Best chances for lots of financial aid/scholarship$$$

Paying for College
1

<p>Hello and thanks for reading this!</p>

<p>My son is currently a junior IB diploma candidate in a urban public HS with an unweighted GPA of 3.86, weighted 5.3. As a Hispanic, his PSAT score was 226 earning him NHRP and semi-finalist status so far. He had a 1st time SAT score of 2050 which he is not at all happy with and will retake in October. He is taking the ACT today. He scored a 35 composite on his practice test. </p>

<p>I am trying to guide him in narrowing down his list of colleges to apply to but aside from wanting him to be in a challenging environment where he can explore his potential, financial aid or scholarship money is critical. We fall into the middle income category; however, we have eight children, so we are not in a position to contribute tens of thousands of dollars in family contribution nor to accumulate debt. According to FAFSA EFC calculator, we do qualify for the Pell Grant. </p>

<p>Can anybody suggest colleges that are both academically prestigious and generous to students like my son.</p>

<p>His ECs include varsity swimming (9- will swill through 12)
Waterpolo (10-will be through 12)
Recreational club swimming 5+ years
Concert and Jazz band (9-12)
Student band keyboard, guitar and bass guitar player
Dance marathon (officer for 2 yrs)
Taught a 2 week music theory class for his band teacher
Red Cross certified Lifeguard and CPR
Works as a lifeguard at local city-run aquatic facility
150+ hours of community service</p>

<p>Right now he is looking at the following schools:
Reach:
University of Chicago
Vanderbilt
Duke
Cornell
Princeton
Notre Dame
U Penn</p>

<p>Match:
Emory
Carnegie-Mellon</p>

<p>Safety:
Wake Forest
Villanova
UF</p>

2

<p>Those safeties aren’t safeties since you don’t know if you have all costs covered for those or will get accepted. </p>

<p>For a school to be a safety, you have to know FOR SURE that you have all costs covered. What good is a safety if it expects you to pay thousands that you can’t pay?</p>

<p>Are you instate for UFlorida? If so, then your son would get Bright Futures for UFL, and likely a $5k merit scholarship and whatever Pell amount you’d qualify for. </p>

<p>Since your son will be a NMSF, then he needs to apply to a couple of schools that will give him HUGE merit for his stats.</p>

<p>Some of the schools on your list won’t give any merit, or has extremely competitive merit.</p>

<p>What is his intended major/career?</p>

<p>Your concern about a “challenging environment” suggests to me that you think that many schools won’t be challenging enough. If your son chooses a challenging major, then very likely the coursework will be challenging even if the school itself isn’t ranked highly. The high-stats kids aren’t equally spread out amongst all the majors a school offers. NO. They’re largely concentrated in about 10-12 majors. </p>

<p>Both of my kids graduated from their state flagship on huge merit scholarships (including National Merit scholarships). One was accepted into an elite PhD program and the other was accepted to med school (starting in August). They were challenged because their majors were challenging (math and chemical engineering).</p>

<p>When you say that you qualify for a Pell Grant, what does that mean in dollars? Pell Grants range from a couple hundred dollars to about $6k per year. What was your estimated EFC?</p>

<p>How much can you pay each year? 0? $1000? $5000? </p>

<p>If you don’t have college savings for your kids, and you’ll be paying out of current income, then estimate that for every $1000 you contribute each year, you’ll have to come up with $100 per month out of the family budget.</p>

<p>Can anybody suggest colleges that are both academically prestigious and generous to students like my son.</p>

<p>“Academically prestigious” schools will likely meet need, but they’re the hardest to get into. They rarely give merit scholarships because all of their students are top students. </p>

<p>Your current reach list is fine. You need to work on matches and safeties…depending on major/career goals.</p>

3

<p>I second what mom2 is telling you. You need real safeties, schools you can pay for with the Pell + any guaranteed merit money AND with guaranteed acceptance. It’s great to aim high, but every year we see posts from kids who simply can’t afford the schools they got into.</p>

<p>I’m going to add that safeties are important because stats are, well, not as helpful as one might think. Case in point, I was looking at folders for the freshmen coming to orientation this weekend. Saw a student with a 3.84. Good, right? Not even top 1/3 of her high school class. Grades don’t always tell us much. We never look at weighted because there’s no standard system. I see 5.X, and the only conclusion I feel I can safely draw is that your school must weight just about everything. I am not trying to bring down any kid’s accomplishments, but you get the idea that all this data is just noise after a while? A kid makes the initial cut and everything else becomes a crap shoot? So have a good safety. Two of them, if you can, because sometimes admission decisions come down to just plain luck.</p>

