<p>entro, Many of the colleges on your list do not offer merit aid, period. So in that case do you mean that your parents are willing and able to pay full tuition? If the answer is yes, then you’ll have a wide choice.</p>
<p>Pitt, Wisconsin, UConn, Boston U, Maryland-CP, Washington (Seattle)</p>
<p>Oh yeah - Check out the SUNY schools. There are some good ones. Stony Brook stands out for the sciences, and they have a lot of research opportunities available for undergrads. SUNY tuition is also relatively cheap for out-of-state. I think Stony Brook is around 14k.</p>
<p>University of Rochester - very strong in sciences and engineering, and they do provide merit aid.
I agree that Case Western is also worth looking into, for strength in sciences and merit aid.
Both of these would be target schools for you.</p>
<p>Stony Brook is $16K tuition with a COA of under $30K for an OOS student.</p>
<p>U. Rochester, Case Western, U. Maryland</p>
<p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>**National Buckeye Scholarship for non-Ohio residents **</p>
<pre><code>Award amount
$10,000 ($40,000 four–year value)
Criteria
Ohio State is committed to enrolling a diverse and talented student population. The National Buckeye Scholarship is awarded on a competitive basis to non-Ohio students required to pay the out-of-state surcharge who are admitted to the Columbus campus for autumn semester. Those considered rank in the top 40 percent of their graduating classes and have ACT composite scores of 28 or higher or combined SAT Critical Reading and Math scores of 1260 or higher.
Notes:
Except where noted, the National Buckeye Scholarship can be combined with any other merit scholarships, as long as the combined total does not exceed the total cost of an Ohio State education.
This award is renewable for a maximum of eight semesters (or the equivalent) of full-time undergraduate enrollment, provided the recipient maintains a 2.5 or higher GPA (earned by no later than the end of the first year), and nonresident classification remains unchanged.
</code></pre>
<p>Geographic diversity (Columbus campus, autumn 2011)
Ohio State enrolls students from every state and territory. States with the highest enrollment:</p>
<p>500+: Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, California, Michigan
300 – 499: Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia
100 – 299: Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Utah, Minnesota, Missouri, Arizona, Tennessee, Connecticut
50 – 99: West Virginia, Washington, Colorado, South Carolina, Kansas</p>
<p>**The Ohio State University: A Grand Institution **</p>
<p>[The</a> Ohio State University: A Grand Institution - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-4KpfAHlz0&feature=related]The”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-4KpfAHlz0&feature=related)</p>
<p>Best of Luck & Go Bucks!! :)</p>
<p>That was an awesome find! Thanks so much. Ohio State is not a bad pick, agreed.
Seems as though U of Rochester is also generous. Am I right about this?
@momrath, Parents do have some money saved. Again, they cannot afford full tuition and it’d be my job to pay it off, unless I get some merit or need-based aid.
Do the qualifications for need-based aid change from school to school or region to region?</p>
<p>Woah! We have really similar desires-I’m in the 3.6-3.7 UW range and I’m looking at urban schools in the same zone. My top (realistic) picks are:</p>
<p>UChicago: Midwest, super urban, nerdy. A lot of students with sub-3.8 GPAs get in here, just write good essays! The prompts are already out for people on their mailing list.</p>
<p>Madison: Fairly urban, LOTS to do, excellent school, fantastic for sciences.</p>
<p>Minnesota: Better at econ than science, but still quite urban, midwest, and has some good science stuff.</p>
<p>Macalaster: Also a Twin Cities school, private but pretty affordable with aid I believe. Big international focus.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think you need to quantify. Most privates will cost you $60,000 a year or $240,000 for the full four years, so the amount of money that your parents can or will devote is the key factor. Even if it’s your responsibility to pay off the loans, legally they will be in your parents’ names. </p>
<p>There is some variation in need based aid formulas from school to school, but not a lot. The most selective tend to be the most generous, but as I said above, if they don’t offer merit aid, they don’t offer merit aid, period. If you run your financials through a few calculators and come up with the same EFC, you can assume that need based aid is not an option for you, anywhere.</p>
<p>Schools that do offer merit aid do so exactly to attract students like you. I think you will be able to find a win-win situation, but it’s going to take some openminded searching. Good luck and let us know how you do!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But choose carefully. LACs and other smaller schools often emphasize particular subjects, but may be limited in others. Going to Sarah Lawrence to concentrate on science would be a mistake, but Harvey Mudd, Carleton, Swarthmore, and Bucknell are among those with relatively strong science offerings for LACs and smaller schools.</p>
<p>@ubcalumnus: Agreed, good point 
I’d add Oberlin, Denison, and Earlham to that group. Big emphasis on undergrad research. I’m not very familiar with the east coast LAC’s.</p>
<p>Has anyone here mentioned Emory? Good sciences, good merit, good overall academics. It’s urban and the right size, and South Asians are more or less considered URMs.</p>
<p>Asians are considered URMs at Emory despite composing >20% of the student population? <a href=“http://www.oirpe.emory.edu/institutional_research/Common%20Data%20Set%202011%202012%20a[/url]”>http://www.oirpe.emory.edu/institutional_research/Common%20Data%20Set%202011%202012%20a</a> That’s a surprise to me. And despite Asians only composing 5% of the US population. [Census</a> 2010 News | 2010 Census Shows America’s Diversity](<a href=“http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn125.html]Census”>http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn125.html)</p>
<p>I’ll second (or third) U Rochester. Yes, they can be good with merit aid and yes they have undergrad research (76% of undergrads participate based on the last stat I saw). They also have oodles of options that a smaller school might not have. My son was hooked when he visited there and spent the night with current students talking research.</p>
<p>Case Western is also an option, and yes, if you want urban and don’t mind larger, Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>Erin’s dad, I said South Asians. This is just an observation and is unprovable as colleges don’t breakdown the ethnicity of the proportion applied to accepted. I hold that a being woman in the sciences and of South Asian descent would be a plus at Emory. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a hook, but it would be an advantage at Emory as opposed to a similarly ranked university in the Northeast or Westcoast. </p>
<p>Again, this is my observation from watching the path of several Indian and Pakistani friends – and they are not US citizens like the OP which is even more daunting – who have been offered substantial aid at Emory.</p>
<p>Bottom line, the OP has two realistic criteria – strong in sciences and offers merit. After that, everything else on her wishlist – like size, location or coed requirement – may have to be traded off.</p>
<p>So I realized that my GPA is actually a 3.58, which is better than I expected.
Thanks again for the advice on colleges to go to and how I should approach the merit based aid. I visited Boston and decided that Northeastern wasn’t for me. Also, BU is okay and not as great as I thought it’d be.</p>