College????

Im a sophomore, and going to be 16 in a few days. I have started looking at colleges and all that stuff. I am ranked in the lower 50%... but next year i plan on doing alot better, i havent fully given my all. Okay so here is some questions.





1. http://www.oar.uiuc.edu/future/cost/tuit... Is this the total cost for 1 year. Or how long?





2. What can I do to increase my chances of being accepted?


3. What are other colleges like UofI that offer Civil Engineering. I want to go to UofI because its one of the top engineering schools in the country.


4. How does that Astrive stuff work? If i borrowed about 15k or so a year. How long after college do I have to start paying it? I will most likely pay part of it off throughout college but just asking. And my parents are also helping me. And scholarships/grants ect.





5. Where can I find out what scholarships/grants I am eligible for?





6. And what should I talk to my Academic Counselor about. like questions, ect.

College????
"$24,714 - 28,866.... $38,498 - 42,650" yep, that's one year... So, if you're not going for something that is practical %26amp; pays well (Engineering, Finance, Nursing, etc) you'd best choose a Tech school... (You can make a decent middle class salary as an Electrician, or a Construction Manager %26lt;foreman%26gt; with the right Vo-Tech degree)... or a Police Academy... definitely something that leads to a good job... especially as you're not in the top 50% of your class.


Astrive is a bad idea... go with federal grants and loans first.


Your Guidance Counsellor is who you should be talking to about getting money for school... "Civil Engineering" is a great field, especially as a lot of Civil Engineers end up in Environmental Engineer type jobs. (These are the "Green Jobs" both Sen. Clinton and Obama are talking about expanding)
Reply:1. That is the cost for one year


2.%26amp; 3. There are a lot of schools which offer civil engineering. Let's face it; though, if you are currently in the bottom 50% of your high school, even if you got perfect grades next year, you would not get into very good colleges, since you only have one year to go before applying. Your best bet is to spend two years at a community college, do really well there, and then transfer. That will not only save you many thousands of dollars, but will allow you to graduate from a decent college, something you don't seem likely to be able to do right now.





4. I don't know about Astrive specifically, but it sounds to me like they are not your best source of student loans. These private companies are really shady in general. You want to get as much financial aid as possible from banks and others who are going to give you federally-insured loans at low rates for students.





5. Most grants are given by the states, and scholarships by the colleges themselves. What usually happens is that you will fill out a form called a FAFSA, which asks a lot of questions about your family's financial basis. On the basis of that, each school will figure out how much you can be expected to contribute toward your education and will offer you a package of grants, loans, work-study, scholarship., etc. to cover the rest of the costs.





6. I think the key for you right now in talking to your counselor is to get a realistic sense of what is possible for you, given that your grades have not been stellar. You need to know, not which school are the best at civil engineering, but what you could get into now. If these schools are not terribly good, as I suspect will be the case, you need to know which community colleges will offer you the best opportunities to transfer to good schools later on.
Reply:You will have to do a LOT better next year and the following year, as well as in the second half of this, your sophomore year, in order to get into U of Illinois for engineering. You're also going to need to rock your SATs. But if you do those things, then your past grades won't be weighted as heavily as those better, future grades will be, and you'll stand a shot. But I have to tell you, you're going to need to apply to some backup schools that you really like, just in case, because you're up against people who've already started doing well, or who've been doing well all along. The remainder of your grades and your SATs are going to be extremely important.





Schools that tend to rank very well for undergraduate civil engineering include: U of I, as you mentioned, U Cal Berkeley, Stanford, Georgia Tech, U Texas Austin, U Michigan Ann Arbor, Northwestern, Virginia Tech, MIT, Purdue, Cal Tech, and Cornell. I also really like the programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic, Olin School of Engineering (which is free, if you can get in), Cooper Union (again free, if you can get in), West Point (free, if you can get in, and a military academy), Annapolis (free, again, and a military academy), Harvey Mudd, and Rose Hulman Institute of Tech.





Know, however, that there are quality engineering programs at a lot of universities. If you don't get into the elite engineering schools, you can still do quite well coming out of a good quality state university, so long as the program is ABET accredited. You'll also want to do a co-op or internship while you study.





Speak to your guidance counsellor about the financial aid process. There are less expensive loans than ASTRIVE, things that are federally subsidized, and she'll also be able to help you apply for scholarships.
Reply:The cost of a state resident for one year and the University of Illinois at Urbana is 11,130. Out of state resident 25,216.





Get stellar grades next year, try your hardest and take as many AP and honor classes as possible. I'm not sure about the enginnering. If I were you I would just go to google and search top enginnering universities.





I'm not from Illinois, so I don't know all of your state scholarships. The best thing to do would be to search Illinois scholarships, i'm from Florida and I searched Florida scholarships on google and found good ones. I know here we have Bright Futures scholarship and that doesn't require a high GPA to obtain, so i'm sure you have something like that in your state.





Talk to your counsler about things to you can to up your chances of getting in, like doing extracurriculars, AP, honors, good SATS. The schools has a 71% acceptance rate, but it's better to be safe than sorry.





Good luck! And remember junior and senior year are the really important years, colleges look closely at those years. Moreso than freshman and sophmore, so really really try hard. I'm a junior and i'm happy to know that this year and next will be the most important. Like you, I didn't have great grades in freshman and sophmore year but i'm taking about 8 classes this year because I want to get into a good school.

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