@jdcollegedad - very well put and totally agree. Our D applied to 11 colleges for engineering, 4 acceptances so far (Purdue, WPI, Rutgers and U of Delaware), one deferral from Case Western. GT, VT, U of Maryland CP, Vanderbilt, RIT, U Mass at Amherst to come. Going to be a long road as some of these are RD and we need to wait for all the financials to be shared to define the final COA for each. Then as you say we will draw the line on affordability and fit and see where we are. Got come accepted student days to attend as well in the process.
So far Purdue with no merit and WPI with merit are about the same cost for our D and are her current top 2 but plenty more to come yet starting with Georgia Tech tomorrow (but not holding my breath as tough to get into).
Congrats for the acceptances so far and good luck to everyone and it will work out fine in the end.
OSU, also a flagship and Purdue’s academic peer in the same geographic region, has about the same COA, and discounts itself down to in-state levels via merit fairly reliably, at least for now.
Our son’s decision is already made, but we are still gathering data from his pending applications to help with planning for the next child, and my feel from what I am seeing thus far is that other than our state flagship (where he won full-tuition scholarship in middle school) he probably will not be applying to any publics. Even for our “doughnut hole” family they tend to have a much weaker value proposition with merit largely out of the picture.
If you don’t mind , which state you are in ? and is your son planning to go to your flagship . We are also gathering this for our next child so that we know better where merit aid is really available .
I found so far that in state flagships are the best . Our son unless he hears from ivies will go to Urbana champaign . where we have in state and 6th best engineering school in the nation and 7th in chemical engineering and he got the honors as well .
even with urbana being stingy it is still coming to the least expensive high quality school.
@illinoisdad1729, I would rather not identify our state, as coupled with the info I previously posted about my son it would effectively deanonymize him, but our flagship is in the 2nd hundred USNWR, and is, regrettably, far from an ideal learning environment for our academically exceptional kids, both of whom had ACT 35 in middle school.
Our elder is going to MIT (also accepted to Caltech). We’ll have to see what’s in the cards for the younger in a few years.
Thank you much for sharing. 35 in middle school is out of the world . In my humble opinion the only place for him to go is MIT , caltech , stanford and may a few ivies . I think it is a little waste of time going after the publics .
My son’s mind is set for UIUC which is instate , and because of the now defunct illinois college plan , I got that for 20k for 4 years when he was about 1 year old .
I will still have to pay boarding . In effect he is going for about 5k a year to illinois . But if we get ivies we have to see how much we pay . Otherwise he is all set with illlinois chemical engineering honors.
Thanks
UIUC in state is a no brainer. Congrats!
MIT also gives great financial aid for donut hole families . For a family up to 150k, tuition is almost free . For 150k and above , each $ you earn you have to pay 50c in tuition .
Depending on what you earn you may be in a for a pleasant surprise.
@illinoisdad1729, they are tuition free up to 90K income. We got our award letter yesterday, and our family contribution is just about the same as Purdue’s cost. Not exactly cheap, but a no-brainer for us.
I just wish Purdue would be more upfront about lack of merit. Web site says top 15% of applicants get merit offer (not top 15% of admitted). So if 28% admitted to CS, over half should get merit by those #s.
I agree that stats don’t tell whole story and am happy they do holistic review. But my very high stat OOS daughter missed 1.5 semesters of HS to illness. Worked from bed, then doubled up on classes/summer school to graduate on time. Still maintained top 2% in crazy competitive school, IB diploma and ECs at 15-20 hrs/wk. She also traveled across country to visit Purdue during Fall. Accepted but no merit.
$ will dictate where she goes, not ranking. We are fine with decision, but would have been better if they had managed expectations. She put a lot of effort into school that won’t likely be an option.
Congrats to all who were accepted! Yay! If you unfortunately didn’t get scholarship or merit money, or Purdue was a safety school — please, please cancel/decline your offer ASAP! It clears spots for those on the deferred & W/L.
My son was deferred (Polytechnic, non-flight). There aren’t very many schools that have his major, aviation/airline management. Purdue is the top school for this. We’ve visited twice from OOS & it’s his top choice.
Thank you from every deferred & W/L student!
