<p>Hey CC, I'm currently a junior in high school and have started to think about college and what i want from it. Though i haven't found any colleges that really impressed me and that i could attend. The once that do impress me are the ones that i cant even fathom getting into. I'm currently hoping to attend graduate school for economics and want to maximize my chance of getting into a good graduate school. But i do have some hurdles such as financial aid and location of the college. My parents aren't willing to send me to a school further than 4 hours away and I also will need to attend a school that offers substantial need based aid to families making around $40,000~45,000. I recently visited Ursinus College and wasn't blown away maybe because it was snowing but i seemed like they have a very good science program but their economics program is more focused towards business. Also their dorms seem to be lackluster. This was the first college i visited so maybe i was just expecting too much but i cant seem to find any other colleges that really impress me in my area (i live in a suburb of philly) and that i can hope to get into. So i was hoping the really well read users on CC that have gone through this process could help my find colleges. </p>
<p>My Stats</p>
<p>GPA:3.78
SAT: M670 CR630 W570</p>
<p>AP classes: US History (5), Goverment (5), Calculus AB (?), Physics B (?)</p>
<p>Extraciruclars: None expect intramural basketball and work.</p>
<p>(Sorry for any spelling and grammar mistakes, typing this on a phone.)</p>
<p>Franklin and Marshall? It meets 100% need and is in PA.</p>
<p>You’re gonna need some more ECs for most private schools, which are the ones that will give you financial aid. Try to get some leadership and/or community service by the time you apply.</p>
<p>There are a ton of excellent schools within four hours of Phila. Get some college guide books (ex. Princeton Review, Fiske) and start reading. And don’t get too caught up in dorms as long as they are OK – more important that you like the students and the programs. In order to qualify for merit aid you should try to find schools where you are in the top 25% statistically. As a few examples, you can look into Muhlenberg, Franklin & Marshall, Dickinson, Drexel, Juinata, St. Joes, UScranton, Goucher, Temple to name but a few.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice but i don’t want to attend a huge college where i have no interaction with professors so schools such as Temple and Drexel are not ideal. Also I don’t think i could get into a college like Franklin & Marshall or Muhlenburg where I am below their median 25% of students.</p>
<p>Check out Juniata, Allegheny, Wooster, Hiram, Washington&jefferson, Susquehanna, TCNJ. I do think you have a shot at Muhlenberg.
Among the ones I just listed, some are a bit further than 4 hours but if it saves them lots of money your parents may be willing to extend the distance.</p>
<p>Muhlenberg claims on average to cover about 91% of demonstrated financial need.
I would expect them to offer fairly substantial need-based aid for families making $40K~45K.<br>
(Use their online net price calculator to estimate your costs.)</p>
<p>assuming that your gpa is UNWTD and taking into account your preference for size, I ran super match and came up with Bentley, Dickinson, Stonehill, Dickinson, College of NJ, Trinity C, Skidmore, UMBC, Allegheny, Fordham, Gettysburg, PSU-Erie Behrend, Bryant, Moravian, Merrimack, Villanova, Susquehanna, Washington C, Saint Vincent, Marist, Millersville, and Clark. I’ve edited a bit, but as you can see there are a lot of schools in the northeast and mid-atlantic that you could look into. I’ve excluded the oos schools I recognized. You can do much the same with super match. Notice that F&M and Muhlenberg did not come up in my list.</p>
<p>I tried Super Match with the following criteria:
Location: Mid-Atlantic (must have)
Scores: 1870 SAT, 3.8 UW GPA (must have)
School Size: Small (must have)
Religious Affiliation: None (very important)</p>
<p>Results include:
Dickinson, Bucknell, Richmond (100%);
Allegheny, St. Mary’s College of MD (98%);
Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Gettysburg, Ursinus, Loyola MD (96%)</p>
<p>Don’t sleep on your PA public colleges. Penn State is much larger than you want, but the smaller campuses of Abington, Brandywine, Lehigh Valley, and Berks are close by and may offer what you want. Altoona and Hazleton are also within 4 hours.</p>
<p>Drexel’s not huge - there are 15,000 undergraduates. The thing about economics is that your classes are unlikely to be enormous - the intro micro and macro seminars may be larger, but once you get into your upper-division courses they are likely to be pretty small and you can have lots of interaction with professors there. But it’s fair to want to go to a smaller school; your scores are a bit low for Haverford or Swarthmore but there’s no harm in trying. If you’re a young woman you may want to look at Bryn Mawr. And Gettysburg, Lafayette, Wilson, Muhlenberg, Juniata, Allegheny, Dickinson, Bucknell, and Franklin & Marshall are all small LACs; Lehigh, Villanova, Arcadia, St. Joseph’s, Susequehanna, and LaSalle are medium-sized campuses. Susquehanna’s another good recommendation.</p>
