Chance me - potential Film and/or Linguistics major

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • State: New York
  • School type: NYC specialized public hs
  • Demographics: White (jewish in heritage) nonbinary person (afab)

Intended Major(s) Film and Linguistics (possibly a combo of the two)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 96.49/100 (a 93 is considered a “good” gpa in my school)
  • School does not do weighted GPA
  • Class Rank: School does not rank (class of ~900)
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1510 SAT

Coursework
7 APs (my school has a lot of APs, but limits you to 4 per year and you can only take 1 in freshman year and 2 in sophomore year) and 3 honors (my school only offers 6 honors classes)

Awards
Gold Medal writing for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards 9th grade
Gold Medal in the National Latin Exam 9th/11th grade

Extracurriculars
Stage director for 8 productions in school
Two short films made during a free film camp in the summers (both are going to be shown in the New York Short Film Festival)
8 years studying/performing classical guitar
Tutor at a Kumon (paid work; 11th/12th, 9hrs/wk)
Started a walking club
Clarinet player in the school band
A few hours of community service to an urban gardening club

Essays/LORs/Other
Common app about finding a balance between school and life (framed around losing my Duolingo streak in Finnish lol)

Cost Constraints / Budget
10,000/yr but FAFSA says my family can pay 28,00/yr :grimacing:

Schools

  • Safety: U Minnesota (already accepted/honors college), SUNY Purchase (EA), SUNY Buffalo (EA)
  • Likely: Syracuse University, SUNY Binghamton (EA)
  • Match: Boston University (priority scholarship deadline), University of Rochester (?)
  • Reach: University of Chicago (EA), Cornell, Williams, Colby, Northeastern (EA), and possibly Yale (if I can find the motivation)

I’m not taking this too seriously-- I’m curious to see what others think-- if you have any advice about applying to certain places please lmk too!

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How about Wesleyan? Or do you want more in linguistics?

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Congrats on your achievements.

What this means is that meet full need schools are likely to be unaffordable for you.

Have you run the Net Price Calculators for the schools on your list so that you can get cost estimates? All of your reaches and matches meet full need as calculated by them…so you really do need to run the NPCs, and let us know those cost estimates….my sense is they are going to be much greater than $10K since your FAFSA EFC is $28K.

The NPCs may not be accurate if your parents are divorced, own real estate beyond a primary home, and/or own a business…are any of those the case for you?

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I did a few NPCs for the schools that meet more need and they said ~$15k-25k (I probably should have put that in the original post and my family doesn’t own a home so that’s probably why the npcs are better than fafsa)

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I think I want to have the option to study lingustics too (but I’ll very much consider schools with really good aid with only one or the other or something more like classics or history)

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That is interesting, NPCs are usually at least the FAFSA EFC and often more. I would double check what you entered for the NPC calculations to make sure it’s accurate. For the NPCs that allow you to just input your FAFSA EFC, you should do that and see what happens.

If your budget is $10K, how will you afford $15K-$25k?

Does the $10K budget include the $5.5K direct student loan that all first years can take? If not, then your budget is $15Kish.

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How will you afford Minnesota or Syracuse ? Do you qualify for TAP?

Maybe add another SUNY, delete my alma mater Syracuse. Add a school that meets need that’s a target like Franklin & Marshall.

Many schools have shrank or even eliminated core parts of linguistics departments so you might study curriculums at your schools.

Good luck.

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Uh oh… okay I’ll take that advice and re-evaluate Syracuse (I lowkey applied to minnesota bc it was free)

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I think for most NPCs they add in considerations of owning a home and my parents don’t so that’s why it might be better aid
the budget doesn’t include the loans and I’m hoping not to take out loans but I’ll probably have to :sob:
an example of a NPC is UChicago which gives me a net price of ~19,000 including work-study

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Run the NPC (and have your family double-check you for the most generous schools, like Yale or U. of Chicago). Any school that does not offer merit aid and whose Expected Family Contribution (EFC) costs more than your family can afford, eliminate.

You list may well be properly classified in terms of your chances for admission. They are not, however, classified properly with respect to your chances of being admitted AND the cost being affordable.

Do you qualify for any of the New York financial aid programs that would apply to the SUNYs or CUNYs?

Since we don’t know the answer to that, I’ll start with the assumption that you’re not and keep my fingers crossed that you are.

Extremely Likely to receive admittance AND be affordable

  • CUNY Brooklyn College and live at home
  • CUNY City College and live at home
  • CUNY Queens College and live at home

Then, to find a school that’s going to be affordable where you live on-campus, you’re probably going to need at least a full tuition scholarship, as room and board alone is usually over $10k/year.
Your GPA and SAT scores can help to get you there, but it’s unlikely at many of the more “elite” schools. They have far more highly qualified students than they can take and their priorities are such that they want to give to whom (they consider) financially needy. Your EFC means that you have need, but it doesn’t meet your full need, so these schools aren’t where you’re going to get the options you need.

These are some schools that I would investigate, running the NPC and looking at their scholarship offerings to see what options they have to get you at least full tuition, and preferably a full ride. These colleges all have majors in linguistics and film/drama, usually with good participation rates proportionally.

  • Earlham (IN) - small school, very progressive student body, and has a very large endowment per student.

  • Eastern Michigan: medium to large public (13k undergrads)

  • Georgia State: large public (29k undergrads), but Atlanta is a big base for film. Also, all the Atlanta colleges are part of a consortium where you can take classes at the other schools, like Emory, Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), etc.

