My daughter is a senior and getting ready to apply to college. We live in the Dallas area in Texas; she moved from NYC when she was 10 and would like to go back to the northeast for college. A couple of years ago, we went to visit some Ivies and very prestigious LACs (Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Amherst, William and Brown). For years she’s had her eyes set on Harvard, but tbh, she hasn’t worked hard enough to get into that school. I think Dartmouth or a smaller LAC like Bowdoin or Amherst would be a good fit because she thrives in that kind of environment. She has no idea what she wants to major in. She leaning toward marketing or anthropology.
I’m a single parent and I don’t have a 4-year degree. Her dad does but he lives in NY and is barely involved except for an occasional phone call. I moved from the Caribbean as a child and have an associates in nursing. I’ve worked two jobs for 8 years so that we can live in a good school district.
She’s African American
top 6% in her class
She’s taken the hardest classes in her school. Even before she could to take AP classes she took pre-ap. At her school, these classes are more challenging than on-level classes.
She’s taken several AP tests. Unsure of all the grades but know that she has one 5 and two 4’s.
AP classes from 10th and 11th grade: world hx, human geography, environmental science, ap lang, us hx, and physics
current AP classes: biology, euro hx, calculus, government, economics, english lit, 3D art, and psych
-never played sports, and her ECs are a little lite.
Treasurer in Student Council and UNICEF. She’s been in both those clubs for 2-3 years.
-National Honor Society, National Technical Honor Society and National Art Honor Society. I’ve read that these aren’t generally a big deal, but in her school, they have to complete applications and essays to be approved and not everyone who meets criteria gets in.
internship during the summer as a rising junior at a small startup App company in NY.
She’s had two art pieces make it to regionals and made it to state in DECA last year
She has somewhere between 100-120 volunteer hours in a variety of areas - nothing specific.
Weighted GPA 5.32 Unweighted 3.96
Her SAT scores are very mediocre and she is taking the ACT this weekend. She HATES these tests and I don’t feel like she’s ever put in the time to study for them. She’s taken the SAT 2x and both times got 1370. She got the last set of scores over the weekend and although she got 8 more questions correct, the curve was a lot less on this test than the last.
I know we’re casting the net wide but she has about 11 schools on her list right now - NYU being her safety - and want to go to the best school she can get into. Any recommendations?
I do not think that NYU is a safety. Is her father helping to pay? What is the college budget? An Ivy is going to be a very high reach with the SAT score.
She has a great resume, and I am sure your daughter will have some great choices. Just make sure she has one or two safety schools that she can afford, because the schools she is trying for are reaches for everyone. She sounds like a candidate for an LAC, but I don’t think she has found her fit yet. Some of the colleges on her list are in big cities and some are much more rural and the fact she has somewhat different ideas for possible majors tells me she really needs to spend quality time thinking about the “Why us?” essays within the application. If she is a senior, she better get a move on.
NYU out of pocket may well be 70k. And it’s not a safety. There are many excellent schools outside the Ivy league and the tippy top LACs like Amherst and Williams (which are, to be frank, very high reaches for her as well). “Her father will pay $0” may be an issue if the school thinks he can pay some number much higher. Then financial aid will be limited. You need to consider cost as well as “what school she can get into.” Both are important halves of the total equation.
You really need to understand your finances first and quickly. Almost all of the schools that give a lot of financial aid will require financial information from her dad. I would not consider NYU a safety, especially until you figure out your finances. Even then it wouldn’t be a safety.
If you think your D hasn’t worked hard enough to get into Harvard, then she hasn’t worked hard enough to get into Dartmouth or Amherst either. Those schools are in no way a step down. She does seem though to have strong grades and being URM will give her a boost at most places. Has she applied to any diversity fly-in programs?
NYU is fairly score focused and they aren’t as lacking for diversity candidates as other schools are, so that’s not really a safety. And if she’s interested in marketing as a major, most LACs are not going to offer that.
@Groundwork2022 you’re right about rural vs. urban. I don’t think urban - especially NYC will work for her. Our entire family and her dad still lives there and will enable her. She’s a little sheltered but open to going to any environment. She really likes taking and editing videos and pictures. The internship taught her a little about marketing, but she wants a liberal arts degree no matter where she goes for UG.
