Better.
For NYU, you probably need to aim for a top-end merit scholarship, not just admission, as it has a rather poor reputation for financial aid. You can try its net price calculator to see.
You should actually try the net price calculator at each school under consideration so that you know whether you just need admission or need a merit scholarship for that school.
@ucbalumnus Thank you for the warning! I actually already did NYU; it said it would be about 20k but we’ll see. It’s not too difficult to just add NYU to my Common App, so I figured I’d try.
Philosophy is a great major, but I’d suggest double majoring with (or at least taking courses in) something more practical, such as math, economics or computer science. Also, I would suggest thinking long and hard about whether law is really the path you want to go into. Law is very competitive these days, and many do not find jobs where a JD is required or beneficial. The applicant pool for law schools are shrinking for this reason (though not as fast as the decline of the industry, save for the big and medium sized law firms).
Here’s a list of colleges that claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2016-09-19/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need
Most are very selective. Those that are a bit less so than the others (but still couldn’t be considered safeties) include:
Bates
Bryn Mawr (women only; students can attend classes at Haverford and Swarthmore)
College of the Holy Cross
Colorado College
Franklin & Marshall
Kenyon
Lafayette
Macalester
Mount Holyoke (women only; students can attend classes at Amherst, UMass, Smith and Hampshire)
Occidental
Smith (women only; students can attend classes at Amherst, UMass, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire)
Thomas Aquinas
Trinity
Union
URichmond
Wake Forest
All of these are small liberal arts colleges.
If you’re female, you might want to check out the three women’s colleges.
Their consortium relationships with neighboring LACs expands the number of course offerings (and other resources) beyond what a single LAC usually can offer.
$20,000 per year net price is probably out of reach if your family earns $30,000 and can presumably contribute not significantly more than $0 for your college expenses. You can take a $5,500 federal direct loan (loans beyond that require a co-signer and are not a good idea anyway) and can realistically earn up to several thousand dollars from work (work-study offers can give you preference in being hired for some jobs at the college or some non-profit organizations), which is unlikely to add up to cover $20,000 per year.
Regarding law school, some information about law school admissions:
http://lawschoolnumbers.com/
Law school ranking and admission selectivity are highly correlated to likelihood of graduates finding law jobs:
http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/
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am low income, @mom2collegekids. I qualify for free lunch and although I can’t remember exactly how much my parents make, it must be only around $30k/yr.
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Take off Rutgers, UIUC and UPitt. They wont’ give you the aid you need, and therefore cannot be safeties.
Since you are instate for UCs, and you are interested in law, where gpa and test scores, not ranking of undergrad college, are the most important factors for admission, you might consider UC Riverside which has a top philosophy program in continental philosophy (if that’s what you enjoy). Philosophy is one of the majors which, because it requires logic and reasoning, aligns very well with success in law school.
Tufts has very strong Philosophy faculty and a teaching/undergrad focus. Tufts has no Phd program to compete for professors attention, but it has a terminal masters program with an international reputation that adds to the number of high level courses available to undergrads.
To provide a back-up to Law School, you might want to consider an interdisciplinary major in Cognitive and Brain Science (which combines Philosophy and Computer Science). This can be an interesting way to develop a knowledge base in Computer Science that will come in handy in all professions. This program also has an international reputation at the undergrad level. There is ongoing research on how to teach morals to robots which has received a lot of attention.
If you are a “Glee” fan, then you may already know that the Tufts’ Beelzebubs are the “real Warblers” behind the group on the TV show.
Tufts meets full need. They will also factor your Community Service more heavily into the admissions decision than the other schools on your list, which could help. (You can see how admissions weighs various factors on each school’s CDS)
Brandeis offers some merit scholarships and is strong in philosophy as well.
I am not familiar with the other recommended schools with terminal masters and no Phd program, but there are a couple from California that might be worth checking out.
From the philosophical gourmet:
http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/maprog.asp
On trying to teach robots morality:
http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/05/31/video-of-stephen-colbert-talking-morality-lessons-for-robots/
On “Glee”:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/471993/glee-meet-the-real-warblers