Chance Me!!! Need HELP

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Grade: 12
State: Illinois, born in Brooklyn, lived in China for six years
ACT: 28
SAT: 1210
GPA: 3.5 weighted, 3.8 unweighted
Class Rank: 33 out of ~200
Ethnicity: Asian (Chinese)
Sex: Male
Family’s Financial Situation: Not very good, extremely in need of Financial Aid and will not be able to attend unless at least half is covered. Both of my parents dropped out of grade school to work and are immigrants, so I’m first gen.

ECs:
National Honor Society, Captain of Scholar (Quiz) Bowl (10-12th), President of History Club (11-12th), Youth and Government Committee Chair (11-12th), Concert Choir plus Spring Musical (only 12th grade), Jackson CEO Entrepreneur and started my own email marketing business (11-12th), SIUC Upward Bound and Summer Law Work Study Lawyer, won Best Oral Advocate Award for aforementioned Mock Trial (11-12th), taught Chinese to the superintendent of my school district (11-12th), and worked at a restaurant (9-12th).

Major: Political Science (Pre-Professional Law Track)

I already got into DePaul, UMass Boston and Dartmouth, and Murray State University, and University of Illinois at Chicago.

I applied and is currently waiting for Penn State (Early Action), Boston University (Early Decision), NYU (Regular Decision), Champlain University, Hamilton University, Syracuse, Cornell, Yale, Harvard (lol definitely not getting into Ivies), Michigan State, Northeastern, Northwestern, SIUC and a couple more.

What schools do I have a good chance of getting into and where else should I apply? How are my chances of getting into the schools I applied for?

2

You don’t need help. You want reassurance. You have 5 acceptances. Are any of them affordable? If so, then you are set.

Not sure how you picked your list, but NYU is not a good bet for you: I don’t know if you would get in, but even if you did, I can’t see you getting the kind of financial aid that will make it affordable for somebody “extremely” in need of financial aid. Are Pen or Michigan State affordable OOS?

Right now, if one of your acceptances is affordable, you just have to wait for your RD decisions to come in and see what the affordability is.

3

@collegemom3717 The schools I’ve been accepted to aren’t really where I want to go. I applied only because I wanted to see how much financial aid I would get. I know this makes me sound really arrogant, but I don’t feel like these colleges are good enough for me.

4

Your title is kind of click bait. Nothing anyone says to chance you will help your decisions or fin aid. Any college can be good enough for you if you put in what you want to get out of it. Don’t shoot your shot to schools you wouldn’t attend you waste their time and your own. With a GPA and SAT strongly below the averages of schools that meet full need and below the stats of huge merit scholarships you can’t be picky with where you’re getting financial aid because if you’re reliant on that merit you will only get it from schools who need to offer you that merit to get you to come, meaning that you WILL NOT be their average student or else they wouldn’t be trying to lure you with money. The schools you’ve gotten into are good schools and the schools that “are good enough for you” are unlikely to meet your “extreme” financial need for merit. Find schools where you are in the 75th percentile or better and you may have a shot with merit. If you FAFSA EFC is low look for schools who meet a very high percentage of need.

Again, don’t apply to schools where you wouldn’t go. Its a waste of time and effort for everyone involved. For somebody in the same boat with not amazing stats and strong need for merit it’s vital that you are not on a pedestal and feel that you are better than a college. Find where you will get a good education not a name brand or rank, and any of the schools you listed could give you a good education. I’m where you are right now but I’m not picky with my options when they are in advantage over you financially.

5

@iiMimic Thanks for the advice. You said that you’re “right where I am”, so I hope you don’t mind if I ask where you’ve applied? What schools would meet the most need for me right now? Where else could I apply?

6

First, above anything else, cost is your precondition before applying to anything. You have a lot of colleges on your list, but they’re almost all private or out of state. If your parents don’t have a good financial situation to pay out of state/private tuition, chances are, you’re going to UI-Chicago whether you want to or not.

7

@coolguy40 What colleges do you think would be suitible for me to apply to that would meet my needs?

8

If you were a Junior, we would suggest working on your ACT or SAT. If you were a Sophomore we would suggest working on both your GPA and your rigor. If you were a fresher we would suggest working on grades and ECs.

But you are a senior, with an ACT / SAT in the bottom 10% of admitted students at Northwestern, Cornell, etc, the bottom 15% at Hamilton, bottom 1/3rd at BU and solid but unexceptional marks and ECs. There isn’t much that you can do to your application except refine essays and choose colleges where you can be accepted and you can afford.

I’m not a fan of the ‘am I good enough for X college’, but I am also not a fan of ‘X college is not good enough for me’. At the end of the day, you bloom where you are planted.

The challenge of financial aid is that you get the most from the ones who want you the most- and those are the ones where you stand out- ie, are at the high end of admitted students (esp, but not only, test scores). The super-generous schools (eg, Harvard, Yale) are looking for exceptional achievers.

Are you looking for specific suggestions as to schools where a 28ACT/3.5GPA will get significant merit aid?

9

@collegemom3717 Are there any other schools that I can still apply to? What else can I do right now?

10

If you are chasing merit, you need to look at schools where your GPA and scores put you above the 75th percentile.

Penn State and Michigan State- you may be accepted but you’ll be out of state so financial aid is going to be an issue.

I think you have little to no chance at Cornell, Yale, Harvard, Northwestern - your scores and GPA are just way too low.
BU, NYU, Hamilton, and Northeastern - still a reach because of your scores and GPA

Champlain University and SIUC - I think you will accepted and could see merit aid

I agree with @collegemom3717 - you will see the most merit at school you probably will think are beneath you. You can be successful anywhere. Shine wherever you go to college!

11

@momofsenior1 Thank you so much!

12

You need financial safeties. If one of your reaches comes through with generous financial aid, awesome; but you need a plan you know you can afford and be happy with.

UIC and SIUC are in this category. I would also suggest looking at Truman State and U of MN-Morris, which are both highly-regarded public LAC’s that participate in the Midwest Student Exchange Program. They can end up being more affordable than the IL publics as a baseline, and also give merit. They offer a residential campus experience that you wouldn’t get at UIC (of course, it completely depends on what you prefer). Run the NPC’s for UIC, SIUC, Truman St. and Morris; look at how much auto-merit you would get (particularly at Truman St.), and see how it stacks up. (Morris also has an internal transfer process - if you wanted to spend your last two years at the Twin Cities flagship campus, and if you were able to afford those two expensive years after saving money in the first two years, it’s fairly straightforward to transfer as long as you have the grades.)

Compare internship and off-campus semester opportunities at the schools you’re considering - for example, https://www.truman.edu/majors-programs/majors-minors/political-science-major/political-science-internships/

If you have a default plan that’s solid and affordable, and you can feel positively about that option, the rest of the process will become far less harrowing.

13

@aquapt Thank you so much for the recommendations!

14

How can you get into Dartmouth with Sat 1210 ?

15

@dz, I think the OP means UMass- Dartmouth campus, not Dartmouth College

16

@dz yeah, @collegemom3717 is right. I got into University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, not Darthmouth University.

17

Just an update: I just got my decision back for Boston Uni Early Decision. I got deferred to Regular Decision. My mood really got dampened.