@bouders I believe she is auto admit to UT. They’ve sent us paperwork but she really doesn’t want to stay in TX. We’ve looked at some of the women’s colleges that you suggested, but going to an all-women college will further feed her insecurities. She’s a beautiful young woman, but coming from the predominantly Afro-Caribbean neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn to Frisco TX where the AA population in her grade is like 5% and about 1% in AP classes, she hasn’t had any interest from boys and I’ve realized it’s made her feel a little insecure.
@donnaleighg He will fill out the CSS profile, but I don’t think he CAN pay anything. He has 3 kids and a sick mother that he helps to care for. Right now I believe her list includes: UCLA, UMich, NYU (I don’t agree with these but she wants to apply because she knows people with similar resumes from her school who has gotten in) Tufts, Bowdoin, Duke, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Brown and Dartmouth. She’s a young senior (turning 17 in Dec) and maybe she needs to take a gap year and beef up her resume if she doesn’t get into any of those, lol.
Her safety needs to be an auto admit Texas school. Hopefully you already have that shored up. It is beyond my imagination you would pay for NYU over having UT in her hand if she truly is auto admit in the top 6% especially without the top test scores that would open doors for her otherwise.
Also I cannot understand this getting ready to apply? Applications opened almost everywhere in summer. Texas applications opened in July for apply Texas? Pay attention to any priority dates if you are looking for money.
So you don’t get child support? dad would fill in the profile though? What is your FAFSA efc? Dad is wealthy?
You really need to run the net price calculator on each of those schools to make sure you can afford them. OOS schools like UCLA aren’t very likely to offer much, if any FA. There are limits on how much debt a student can take.
Just because the school is all women doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities to socialize and take classes with men. Barnard is part of Columbia and students cross register and take classes together all the time. The Barnard dorm is across the street from the Columbia campus. Wellesley students can take classes at MIT and other nearby schools. Smith students can take classes at Amherst.
SIL met her husband of 20+ years when he was at Amherst and she was at Smith.
@wisteria100 great question. No, she has not applied to any diversity fly-in programs.
@Sybylla We completed FAFSA a couple weeks ago and she didn’t qualify for any aid. I just applied for child support last year and get $300 / month. He will fill out a CSS profile, but as I mentioned before, he likely will not be able to contribute anything more than that. I’m sure once she turns 18 in Dec 19 and no longer REQUIRED to pay, he’ll stop contributing period.
You need to understand that just because her dad will not contribute anything doesn’t mean that colleges won’t determine that he should contribute. That amount will affect your financial aid if it greater than zero. I don’t know how UMich does the income/asset cap for out of state unmarried parents, but you need to know. Don’t let her apply to unaffordable schools. It makes for a difficult April.
You said you filled out FAFSA and don’t qualify for aid. What does that mean? That would have been just based on your income. Was your EFC in excess of 60-70K? And you think you can realistically pay 30K per year. Is all of that correct?
As stated in an earlier post, UCLA gives little to no financial aid (need-based or merit based) so expect to pay close to $65K/year for your daughter to attend. Run the Net Price Calculator to confirm. Plenty of good options listed from the other CC posters.
Your daughter’s standardized testing should not necessarily be regarded as low for all of her tentative schools of interest. Her 1370 places her a solid 80 points higher than Bowdoin’s 25th percentile, for example.
Run some NPCs to see what the schools will expect you to pay. If your EFC is reasonable the choices are better, but some of the places on her list are simply not going to be affordable: UCLA is $65K+ with NO aid for OOS students and UMi isn’t going to be much better and NYU is famously bad for financial aid. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth are all good for aid- but are also extreme reaches. They are a really wild mix of urban and rural, small and large, intense and chill, so she should do some more homework and figure out which ones she actually can picture herself attending. (she needs to do that for the ‘why’ essays anyway).
Has she considered Georgetown? it’s a good blend of a nice campus (contained, yet open to the green & quiet Georgetown neighborhood, with the rest of DC nearby), academically rigorous, and with a reasonably diverse student body.
The Claremont-McKenna (CA) consortium, Davidson (NC) and Berea* (KY) are other LACs with a relatively diverse student body, good need based aid that might be good additions to consider.
Berea- ok, it is *very rural, but it’s a great small town in eastern KY, and if it suited her she would be a strong candidate and it would be essentially free (all students do have to work on campus though), and again a reasonably diverse student body