Don’t know anything about you - to know if applying to the schools you mentioned is in your wheelbase. You may or may not be overstating or understating your chances.
I also don’t know if you are pointing to tuition costs or total costs - but if you have two doctor parents, I tend to think you are from a high income family and you are choosing $90K schools. Has your family run the NPC?
Are you living at home while going to UMD? Current COA is $29,936 for tuition, room and board, so where is $26K coming from? Are there guaranteed scholarships? And yes, costs go up so it will be higher when you go.
So the first thing is to understand your finances - and maybe you do - but asking to validate them.
If you end up on the med path, there where won’t matter - but it sounds like you might not. You can look at schools like Duke and Vandy - and where their residents went to undergrad:
At Vanderbilt’s Hospital, schools like Ole Miss, UMass, Sewanee, UF, Murray State, N Illinois, Kansas, Luther, Lipscomb, OK State. And yes the UNCs, Lafayettes and Vandy’s of the world too - but not by and large.
For Duke Hospital, Tuskegee, UCF, Muhlenberg, Minnesota - that’s four of the first five. The 5th being Dartmouth.
The next resident year - Temple, FSU, Cornell, Gannon, Earlham, and Campbell.
So a name, in an of itself, Brown/Rice/WUSTL - won’t give you a leg up. Being where you can stand out, where you can enjoy, so that you perform strongly - that’s what matters.
So what you are asking from a desires POV won’t be easy to find.
Flexibility - engineering is anything but. You might look at LACs that claim more flexibility but I don’t know if it’s true - a Bucknell or Lafayette as an example. Engineering - no matter where - has required courses for accreditation. Some schools - Brown/Dartmouth - might take a 5th year to get an accredited degree - so that’s where you get flexibility. Oh, and that’s more money.
Research - I dunno - my kids went to an SEC flagship and regional public - and they could both do research had they wanted to. My son’s gf did all four years. There’s emails, professors always asking - I think kids overplay - certain schools have access and the elite colleges let them because it’s good marketing for them. If anything, you’ll have more competition at elite schools but you have professors conducting research everywhere. Don’t forget, these are all academician/PhDs…so not a concern.
Supportive advising - school by school and adviser by adviser - but in the end, you’ll have regular advising (each semester) and a flowchart for engineering - and for med school, if you do that, you’ll know the pre reqs, etc. and it will be incumbent upon you - things like shadowing - which sounds like you have a head start. Practice vs. Theory is tough - most will have “some” but most will be theory. Cal Poly is known to be more practice and Louisville’s Speed school is supposedly similar to Cal Poly. Perhaps a WPI, which is project based, works there - but at the majority, as you’ll be following an ABET set of curriculum and things to be taught - I don’t think this happens - but you might set up a 30 minute meeting with a dept head at each school to ask about that. And then there are clubs - whether a rocketry club or ecoCAR or Formula SAE and more - where practice is happening.
But I’m back to money - you need to verify you understand the finances - you might and I might be wrong but given what info you’ve provided, I’m not quite sure. Your privates are going to be $100K a year or close - and don’t provide any merit aid - well Wash U and Rice do, but unlikely to come through and certainly no assurance - whereas, for example, a U Miami might or would at least have better odds to get there or close to $60K (maybe a tad over but they give most $25K).
Some things to think about.
Thanks
- Fit priorities: Flexibility, interdisciplinary options, research access, supportive advising, I would love a school with more focus on practice vs theory.
In the end, you need to validate your finances and need as they school’s say before you apply anywhere ED - or get in and be on the hook for $90K+.
btw - depending on your stats, you may be able to go for as low as $20K? Would the save then be applied to med or grad school? That’s another route to go - OOS publics - but you need a good GPA and SAT over 1400.