FYI - anyone deferred from Michigan - my older daughter graduated in ‘18 (go Blue!). She was deferred at first from EA. Thank heavens I saw on CC that almost every top OOS was deferred the past 2 yrs right before she got her decision. Her stats 4.6/4.0, 2160, 36, V swim capt, EC, etc. Top 4% class of 1550. They even deferred an intern working directly for a state governor w/same stats.
All these schools know our top kids now apply to 8-10+schools seeing how many they get into & $$ they get, so they defer.
DD sent letter of interest to AD & was admitted first wave in Feb.
My son will do the same for Purdue. ???
Did anyone run the NPC for Purdue? I did and it mentioned grant/ gift aid. We are OOS. Does Purdue give grant/ gift aid to OOS? Is this something that would come later ? Is this a mistake?
Good luck to your son! While clearing spots may help closer to RD, right now the only program that is closed for Fall 2020 is “Food and Nutrition.” Everything else still has available spots, so they are waiting to review RD applicants. I agree with withdrawing once another decision is made, but most still want to let Purdue put best offer on table including financial package, honors, etc.
@Artist2233 I have the same question whether Purdue provides any need-based grants to out of state applicants. The NPC does not automatically figure out merit aid but provides a spot to enter any scholarships received. Because we didn’t know the merit situation until this week (no merit), I tried the NPC with and without merit scholarships. For the case with merit scholarships, the NPC indicated that they would meet full need (including grants) beyond the merit scholarships. For the case with no merit scholarships, the NPC indicated that they would only provide self-help aid. Not sure what to make of these results. Maybe they are saying that they really want merit scholarship holders to attend and will give whatever aid is needed to help them attend? I am not hopeful that there will be any grants.
If Purdue is only $4k-$5k more without the merit than the other school you were admitted to, I am not sure I would be fast to cross off the list. In the big picture of college expenses we are all mostly in the hole anyway, an extra 4-5K may be well worth it. Purdue has some special recognition and reputation.
@jdcollegedad +1 Our daughter has a list of about 5 similar schools (also including WPI with merit), and we told her the same. However, she loves the Purdue Honors College with its tight community of diverse scholars, not just math geeks, dedicated Harry Potter-style housing in an almost new building, faculty involvement, and registration perks. As a University of Illinois CoE James Scholar Honors alum myself, it pains me to say that Purdue is far ahead of most of the big engineering schools in that regard. Combined with lower OOS costs than other schools, a real FYE program that includes design and exploration, it was a no brainer for us. If she doesn’t get into the Honors College, it will be a far more complex decision-making process.
As a side note, I scratch my head at people willing to pay $250K+ for an undergraduate engineering degree. Companies consider engineering students fungible, and the differentiator that hiring managers use is actual job experience. You are in a far better position having done an internship/externship at a company that you are interested in than coming out of an Ivie green with no experience. I’m sure my daughter would rather have the extra money for a down payment on a house.
@RoboticsDad is spot on. I am a parent of an admitted student to Purdue, but back in the day I did not get to go to a nice college, had bad SAT scores etc. But my college did have a CO OP program and after that experience, coming out of college I had no problem getting a job.
I told my son he can go to any college on his list, but my only non-negotiable criteria is the school must have a CO OP/Internship program that he can get into. The degree is paper needed to check a box of an employer, the experience gets you the job in IT.
BTW, I hire a lot of people and have managers below me hire college kids. I always tell them to chose ones who did a CO OP or internship.
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@jdcollegedad That is a really interesting question/observation. I cannot confirm it for our specific case because after the merit deduction, the remaining amount is less than our EFC, so we won’t get any aid. But I tried it as a guest with a lower EFC, and I got the same result (additional aid if you had a merit scholarship). In our experience, Ivies do a much better job at meeting true need for donut hole income families.
jk2podnar2ub2niu:
Our experience w/Michigan (DD UM “18) - they really don’t give out much merit $$ to anyone OOS. There are a couple of scholarships to apply for that a few kids get, but that’s pretty much the gist. It’s “the leaders & best” going there & so many kids would be getting merit. The state is broke & it needs our money. In-state kids have programs based on HS grades & of course need-based. Figure approx $55-60yr esp when you apply all AP credits & they’re a junior mid-freshman year - you start paying “upper class (jr/Sr) tuition” after that.