<p>I am a rising senior from southern Arkansas
Stats: 1400 (cr+m) SAT (710,690,710)
30 ACT
4.0 UW GPA
I am hoping for a full ride somewhere....based on merit awards. Is this even possible? I'm open to anything!</p>
<p>What did you score on the PSAT?</p>
<p>It is possible to get a full ride somewhere, but no one is going to seek you out to give you full tuition. My best advice, based on experience, is APPLY EARLY!!!When filling out your college applications, check the website for each college you apply to and look under the tab for financial aid/scholarships. The scholarship part is what you want to look at. Nearly every school will give you, being the excellent student you are, some merit aid. You will have to apply for the full ride after having carefully reviewed your full tuition scholarships possiblities at each school and made it a point to apply for those specific scholarships. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>193 
… so no national merit chances…but there are other options, right?</p>
<p>Very, very few schools offer full ride scholarships (Full ride = full tuition + room & board). Full tuition scholarships are more common but still difficult to get.</p>
<p>If you need merit aid to attend college, you need to look at schools where your stats put you in the top 25% of admitted students. (And if you need really BIG merit, you need to look at schools where your stats put you in the top 5-10%. This means you will have to look lower in the rankings. Consider regionally known colleges rather than top ranked national colleges.)</p>
<p>Do a search here on CC and find a thread from momfromtexas. She found huge merit aid for all her kids. While the thread is dated now, her methods are sound.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html</a></p>
<p>You should also look at this thread:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html?highlight=guaranteed+merit+scholarships[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html?highlight=guaranteed+merit+scholarships</a></p>
<p>But please be aware that scholarship availability changes from year to year. Once you have the names of some schools, you wil need to verify that the particular scholarships are still being offered.</p>
<p>Also as noted above, some schools require separate applications for scholarship consideration that have deadlines that are different from admission application deadlines. Make sure you you get your scholarship applications submitted on time!</p>
<p>Do you have a intended major?</p>
<p>If you are a National Merit Finalist, you qualify for eight semesters of tuition, a dorm room plus a few extras. Assuming you are not a National Merit Finalist, you still qualify for an automatic “full tuition” scholarship at the University of Alabama. But, you would need to pay for your room, meal plan and mandatory fees.</p>
<p>Edit - cross posted - I see you are not NMF. But you still qualify for full tuition at Bama. Their Honors College is great. You can read more on the Bama forum.</p>
<p>Biology/premed…
Is it worth it to go to a school that is ranked higher…even if I have to pay for some/a lot of the tuition?</p>
<p>There are numerous threads about pre-med. The MD who came to my DD’s HS to talk about medical school had the following advise - Go to an affordable school!! Don’t borrrow a ton of money for undergraduate school, because you will likely be borrowing a lot of money for med school. Grades are one of the most important things for med school admission - it is far better to get A’s at “South Succotash State” than to get B’s at an Ivy.</p>
<p>Now, if your parents are millionaires - go ahead and spend their money. But since you are looking for “full ride” scholarships, just do well at any regionally accredited school.</p>
<p>Any US college ranked in the top 250 or so will adequately prepare you to take your MCAT and apply to medical school. The prestige of your undergrad is not a major factor in admission. </p>
<p>Some hard facts: </p>
<p>medical school is expensive! (COA runs $45,000-$85,000/year and there is almost no merit aid available) You do not want significant undergrad debt going into medical school since you will be taking out huge loans to finance your medical education. (Also doctors do NOT make huge salaries immediately upon graduation. You will have 2-8 more years of training post med school graduation before you can look forward to a doctor’s salary.)</p>
<p>medical school admissions are extremely competitive. Only about 40% of qualified students are admitted. (Qualified = MCAT 30 and GPA 3.6 or higher) Over 100,000 people take the MCAT each year; there are just under 19,000 slots available.</p>
<p>the attrition rate among pre-meds is very high. Approx 65-75% of all freshmen pre-meds never even apply to medical school! (And mostly not due to academic reasons either. Simply put interests change in college.)</p>
<p>All of these are excellent reasons to minimize your undergrad debt.</p>
<p>80% of all Americans are former pre-med majors who borrowed scads of money to attend a “higher ranked” school in order to enhance their chance of admission to a good medical school.</p>
<p>Go to an academically reputable school that you can afford and where to can both learn and earn top grades due to a combination of your native intelligence and hard work. Then you will have given yourself a fighting chance at med school if that is actually something you still want after 4 years of college.</p>
