Federal Direct Loans, which do not need a cosigner, are typically up to $5,500 for frosh year.
https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsidized
Student work earnings part-time during the school year and during summers are typically assumed to be a few thousand dollars per year.
Note that many on-campus jobs give preference to students with work-study (a form of need-based financial aid – work-study subsidizes the student’s pay so that the cost to the employer is less); the availability of jobs for work-study and non-work-study students varies by campus.
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Instate, beside UNC (and she could try to apply to the Honors College - it doesn’t add much but does create a smaller community within the larger campus) App State (esp. applying to Honors and Watauga + scholars) and UNC-Asheville sound like they’d be good fits.
Seconding Beloit, College of Charleston International Fellows (Spanish+Anthropology), Denison, Lafayette, Agnes Scott, W&L (if ok w/name/history).
Not sure if Muhlenberg or Goucher could be within budget but they do offer merit.
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Admission to W&L isn’t a Hail Mary but a Johnson is - and apparently a large portion (50%) are used to improve diversity. That can be SES (Pell), racial, religious, etc.
The racial component would help.
But I’ll stand by Hail Mary because if OPs kid gets in like mine - with no $$ - then it’s a no. And it’s a hard admit but if admitted it’s many times more likely with no money than with money.
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If she does qualify as a semi-finalist for PSATs, Fordham offers some full tuition awards.
A bit further than her 6 hr preference, but short direct flight away. It’s mid-size and has two different campus options. The Lincoln Center campus is in NYC and the Rose Hill campus has the more traditional campus. Fordham is s Jesuit university but seems fairly liberal.
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I think she’s in range for the NMSF-is that helpful, even if she doesn’t become a finalist?
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According to Fordham’s site, a student
needs to be designated as s semi-finalist.
There have been past threads on cc discussing this. (My daughter didn’t qualify in our state so don’t have any specifics.) She did get 27k in merit from them with similar stats as your daughter but still quite expensive at @ 57k a year.
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If she makes NMSF, she will make NMF (of the 16K semifinalists, 15K make finalist. Those who don’t either fail to turn in the application, have some significant behavioral issue such as suspensions or crimes, or have multiple Cs or lower on their transcripts.)
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How does free sound with a 6 hr travel time ?
First rate. Attention. The President monitors the CC. He said 20% of the class is.
Then you have your other big money ones like Bama and more but they’re not your size desire, etc. I believe most nmsf become finalist.
But $36k could be expensive :). A nice problem to have.
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In addition, Fordham also offers many full-tuition merit scholarships to National Recognition Scholars (e.g. National Hispanic Recognition Scholars, National African American Recognition Scholars, National Native American Recognition Scholars.) These official designations are worth getting for those who qualify.
ETA: In years past, Fordham granted the full tuition scholarship to ~70% of applicants with these designations.
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Wow, that’s pretty amazing.
That is a high estimate for summer earnings. If a student worked 40 hours per week for 12 weeks at $20/hr, that would be $9600. That’s before FICA, taxes, or spending one dime on herself. And that’s working 40/hr for the full 12 weeks.
I don’t think that’s realistic. Great if it happens, but what if it doesn’t?
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Here is a link to the interactive Data Dashboard for UNC system schools, which allows you to input various criteria to get information on numbers of students who applied, were admitted, and then enrolled at various UNC system schools (including, of course, UNC-Chapel Hill): Workbook: db_freshmen.
There might be some useful information that is available to you from this dashboard.
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I presume that your daughter is a HS junior. How many, and which, schools has she visited in person?
I found with my kids that visiting schools (when they are in session, so your child can see the student body and get a feel for whether she can see herself as one of them) was always revealing, and helped winnow the possible choices.
I will toss out another suggestion: Centre College in Danville, KY (south of Lexington, KY). Here is a link to scholarship info for Centre: Scholarships & Fellowships | Centre College
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Thank you. We have visited a handful of colleges, but usually on Saturday mornings, or other times, where they weren’t many students around. Would like to see the impact of visiting when class is in session….
I don’t know whether your daughter would have a week for a Fall Break, or other days available to her during the week in the Fall in which to take college visits. If she does, then you might look at the academic calendars of some target schools, and see whether those target schools are in session when your daughter has a break; and then plan a Road Trip for several of them, allotting a day for each visit and then travel to the next school.
If you can’t do (m)any visits this coming Fall, there are always Admitted Student Days in the Spring with the schools where your daughter has been admitted, so she can travel there and see what her future potential classmates look like.
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Starting to hone in on the list-where we’ll apply. Thanks for your input! I just need to get my daughter to read up with me—any tips on that? I think she’s daunted/stressed by thinking about all of this, the thought of leaving home, and studying for finals!
Anyway, I love all of these and want to go back to college myself (so many cool areas of study)!!
As a reminder, my daughters info:
-Resident of North Carolina, biracial, legacy at Chapel Hill (I believe that doesn’t help us, since we are in state)
-3.9 UW/4.3 W GPA (roughly, waiting on final grades)
-9 or 10 AP courses by the end of senior year, all others are honors
-34 ACT -no SAT yet)
-Based on predicted numbers, will likely be a national merit finalist
-part-time job 4 years, stage crew three years, tutors adults in ESL, face painting business, a few clubs
-undecided, but interested in anthropology, Spanish, biology and media arts
-Looking for a nice campus, good housing availability, potential for smaller class sizes and good advisement to help her determine her studies
-we’d like to come in under 40 K after merit
-She says she doesn’t want to be too far from home, but I’d like to have some great options for her, and if it’s affordable enough, we can spend more money on travel to get her back-and-forth
-UNC [Chapel Hill]
-UNC Asheville
-Elon
-Richmond
-William and Mary
-American University
-SUNY [Binghamton]
-Denison
-College of Wooster
-Miami U. of Ohio
I feel really good about our list, but we need to cut off a few, and make sure we have a good balance of true likelies (including cost), and matches, not sure if we need to reaches)— I have to see if my daughter still wants to apply to Penn (which I’m sure it won’t come in as affordable, but if she wants to see what happens, I’m fine with that).
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I think that’s a nice list, assuming all are affordable. I don’t see a single traditional reach – maybe UNC, Richmond and W&M could be considered low reaches/high matches, but regardless, there are multiple acceptances on that list.
Be sure to really show the love to American – they consider demonstrated interest greatly.
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I agree it is a good list, as long as the OP’s daughter will be happy attending one of the admission and affordable safeties. The reaches (mainly due to the need for merit) are all reasonable reaches for this student.
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We tried to only talk about the college process about once a week (D20 picked Sundays, D23 picked Wednesdays) and the rest of the time - we talked about anything but the college admission process.
That helped with some of the stress. Also making a plan to apply EA where possible helped with the stress. Both D20 and D23 were accepted by one rolling admission school before mid October which also took some stress off.
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