4

<p>Thanks for the input. I’m not quite sure about the weighting system at his school, but I think they weight Honors, AP and IB classes. All of his HS classes fall into these categories (most AP or IB). His rank is 12/499.
On the FAFSA EFC calculator my result was under $6000 and that is doable. We do have the Florida Prepaid tuition plan (tuition only) for him, yet when plugging in numbers to the College Board’s net price calculator, UF’s price tag comes out the same or higher than some of the other schools listed. I assume this is because individual institutions estimate “need” differently.
How would I gauge “guaranteed merit money?”</p>

5

<p>Thanks for taking the time to respond at length!
Yes we are Fl residents, and I have the prepaid tuition only plan for my son and he would automatically qualify for the Bright Futures grant; however, even with that, the net cost price tag on UF is just as high as the others. I guess that’s because of calculated need.
I think the the EFC came back with a Pell Grant amount of 800 to 2500. I don’t quite remember but I’m pretty sure that was the range.
We could pay up to $5000/year but no more than that.
Any suggestions to add to the list of safeties or matches? He want’s to go either pre-med or other related sciences.</p>

6

<p>BobWallace is one of the merit-aid experts in this forum. If you run a search for his username, you will get the links threads that he has begun. Here are two to start with:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1461983-competitive-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1461983-competitive-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If your son isn’t happy with his SAT scores, he might prefer to try the ACT.</p>

7

<p>If your EFC is $6K then I don’t think you’d be Pell eligible. If your S wants to go premed (which means any major but taking classes to go on to med school) then he needs to keep his undergrad costs way down so he can take his loans in med school. Look through the links Happymom posted for schools with good scholarships.</p>

8

<p>In addition to BobWallace’s threads (which are awesome, by the way). Check websites of the school’s your son may be interested in. Many will be very open about what you can expect with certain test scores.</p>

9

<p>On the FAFSA EFC calculator my result was under $6000 and</p>

<p>Around 5000 is the cutoff for Pell, so it sounds like if you end up qualifying, it will be for a very low amount…maybe a few hundred dollars.</p>

<p>Pre-med isn’t a major at 99% of schools, as you probably know. A student majors in whatever he wants and includes the pre-med pre-reqs. So, your son could be a bio, chem, English, History, Engineering or whatever major and apply to med school. As I mentioned above, my son was a Chemical Engineering major and he’s going to med school in August. </p>

<p>The med school application process is the most stressful experience I think we’ve ever been thru. Each med school only accepts a very small % of applicants. They only interview about 10% of applicants, and then from their interview group, they accept about 33%-50%.</p>

<p>Since MCAT score and GPA (cum and BCMP) are the most important aspects of the process, it’s very important to choose a school where maintaining a VERY high GPA is possible.</p>

<p>The premed prereq classes are “weeder” courses and only a limited number of A’s are awarded. This is how schools “weed out” students who aren’t strong enough to continue as pre-med or STEM students. </p>

<p>The risk of going to a tippy top school is that a student may not emerge with the needed A’s since all of his classmates will be super-achieving students. </p>

<p>Pre-med pre-req classes are very hard everywhere. These aren’t “unique” classes. They’re the same classes that most of the STEM students are taking: Bio I and II (for STEM majors), Gen Chem I and II (for STEM majors), Organic Chem I and II (for STEM), Physics I and II (for STEM majors), BioChem, Calc, etc. Obviously, most of the student body isn’t taking these same courses.</p>

<p>Personally, I think it’s better for a premed student to go to a good school (like UF or similar) where the student’s stats are well within the upper 25% of the school. He’ll still have other smart classmates. </p>

<p>Med schools don’t care where you went to undergrad unless it is a complete Podunk U and unheard of. Med schools don’t overlook a lower GPA from a “better” school. So, getting a 3.5 GPA from Name school isn’t considered better than a 3.8 from Flagship U.</p>

10

<p>How would I gauge “guaranteed merit money?”</p>

<p>there are certain schools that give assured merit awards for certain stats and/or for National Merit status.</p>

<p>Look over Bob Wallace’s Automatic scholarships link listed above in post 6 (the first link)</p>

11

<p>Please see the Hispanic Students forum (under College Admissions, Specialty Topics); start with the Resources sticky thread for information on: scholarships, past Results, diversity weekends, etc.</p>

12

<p>Texas A&M strongly recruits both NMSF and Hispanic scholars. You could get quite a bit of $$$.</p>

13

<p>Thanks to all. I will certainly check into all your suggestions and visit the Hispanic Students forum.</p>