (students can S/NC, or Pass/Fail, any course.) Brown’s also home to the Open Curriculum, whose virtually no requirements (except for 2 writing designated courses, offered in a variety of fields,) makes it easy to double-concentrate if so inclined, or to explore electives as aforementioned.
Brown offers most of the traditional engineering majors, and most, if not all of the BS degrees are ABET-accredited.
Here’s a list of concentrations (majors:) https://bulletin.brown.edu/the-college/concentrations/
Hope this helps!
Students in the ABET-accredited majors at Brown must take four humanities and/or social studies courses, because ABET accreditation requires that the accredited engineering program have “a broad education component that complements the technical content of the curriculum and is consistent with the program educational objectives”. So the open curriculum does not really apply in this case, although the humanities and/or social studies requirements are fewer than at many other colleges like MIT.
https://bulletin.brown.edu/the-college/concentrations/engn/
https://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/criteria-for-accrediting-engineering-programs-2020-2021/
A high-achieving student in a high-achieving HS school looking at engineering is going to have to develop a perspective that goes beyond HS graduation (when the importance of the ‘prestige’ of the college name becomes substantially less acute) . Challenging- but achievable.
The sooner your daughter focuses on the merits of specific engineering programs- and their relative prestige within the field, v the general public - the happier both senior year and the college process will be, for all of you.
As she looks for ‘why’ reasons for her safeties and matches, she can talk them up to herself and her friends/family. Easy example (that might relate well to her EC) is the Maker Labs at various schools, which sometimes have videos of cool stuff that has been done in the school’s maker lab* (do some searches on YouTube), which can be more impressive / persuasive than an entry in a college guide.
One more thing: both the % and the attitudes about women in engineering department vary a lot. Only about ~20% of engineering students overall are women (and only 1% are women of color). Cornell is explicitly 50:50. Both GaTech and UVa are up to 35% women (for GaTech, from 25% in 2015 and 20% in 2010). At UVa nearly half of the women are in bio or civil, but there is a strong emphasis on the value added that diversity brings to the field. Collegekid2 wrote off some programs because she didn’t like the gender dynamics/attitudes in the lab/department. You hear ‘oh STEM + Female = Admissions boost’- I don’t think it’s as true as people think it is, but it also completely ignores what the experience is like once you get there.
That article is 5 years old @collegemom3717. A lot can change in 5 years, especially as it relates to maker space facilities. Purdue’s Bechtel Center was completed in 2017.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/EngineeringImpact/spring-2019/maker-space-for-boilermakers
Here’s another more current list: https://www.greatvaluecolleges.net/best-maker-spaces/. (note that they did use the gtech article as one of their citations).
eeps, you are right, @momofsenior1 (dates when we were looking at engineering programs…)- thanks for the save & update!
@collegemom3717 - I’m still blown away by the pace of new construction at universities. The rate of change and upgrades is crazy fast!