  • Lawrence (WI): small liberal arts college, part of the Colleges That Change Lives association (a good place to look for other options), and usually pretty generous with aid (merit and financial)

  • Miami U. (OH)

  • Montclair State (NJ): 16k undergrads

  • Ohio U (whose honors college also has a very good reputation)

  • Portland State (OR)

  • U. of Arizona: They’ve historically been very generous with merit for top stats, but have begun to be a little less generous (though still generous by most standards). I’d see how much you’d get.

  • U. of Iowa

  • U. of Kansas

  • U. of New Mexico

  • U. of Utah (and they tend to have a very low bar for getting in-state residency status after the first year)

  • U. of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

@dfbdfb is our resident linguistics expert and may have additional advice for you as well.

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Thank you for all these reccomendations - I’ll check them out

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FYI for linguistics, unless you want to go more into speech pathology, the field has almost completely moved into computational linguistic, natural language processing (ie. Siri and Alexa and chatbots). It’s exploding and great, but realize it’s computational heavy now.

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@AustenNut, you rang?

(That works so much better if you imagine it in a Lurch voice.:upside_down_face:)

Anyway: Linguistics and film, the first thing I think of is those universities in California where there are linguistics faculty who occasionally consult with movie studios on linguistic issues (e.g., USC, UCLA), or where there are faculty who actively do research on language in film (e.g., Pitzer)—but they’re probably out of your financial band.

So I’ll just talk about linguistics (lx, it’s easier to type) from this point, leaving the film part to others.

Lx is mostly offered as a major at larger universities—LACs and smaller publics tend to at the most have a few lx courses, maybe a minor or at most a small specialization within one of the language majors (usually English), though there are exceptions with comprehensive lx major programs (e.g., Macalester, Southern Maine). This means, though, that you can target larger colleges that offer good automatic merit but might tend to be ignored here on CC, whether because of location or low prestigiosity, but provide a good education nonetheless. Also, I wouldn’t immediately rule out programs that are a specialization within another major—so, for example, some such specializations might be an English major where two out of fifteen courses are in lx (not really what I’d call a lx major), while others might have six of them as courses in other branches of English studies but the rest in lx (which I would think totally counts as a lx major).

And then, of course, different lx programs have different focuses—my undergrad was at Maryland where the major was and remains heavily focused on cognitive modeling and theory, but the program at Georgetown foregrounds socially marked use of language, the program at Alaska Fairbanks is strong in language documentation and revitalization, the program at NC State centers language ideologies and identity, and so on. That’s something to worry about later, though—everybody’s got more or less the same core, and so the differences are more ones of focus rather than being absolutely different from each other.

And I’m going to push back somewhat against @jtb’s characterization of the field—yes, computational lx is one of the few subfields in which a lx major has a good shot at getting a job within their major field with a baccalaureate (the other is applied lx, which is second-language teaching rather than applications of linguistics, it’s a misleading label)—but that’s nowhere near the bulk of the field, it’s just the most visible and best-paying specialization. That said, even if you end up in a subfield that isn’t computational (e.g., dialectology, theoretical syntax), developing some ability to, say, program in Python is going to be useful.

(Important: If your interests include lx because of a desire to work in speech pathology or audiology, those both require professional degrees—lx is a common major leading to them, but they are, like other professional programs, effectively agnostic with regard to undergrad major.)

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Very interesting, Lurch :wink:. I wonder whether any of the faculty in other areas with a heavy film focus have linguistics faculty with similar interests. And where are some of the other big film centers? I’m thinking New York would be the next most likely place, and since Atlanta is booming in the film/tv industry, that’s the next place I would look, too.

In terms of Atlanta possibilities, Oglethorpe offers a flagship match program, so the tuition would be the same as at a SUNY (and you may be able to get more). But the match alone with the cost of room & board is still over your budget. Alternatively, Agnes Scott is a women’s college that is inclusive of transgender and nonbinary people, I believe. @Sweetgum may be able to speak more to Agnes Scott, which gives very generous merit aid. As with Georgia State mentioned above, these schools would also have access to classes at SCAD, Emory, etc.

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Can’t find the article but I remember a few years back had U of Mary Washington as #1 in linguistics. No idea about merit, etc. and I know it’s not a big name - but that stood out.

I don’t see the article anymore - it was student rated and talked about it being above Chicago etc. for linguistics. I don’t think anyone would see that - but the ranking had it this way.

Not sure how they incorporate film into the studies.

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Op- understand how work study operates. You only get the $ after you’ve worked.

So a job at the college library- if you qualify for work study- you work your hours, you get your paycheck. They don’t hand you the cash at the beginning of the semester. So you can’t be tapping your work study award to pay your bill- it will likely cover incidental expenses (toiletries, laundry, a pizza) but will not make a dent in your room and board fees.

i’m worried you don’t have affordable options here…

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With respect to estimating college costs, this site can be especially convenient for the partner schools listed:

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yeah I’m thinking this is an issue for sure – but now thinking about it I’ve done some calculations and idk why my parents told me 10,000 is the most they can pay (I think they might not be aware that you don’t have to pay upfront)
also I need to edit the post because I forgot that I have money saved up from working ($3,000) that I can use to pay for some of those incidental expenses too but I can’t figure out how to edit it

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With respect to Williams and Colby, which, I believe, do not offer linguistics, you may want consider replacement ideas. Hamilton, for example, might offer you a nice balance across film, linguistics (available as a minor), classics (excellent there) and history.

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Adding link I missed b4 on U of MW

Mary Washington Classics Program Shines as No. 1 Among Student Rankings - News (umw.edu)

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