Am I kind of screwed if I want to go anywhere beyond Minnesota?

College Search & Selection
1

I just saw my newest ACT score online, and it’s the same as the one I took in March. So I don’t have any changes to my “chance me” thread, which you can see here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1883101-what-are-my-chances-for-a-few-different-schools.html#latest

I’ve thrown out every school except Minnesota off my list.

Since I have no intention of retaking the ACT only to get the same score again, am I more or less left with Minnesota as my only option for a school of that caliber, and has every quality I’m looking for, since I won’t have impressive stats for admission or scholarships/aid money? I won’t need it as much at a place that offers in-state tuition to ND residents.

So am I stuck with Minnesota-Twin Cities as my only option?

P.S: I might add that I’m not applying to UND or NDSU for multiple reasons, but mostly that neither has ANYTHING I’m looking for in a college, and I don’t want to go somewhere I hate for 4 years.

A list of things I look for (Ranked):

  1. Good enough where anything I choose will be strong programs. Looking at a non-engineering STEM field, but strong programs in Business/Marketing or a good major to get into law school. (I’m still undecided). Hoping to Minor in History though.
  2. Non-male skewed gender ratio. (No more than 49% guys)
  3. FBS football (It’s a world of sports I’d prefer to be a part of. Much better than professionals)
  4. Not Rural (should be in a cool place, that’s fairly big.)
  5. Decent financial aid or merit-based scholarship that could make it affordable, or just simply affordable.
  6. Preferably in a more liberal political climate than North Dakota.

Is Minnesota the only school that has these things that I can realistically go to?

2

There is nothing wrong with UM. There is nothing wrong with taking the ACT again either, especially with preparation. Same for ACT. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with North Dakota. Perhaps you need to change what you are looking for in a college.

3

I told you in the other thread that Minn-Twin is the school for you. I’m telling you again that Minn-Twin is the school for you. It meets all your stated requirements, and it has a well-deserved reputation as one of the better flagship publics in the country. Since Minn-Twin offers ND students the same low in-state tuition that Minn residents get, it’s a virtual no-brainer.

4

You qualify for free tuition at a few schools on this list. None are as good as Minnesota.

http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/

5

To me it seems like UM-TC has most of what you are looking for, and is affordable.

6

A 3.56 unweighted GPA is respectable, and a 30 ACT meets the threshold level to unlock merit money at many schools. Plus your ND state residency will interest many schools looking to increase their geographic diversity, if you look further afield than the states near yours.

Except for schools dominated by engineering, most schools have more females. The most selective schools tend to be 50:50.

Since you’re not constrained by seeking schools w engineering programs, LACs would seem to be a good admissions & FA bet for you. They tend to have a higher proportion of females, so a strong stats male candidate like you, especially one with a minor hook for geographic diversity, is sure to be welcomed with open arms.

7

However, if D1football is important to you, most of those LACs (e.g. Colgate) have a more male-skewed applicant pool, so you wouldn’t have that boost. The football might still be pretty popular at some D3 LACs, though.

Also, most will have an Economics major rather than business or marketing (again, some of the D1 Patriot League schools, like Bucknell, might be a better fit). They would have fine pre-law. If you look at the Yale law undergrad schools, you’ll see that many are small LACs.

Edit: Here it is! Under “undergraduate institutions represented.”

https://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profiles-statistics/entering-class-profile

8

You need to prioritize what’s more important to you:

Getting away from ND to go to a school you can afford
or
Football

9

The University of Minnesota is a very good school. It has contributed a lot of knowledge and many advances to the world and has educated countless droves of people.

10

Minnesota is 100% a no brainer. But because they still accept less than half of their applicants, I’m still a little worried about it and it’d ease my conscience a little to not put all of my eggs in 1 basket. Minnesota is awesome. I love it. I went down south to visit and Minneapolis blows me away every single time I visit. It has nothing to do with Minneapolis not being a good school. I just don’t want to apply to one school that I actually like.

11

There is nothing wrong with your GPA and ACT’s. Sure, they could be higher, but they are not anything to be ashamed of. I think you should study this summer and take the ACT in September. You have nothing to lose except a couple of bucks. I have heard of multiple people going up on their third try.

12

I should mention I don’t plan on taking the ACT again due to time constraints. I work and play football in the fall. Time isn’t something I have.

13

Have you considered applying to UAlabama as a sure-fire safety? I believe your scholarship would bring the cost to ~24k, which I think is just under ate UMinn cost for ND residents. The region is obviously not more liberal politically, though the town and especially the student body are more liberal. Tuscaloosa’s not Minneapolis but it’s a pretty nice college town.

14

A 30 ACT puts you in the top 5% of all test-takers on the ACT. It’s a great score, and it doesn’t rule you out of the vast majority of universities in the country.

