Best In-States? Help

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Greetings</p>

<p>I've been searching for colleges for some time now and I certainly have a good amount of dream schools I feel confident I could get into, but because of some financial difficulties my family is having I'm most likely gonna be restricted to an in-state public (though I'm dying to go OOS). They're drawing the line at around 12k I believe; we wouldn't qualify for hardly any financial aid.</p>

<p>I'm confident enough with my stats so I won't delve too much into them:
Estimating SAT to be around 2000 and ACT to be 30, taking the former next week, fingers crossed
Attending a college prep school, all classes here are counted as AP
Mostly As with maybe four odd Bs from slacking in previous years
I'm not interning at NASA like some of y'all on this site apparently are but I feel fine about my ECs. I'm particularly involved in theater.</p>

<p>Growing up in Tennessee all my life I'm familiar with the names, like UT Knoxville, UT Chattanooga, etc., but I'm still unsure of which in-state comes out on top in terms of academics. Do y'all have any idea of what the better schools here are?</p>

2

<p>Keep in mind that with merit money, some private colleges can come out even in price with an in-state public. Many colleges are now posting the standards for automatic merit aid on their websites, while others just give you a hint of what is possible. Apply to a variety and then wait to see your options and the net price of each.</p>

3

<p>Knoxville is probably the strongest IS public U. Great IS privates include Sewanee and Rhodes. As Charlie stated some privates will offer scholarship $ for a strong record. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;