<p>Your SAT score and grades would qualify you for an automatic full tuition scholarship at U of Alabama or Alabama-Huntsville.</p>
<p><a href=“http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html[/url]”>http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.uah.edu/images/admissions/Financial%20Aid/Documents/scholarship.pdf[/url]”>http://www.uah.edu/images/admissions/Financial%20Aid/Documents/scholarship.pdf</a></p>
<p>There are many competitive full tuition and full ride scholarships for which your stats make you a viable candidate, but competitive awards are hard to predict.</p>
<p>Biology/premed…
Is it worth it to go to a school that is ranked higher…even if I have to pay for some/a lot of the tuition?</p>
<p>how will you pay for Room, board, and some/a lot of tuition? How much will your parents pay?</p>
<p>BTW…no, it’s not worth it to pay more for a higher ranked school. Med schools don’t care about that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Curious how you arrived at that metric - top 250 or so. Is there a factor in the rankings that predicts success on the MCAT?</p>
<p>If you are an Indiana resident, check this out.</p>
<p><a href=“http://honorscollege.iupui.edu/documents/HPA%20Overview%20Fall%202012.pdf[/url]”>http://honorscollege.iupui.edu/documents/HPA%20Overview%20Fall%202012.pdf</a></p>
<p>DS1 got admitted last year. It is an excellent BA/MD program and the college will chip in $5K /yr toward your professional degree. The opportunites there are just incredible. You will still need to take MCAT and do well. Since the program was relatively new at that time and we could not get confirmation from IU medical school about the process, he sent in his enrollment letter, instead, to the state flagship school on 5/1 and decline the admission to the college. Two weeks later, we received a formal admission letter from the medical school with three signatures from the medical school professors. My wife and I were so sad. We kept that letter since we thought that it might be his only chance to get such letter (hopefully not).</p>
<p>Being from Arkansas might help with $'s, especially if you apply to LACs far away (think Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Occidental, Pitzer etc).</p>
<p>Arkansas resident</p>
<p>So it wouldn’t really matter if I decided to just go to a less known school as far as trying to do well on the mcat and getting in to medical school?</p>
<p>RE: The 250 or so </p>
<p>This is a guessimate based on the fact that most MCAT takers will not score in the top 10% of all test-takers nationally. An average MCAT and coming from a school that has no academic reputation outside it’s own in-state region is going to disadvantage an applicant to every medical school that exists outside the local name-recognition bubble. (Adcomms are not snobs, but it’s human nature to more stongly value recommendations and GPAs from places/people one knows over those one’s never heard of. Known quantity vs. unknown quantity. Seats at a med school are scarce commodities and adcomms are reasonably risk-adverse since the cost of educating a medical student far exceeds the tuition costs a student pays.)</p>
<p>MCAT plus GPA is only the first step in gaining admission to a medical school. There are about a billion more hoops to jump thru. Colleges were few students apply to medical school lack adequate advising to help the applicant navigate the often murky and confusing path to med school.</p>
<p>So it wouldn’t really matter if I decided to just go to a less known school as far as trying to do well on the mcat and getting in to medical school?</p>
<p>No it won’t matter.</p>
<p>Since it sounds like you have an unaffordable EFC (that parents won’t pay), then applying to schools that “meet need” won’t likely work. </p>
<p>you can only borrow $5500 as a frosh on your own. To borrow more requires willing and qualified co-signers, which doesn’t sound likely. Besides, it’s unnecessary and dangerous.</p>
<p>Are you sure that Arkansas gives a $4k merit scholarship to all students who score an ACT 19+??? That just seems unbelievably generous for a state. And, also gives more merit to those with higher stats? </p>
<p>Annasdad…I don’t know what metric Wowmom used, but maybe she’s really just saying that any good university is fine for pre-med students. No one should pay more (or worse borrow more), to pay for a higher ranking school as long as your cheaper school is good enough for pre-med pre-reqs.</p>
<p>oops…crossposted with WOWmom.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, as already noted upthread, what you want are good grades - that’s what counts for med school admission! (Oh yeah, and you’ll probably do better on the MCAT if you’re not stressed out about your massive unpaid undergraduate loan debt!!!)</p>
<p>Yes, I am positive. I guess Arkansas wants high school grads to go to college in-state. Honestly, though i figured all states had similar programs…guess not.</p>
<p>[Academic</a> Challenge Scholarship](<a href=“Arkansas Department of Higher Education - Home page”>Arkansas Department of Higher Education - Home page)</p>
<p>[Financial</a> Aid Programs](<a href=“Arkansas Department of Higher Education - Home page”>Arkansas Department of Higher Education - Home page)</p>
<p>Thank you so much everyone for giving me this information! I now have some new insight on college.</p>