2330 Superscore, Unconventional App

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey guys, I'm looking to get a little insight as to which schools I should most realistically be considering. A little background:</p>

<p>I'd be extremely happy to attend Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer, URochester, or Cooper Union.</p>

<p>I scored 800 M, 760 CR, 770 W on the SATs but my GPA doesn't really correspond to these scores. After this year I will have something like a 97 weighted (my school doesn't calculated unweighted). That will put me in the top 20% of my school. I'm a prospective electrical engineering major.</p>

<p>My freshman year was a complete debacle. I did fairly well first semester but second semester I failed a marking period of Italian and came very close to failing in some other classes. I really just didn't care. Sophomore year I still didn't care very much about school. By the end of these two years, I had a 94 weighted. I went through a lot during these years, with my mom having two strokes and my dad having one. Also, there was an extremely personal, horrible situation regarding my brothers that I can't/won't post about here. Suffice to say that I had difficulty dealing with these problems and my grades reflected that.</p>

<p>During junior year I started to shape up a little bit. Problem is that my school changed the weighting system by lowering all the values, so despite my extra effort this year I don't think it's going to make a very big difference in my overall GPA. I'm probably around a 96 or so unweighted for junior year and a ~103 weighted. However, my course rigor is severely lacking. I take all advanced courses with the exception of AP Lang and Honors Algebra II (I'm a year behind). </p>

<p>Next year I'm taking AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Macro/Microeconomics, Honors Pre-Calc, and all the other classes will be advanced (I'm moving down from AP Lang).</p>

<p>As far as ECs go, I don't think I really have much of any. I do not participate in any clubs, nor do I volunteer/work. </p>

<p>I used to spend a lot of my time playing video games. I got pretty good and worked with two other people to produce a video of us playing which has something like 40,000 views on youtube. I know it must seem incredibly desperate of me to even mention this but like I said, I basically have no extracurriculars. I guess it follows this to say that I've been editing in Sony Vegas for 5 years. I learned how to edit because I used to do a lot of card tricks when I was younger (think things you'd see in a vegas casino; really flashy kind of stuff) and made a youtube account to showcase my skills. That account has ~80,000 views on youtube. </p>

<p>I also have been skateboarding for several years but I have no idea how an admissions committee would view this activity. It is probably one of the most important things in my life right now. I have a filmer and will be working on a full-length video this summer.</p>

<p>Outside of these things, I'm a pretty skilled artist and I guess that that's the thing that most people know me for.</p>

<p>I'd really appreciate any advice or insight from anyone willing to read my story whether its in regard to how I should market myself on an application or which schools I should/shouldn't be considering. It truly means a lot to me. Thank you.</p>

2

<ol>
<li><p>Have you checked each school’s net price calculator to see if cost and financial aid are affordable to you and your family without excessive debt?</p></li>
<li><p>Do you have any solid safeties for which you are assured admission, assured affordability, and which you would be happy to attend?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Start your application list with the safeties.</p>

3

<ol>
<li>Haha I’m sure you noticed that most of the schools I’m interested in are really expensive. My mom tells me that my EFC is ~16k, an amount she is willing to pay, but that seems uncharacteristically low for a family that makes ~140k annually. Then again, I do have a lot of siblings, 4 of which can be considered dependents. </li>
</ol>

<p>She says she’d be able to pay for CMU but for some reason I doubt it since she has next to no money saved up for me. </p>

<p>I think I am willing to take up 50k in debt. I’m very willing to listen if anybody thinks this is a horrible idea</p>

<ol>
<li>I think that the only schools I know for sure will be financially possible are Rutgers, Drexel, and UAlabama. I like Rutgers a lot more than Drexel and UA but it is considerably more expensive. </li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks for the advice. I appreciate a lot of your posts in the engineering forum</p>

4

<p>Well, try the net price calculators on the colleges’ web sites to see if they expect significantly more than $16,000 per year. If they do, you are aiming for large merit scholarships, not merely admission.</p>

<p>Note that you can borrow up to $23,000 over four years with subsidized Stafford loans. More than that is generally considered riskier, though it is somewhat mitigated by the relatively high pay for graduates of your intended major (some suggest that total undergraduate debt should be no more than half of the new graduate yearly pay for your major).</p>

<p>Your stats look like a big merit scholarship at the Alabama campuses in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville, assuming your GPA translates to high enough (3.5 for Tuscaloosa, 3.0 for the others). Huntsville has a full ride for 1490 SAT CR+M and 3.0 GPA, so that can be a super-safe financial safety, if you are willing to attend. The others should be under $16,000 per year after applying the big-merit-for-stats scholarships, assuming that your stats qualify.</p>

<p>Are you in-state for Rutgers?</p>

5

<p>Yep I’ve done a lot of the price calculators but the thing is that I don’t have the exact numbers for my parents’ income information so I’m sure that the estimates weren’t wholly accurate. I do think I can get through RPI and URochester with less than 50k in debt but as far as CMU goes the number was almost ridiculously higher. Cooper Union is pretty safe financially but I don’t think I have a good chance at admission.</p>

<p>I think a lot of my hesitation towards relying on merit scholarships falls on the fact that I have no idea how my GPA on a 100 point scale will translate to a 4.0 scale, making it kind of hard to gauge how much money I can expect to get from schools. I have looked into all three campuses of UA and despite all the praise it gets on CC I’m not confident I’d be willing to attend birmingham or huntsville. But those guaranteed merit scholarships really are comforting.</p>

<p>I am in-state for Rutgers. I know that there is a full-ride opportunity here but I’m not sure if my GPA would put me out of the running. If I do get it then I will definitely attend.</p>

6

<p>You should ask each college how your high school’s grading scale translates to the usual 4 point scale.</p>

<p>There are some other reach-level full rides, like NCSU Park, Georgia Tech President’s (they offer different levels; the two top ones are full ride and full tuition), Duke Robertson, UNC-CH Robertson, etc. but they may be harder to get than the in-state full ride at Rutgers.</p>

7

<p>If you actually do make $140K your EFC should be more like $35K, not $16K.</p>

8

<p>Yeah I’m aware of that but I think I’m just going to have to trust my mom on this one. I don’t know too much about how EFC is determined but it might have to do with the fact that I have a lot of siblings and that my parents pay a huge amount in taxes/mortgage. It probably is worth asking her to recalculate it, though</p>

9

<p>Make sure not to mix up EFC with what your parents are actually able and willing to pay. Also, note that not all schools have the same EFC calculation, and many do not meet full need with non-loan financial aid. If the amount that they are actually able and willing to pay is significantly less than EFC, then you need to aim for large enough merit scholarships.</p>

<p>If there is uncertainty with the finances, and you are willing at all to attend the big-merit-for-your-stats schools (e.g. the UA schools), apply to them so that if the finances turn out worse than you believed during application season, you will still have options. Also apply to the match/reach level full ride merit scholarships. April tends to bring posts here about students whose only acceptances were to unaffordable schools because they or their parents did not pay enough attention to cost and financial aid issues during application season.</p>