Why did you settle on Minnesota? Is it because of relatively low OOS tuition? There are lots of other great schools that are Division I football. Lots of them are OOS publics, but there’s also Boston College, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rice, Southern Methodist, Tulane, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest. With a 30 ACT some of these schools are matches or matchy-reaches for you. If you’re willing to consider some FCS schools you’ve got a whole host of other schools - Bucknell, Furman, Davidson College, Duquesne, Elon, Fordham, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Wofford, University of Richmond, and Villanova on the table, too. You can still get the school spirit and lots of the same benefits that a FBS football school gives you.

Also, you should definitely apply to at least one of your two state universities, unless your family can afford to pay full price at a WUE school where you are assured admission and get the WUE 150% price. I understand that you don’t want to go there, but you also don’t want to be left without an inexpensive in-state option just in case something happens. I have a cousin who is going through this right now because she refused to apply to any affordable public options in her home state and now she has nothing she can afford.

15

@juillet I picked Minnesota for a couple reasons. First, I actually get instate tuition there since I’m from ND. That makes it considerably more affordable to me and my family since I’m probably not statistically impressive enough to go out of state.

I love that that the school is big. I love the big city community around it.

It has big time football. I mean, Power 5 conference football.

It’s a good enough school where pretty much anything I choose will be good.

The culture is awesome. It’s liberal and progressive, which is so refreshing compared to ND, the city is very supportive of the school, (just walking around and you’ll see all sorts of people wearing Minny gear), and it’s a very fitness based culture with the bike riding and running and park system.

It’s not skewed towards guys like my own state’s schools. And it’s not focused on engineering.

Also, my mother went there and lived in Minneapolis for some time in the 90s. Also, I’ve been exposed to the Minnesota system through school stuff, though I had to search out the main campus on my own.

Also, I’ll probably apply to Montana through WUE. I’m just not thrilled by it the way Minnesota gets me. I do like the mountains and I’ve spent a lot of time in that state.

16

The U sounds like a perfect fit.

If you can do without DI football, but still root for DI basketball, Creighton would also work for you. Great school too.

But the UMN looks like it works for your stated criteria.

17

@juliet, Minnesota has reciprocity with ND, I believe. Not widely discussed out here, but it does.

http://www.ohe.state.mn.us/hesod/NDReciprocity/apply1.cfm

18

“Minnesota is 100% a no brainer. But because they still accept less than half of their applicants, I’m still a little worried about it and it’d ease my conscience a little to not put all of my eggs in 1 basket.”

I don’t believe anybody in this thread is suggesting that you put all your eggs in 1 basket, of course you need to apply to a couple safeties. Just pick two safeties at schools you feel you could tolerate spending a year at, in case you end up at one of them. Work hard and get excellent grades, then apply for a transfer to Minnesota after your freshman year. Virtual no-brainer.

19

You honestly seem like you would be a fascinating applicant to a lot of schools, and that ACT score is probably considered really good for applicants from North Dakota. You’ll probably get into Minnesota, and you’d be competitive for many great private schools, most of which place much less emphasis on stats than publics and more on intangibles (and are much more likely to give aid to OOS students). If the D1 sports are important, Tulane might be a good option (in a cool city, fairly liberal, and supposedly tends to throw around lots of merit aid). You could maybe even reach for, say, a Northwestern or USC.

If you’re ok with forgoing sports to a farther extreme, and want an internationally academically acclaimed, liberal school in a vibrant city with cheap-ish tuition, maybe check out McGill (I think it’s like $18K/year for internationals). Their admission is apparently mostly stat based, so I’m not sure if you could get in, but it’s probably worth a shot.

20

<<<
I have a few schools in looking at and wondering what things look like for me in admissions.

Here they are, alphabetically: Minnesota-Twin Cities, Montana, Nebraska-Lincoln, Ohio State, UC-Berkely, and UCLA (A couple reaches, a few middle-of-the-roads, and a safety. Clearly not respectively)

Little Info About Myself:

State: North Dakota

Gender: Male

Ethnicity: White

Family income status: I’d say Lower Middle to Middle class. We are certainly not wealthy, by any possible meaning of the word.

GPA: 3.56 (I really slacked off freshman year, and my school doesn’t offer any AP classes or stuff like that, so my GPA is my GPA. No fancy weighted/unweighted magic to hide anything.)

ACT: 30 (don’t honestly know how good this is. I only know one person who has gotten better than me.)

Main Extracurriculars: Football, Golf, Speech, Student Council
<<<

How much will your parents pay each year? Ask them, please don’t guess. We see later posts from a lot of disappointed students who thought their parents would pay more.

What is your dad’s Home of Record listed in the military? Is it North Dakota or another state? If it’s another state, you’ll get instate there. Ask him.

<<<

  1. Good enough where anything I choose will be strong programs. Looking at a non-engineering STEM field, but strong programs in Business/Marketing or a good major to get into law school. (I’m still undecided). Hoping to Minor in History though.
  1. Non-male skewed gender ratio. (No more than 49% guys)
  2. FBS football (It's a world of sports I'd prefer to be a part of. Much better than professionals) <<<

Are you going to take the SAT??? You may do better on that!

What was your ACT breakdown?