<p>@engineering2015 UCSD should be a shoe-in for you. All the UC’s except LA and berkeley should be shoe ins infact. You should also apply to Berkeley, UCLA, and Stanford even though they are a reach ( cus theyre a reach for everyone lol ). Good luck!</p>
<p>@DrGoogle My brother will be in college at the same time as me for the first year so my parents are splitting the $7,000 that they are paying out of their pocket between us. I wouldn’t label my family as “poor,” but we are far from rich and have to take out loans. So in all I will have $19,000 without scholarships for school: $3,500 from my parents, $3,000 from my grandpa, $7,000 taken from house mortgage, and $5,500 from FAFSA (that is how much my brother currently gets). Other than that I have to pay through merit scholarships and outside ones from my school or organizations. I’m sure I will get some type of merit aid considering my brother got the second highest type of merit aid from his school (OOS, Butler) and his stats were nowhere near mine (~3.5 UW GPA, 29 ACT, only 4 AP classes, barely in the top 20% of his class, and very few extracurriculars). I don’t want to make it seem like he was a bad student because he’s very smart, but I’ve worked a lot harder in school to make sure I can go to a decent college.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if Pepperdine has a good engineering program?</p>
<p>@realcoolman thanks! This whole picking colleges thing is just a frenzy to me haha</p>
<p>Why don’t you apply to a few private school in CA, University of San Diego for example. I’m not sure the UCs give that much merit aid.
Pepperdine has good engineering school and so is Santa Clara University, and USC. Pepperdine gives more merit aid but not more than $30K/year from what I’ve read.</p>
<p>UC’s don’t give out that much in Merit aid. My sons friends received merit aid and it wasn’t that great. Assume maybe $2000 per year at the most. My dd got $300. If you want to apply, assume you will get in, but again because California can attract students from around the world who will pay full fees, they wont go out of their way to pay for OOS students. </p>
<p>UC’s only give “merit aid” in the form of a regents scholarship which is usually around $3500. You would be better off applying to California privates if you need substantial merit aid like DrGoogle stated above. There is a huge gap between your $19K and the UC price tag of $56K</p>
<p>I echo what Dr. Google suggested: the privates like Santa Clara and USC might give you adequate merit aid. Check out their websites.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle @Gumbymom @aunt bea thank you guys for you suggestions. So what you’re basically saying is to apply to private colleges in California if anything. However, would I even have a chance of getting in to Santa Clara and USC? I think my chances are slim and merit aid even slimmer. I think the only impressive things in my profile are my GPA, rank, possibly ACT score if I get 33 or 34, and my internship at Fermilab. My extracurriculars lack, but is merit based a lot off of extracurriculars?</p>