<p>In the NYC area there’s Fordham, Sarah Lawrence, Bard College in upstate NY (may be a bit further than 4 hours), St. John’s in Queens, and Manhattan College in the Bronx. DC’s also within 4 hours of Philadelphia and there’s American U, Goucher College, and Loyola Maryland.</p>
<p>It is February of junior year. Get some study books and take the SAT one more time. Lots of the schools listed here would be possibilities for you if you can bring your SATS up a little further. Also, note that a lot of colleges consider the M & CR sections of the SAT more strongly than the Writing section, so for you that is a good thing.</p>
<p>I’d suggest a study program and retake the SAT or take the ACT. your sat scores are decent but if you could pull them up, that would give you more merit aid options, which could help with the finances. also, since you have grad school on the horizon, consider a community college to start to keep undergrad costs down. the smaller Penn State campuses came to my mind too, And I agree with another poster that Susquehanna could be a good option. </p>
<p>yeah, Juniata is in a rundown county seat with a max prison (I think it still has a chair), Huntingdon, but there isn’t much to it. Fishing and hunting are pretty good. A friend of S left our suburban DC community for Juniata and was back home in two months. A lot of poverty and not much to do. The closest thing to it in the Philly exurbs is probably Berks County, without the sometimes beautiful farms and expensive, horsey homes. It will be different from philly suburbs, but that can be a good thing, too, for some people.</p>
<p>It’s frustrating, but we found that the less selective schools just don’t have the money available for lower-income families unless you’re a super-top-notch candidate. My daughter was in a similar situation (though her GPA and SAT weaknesses were the opposite of yours) and it was frustrating making her college list. There were very few schools -scratch that, there were NO schools- that met the criteria for “safety” school in both the academic and financial categories. If she was likely to get in, she couldn’t afford it, and vice versa :(</p>
<p>When my D was making her initial list, she found schools that she liked for their academic programs, size, location, and vibe, and then we ran the Net Price Calculators for all of them. The list quickly dwindled from over 20 to 7, then 4. Note that she DID keep 'reach" schools on the list, and, in fact, improved her SATs and GPA greatly by halfway through senior year. Hopefully enough that she’ll get in!</p>
<p>Have you run the NPCs? The easiest place to do it is through the College Board dot com (sorry CC!) interface. Many schools are tied into the same system, so if you set up an account and enter your information, it’s saved and makes running the calculator for additional schools much easier. You will need to get estimated (or last year’s) financial information from you parents in order to do this, but trust me it’s worth it to be able to have a clearer picture of which schools you can afford. (Remember, it’s only an estimate. Your actual award could be different if your financial picture changes or if you get merit aid not accounted for in the calculator. But it’s a good ballpark anyway!)</p>
<p>Also, I second ctl987’s SAT study idea. For about $80 you can buy the actual online study program on College Board dot com. If you are self-motivated enough to actually do the course as suggested, it can help bring your scores up a lot. (There are also hardcopy books if you prefer that method to online.)</p>
<p>With slightly higher SAT scores you would have a better shot at some schools that are likely to have bigger endowments and more financial aid.</p>
<p>My D had similar test scores and a lower GPA and got good merit aid at Allegheny and Susquehanna. She was accepted at Dickinson (which she now attends). </p>
<p>Take off the none for religious affiliation. There are “affiliated” schools that will not impose their beliefs on you and that might be good matches for you. Those would include Moravian, U Scranton, and Kings College, to name a few. A “religion” class or two might be required, but often there is a broad spectrum of available classes and none would be indoctrinating.</p>
<p>Hey guys, thanks for all the advice. I did retake the SATs and hope to get anywhere from 1950-2050 (may be higher I felt it was kinda easy.) Not much of an improvement but it should help a little. I also registered to take the ACT in april so I’m going to study for that now. For now I seem to be getting around 29 from the practice tests I’ve taken. I’ll update you guys as soon as i receive my SAT scores.</p>
<p>As for the financial aid situation i have been running the net price calculators and have been getting prices as low as 9.000 without loans and as high as 23,000 without loans (I only used estimates from my dad so I can’t conform anything.) As for Penn State it seems it will be more expensive for me to attend penn state than it would be for me to a private university, which seems preposterous.</p>
<p>This is kinda going on a tangent, but I feel that I’m kinda stuck in the college admissions limbo. Where there are no universities that specifically cater to students in my range or that are willing to offer aid to student like me. IT SUCKS!!</p>
<p>According to IPEDS data, for a family income of $30,001-$48,000, students receiving Title IV Federal financial aid in 2011-12 paid the following average net prices to attend the following schools:</p>