<p>Vassar College may not standout as far as engineering goes, but they have a good music department, and is a top LAC. Though your son’s GPA may be below the range, the fact that he is a male URM increases his chances of getting accepted. Can’t comment on FA.</p>
<p>I would also agree with the previous poster regarding CMU. My son will be going there next year (URM ,Hispanic). Got accepted to the business school and waitlisted for engineering (he had above 4.0 weighted gpa, but did subpar on SAT critical reading). He was tossed between business and bio engineering. I steered him away from any schools that concentrated on one, but not both…CMU was ideal. He also wanted medium size student population (under 15k, over 5k), near an urban area. Based on other posts, to get FA, you have to have a demonstrative need. Though they do state that they will try to match offers from competing schools, if, for example, they already have enough URMs committed to going, the likelihood of getting significant, if any, FA diminishes.</p>
<p>Whichever way your s decide to go, visit, visit, visit… Can’t stress that enough.
Good luck.</p>