Reach/Target/Likely list for an engineering student who wants to stay close to home

[Anonymous]

If you're considering Princeton (3 hours) and Lehigh, I'd say Penn State main campus which is also 3 hours.

[Anonymous]

I am from Tidewater. ODU is 4-5 hours drive from the American Legion bridge, depending on traffic in NoVa, Richmond, and at the HRBT.

ODU Engineering is fine academically, but it is a "sink or swim" environment. Look closely at their engineering graduation rate before matriculating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're considering Princeton (3 hours) and Lehigh, I'd say Penn State main campus which is also 3 hours.

I have those two schools on there, because if something is going to tempt him to exceed his radius, it's a school that meets need, or offers a ton of OOS merit. I haven't heard either of those things about Penn State.

[Anonymous]

You have a wide range of schools on your list all pretty close to Rockville.

Does he want urban, suburban, rural, bigger, smaller? That will help narrow down the options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have a wide range of schools on your list all pretty close to Rockville.

Does he want urban, suburban, rural, bigger, smaller? That will help narrow down the options.

He is a pretty easy going kid. Taking him on college tours with his older siblings, he's liked every school we say. So, we'd like to plan to visit most of them before he makes a list. Luckily they're all doable in a day trip, and some of them are clustered so he can see a group in one visit, like Temple/Penn or Lafayette/Bucknell/Lehigh.

Maybe he'll fall in love with something and it will rocket to the top, or maybe he'll end up choosing based on the strength of the engineering program, cost and distance from home.

We've seen a lot of the reach/match schools for one reason or another. Maybe we didn't take a tour, but we went to visit a cousin there, or we went to watch a game. I am trying to figure out how many safeties we need to visit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're considering Princeton (3 hours) and Lehigh, I'd say Penn State main campus which is also 3 hours.

Aid will likely not be there for an out of state student, at main campus.
Nonresident tuition ~$50,630 for engineering plus fees, housing, dining, and more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid, with strong stats and EC's, is hoping to study engineering within about 2.5 hours of home (Rockville). He'd specifically like a school that has has a variety of engineering disciplines, and that allows students to transfer between disciplines. He'll need somewhere that's either in state (Maryland), meets full need, or gives good merit.

Can you help us think of schools to explore that we might be missing, and to rank these schools that we've found as Reach/Match/Safety? If you know anything specifically about a school that might help us, we'd appreciate it.

Here are the schools we know about.

Catholic University
Delaware
Drexel
GMU
GWU
Johns Hopkins
Princeton
Rowan
TCNJ
Temple
UMD
UVA
Villanova
VCU

Virginia tech

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid, with strong stats and EC's, is hoping to study engineering within about 2.5 hours of home (Rockville). He'd specifically like a school that has has a variety of engineering disciplines, and that allows students to transfer between disciplines. He'll need somewhere that's either in state (Maryland), meets full need, or gives good merit.

Can you help us think of schools to explore that we might be missing, and to rank these schools that we've found as Reach/Match/Safety? If you know anything specifically about a school that might help us, we'd appreciate it.

Here are the schools we know about.

Catholic University
Delaware
Drexel
GMU
GWU
Johns Hopkins
Princeton
Rowan
TCNJ
Temple
UMD
UVA
Villanova
VCU

Virginia tech

Too far at 5+ hours from OP.

Also, VT's engineering graduation rate is not ideal. Colleagues who graduated from there -- with a high GPA no less -- still complain about VT's weed out courses over coffee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Best to check your school's scattergram or each college's Common Data Set for GPA/Test score ranges but here's a guessing start for a MD resident:

Likely:
Catholic University
Delaware
Drexel
GMU (check OOS stats, getting harder for engineering)
Penn State - Harrisburg
Rowan
TCNJ
Temple
UDC
VCU

Match:
Bucknell
GWU
Lafayette
Lehigh
UMD
Villanova

Reach (b/c they are for anyone):
Johns Hopkins
Princeton
UVA

Thank you! How many would you apply to in each category?

3 likely, 4 match, 3 reach. That should give your DC a good range of merit/financial aid offers and acceptances to compare. You also asked how many likelies to visit...the 3/4 that seem most promising. It's good to be excited about those schools too. Best to you and your DC!