Hi all,
I am looking to apply to colleges with a good undergrad business program. My desire is to major (or at least concentrate) in marketing.
Over the summer my college list has been getting exceedingly long and I am looking to cut it down to a more reasonable size so I don’t have to pay a ridiculous amount of application fees. My heart is not set on a particular school, but I would like a college that is large, diverse, politically active, and has a lot of options just in case I end up deciding to change my major. Also cost , scholarships, and merit aid is very important since I qualify for almost zero need-based aid.
Can anyone help me weed out some schools from the below list (or propose alternatives)? Thanks!
Stats:
NJ resident
Private religious school
1490 SAT (780 Reading/710 Math)
4.55 weighted GPA
All honors classes + 5 dual enrollment college classes (school does not offer AP/IB)
One community college class taken outside of school
Founder & president of Model UN club (3 years)
Student government officer (2 years…possibly this year too)
Work experience (10th thru 12th grade)
Three volunteer mission trips and community service
Schools:
Rutgers - New Brunswick
U of Maryland - College Park
Ohio State
Indiana University (Kelley Business School)
Purdue University
Boston College
Case Western
Tulane
Cornell
Fordham
Wash U in St Louis
Northeastern
Emory
SUNY Binghamton
Columbia (super reach)
The one thing I’m noticing off the top of my head is that you have several out-of-state public schools on your list, and they tend to not offer much financial aid to OOS students.
D had Case Western, North Eastern and Lehigh as her final three private u’s. They are all very good.
I agree with @rosered55 that unless you are full pay, I would consider taking off the out-of-state publics unless you can get into a very top public business school like Berkeley, Michigan or UVA.
What are you looking to pay? A number of schools on your list offer merit, but will a $15,000-$25,000 reduction at a $65,000/year school be sufficient?
You need to define your budget, if you are complaining about application costs, some of the schools won’t give more than a nibble of merit for you. Tulane and CW might well WL if they think you are just using them as free applications for merit fishing. NEU may offer very little merit at your stats.
Thanks for the responses. I generally would not be willing to pay more than $40000 per year unless I somehow got into Cornell or Columbia. While I understand that most state schools will not give me much (or any) money because I am oos, I am interested in applying to several of them because they are still at the end of the day cheaper than many of the private colleges (not counting merit aid). Indiana University in particular interests me a great deal because their business school is very well ranked and they also offer a moderate amount of money to out of staters.
****Maybe someone could suggest some private colleges that I may have a good chance at getting merit aid from??
@Sybylla I didn’t intend to come across as complaining. I’m really just acknowledging the reality that I’d rather not spend a great deal of money applying to schools that I’d never end up getting accepted to or attending. You mentioned Tulane may assume I’m fishing for aid and thus waitlist me. Is there any way to show that I really am interested in their program?
@TomSrOfBoston I know Columbia doesn’t have a business major. I probably should have specified that I’m applying to
Columbia as a poly sci major, honestly just out of sheer curiosity to see whether or not I’d even get in
@mommyrocks I should’ve been more specific. “Large” to me is any school that has more than 12000 or so students. I really don’t want a small school where everybody knows each other and you end up seeing the same exact people everywhere you go. I go to a super tiny high school so I’m ready for a change.
Which of these is your dead-on, guaranteed admit, guaranteed affordable safety? Find that place first. Be sure you would be happy to attend if all else goes bad in the admission and financial aid process. Then comb through the rest of your list and get real with yourself about how much you like the others. Don’t expend any time or money applying to a place you like less than that true safety. I know several students who were one-and-done once they identified their safeties.
Indiana is a good choice, and with merit should fall in your range. They have rolling admissions, which means you wil hear early, and should have no trouble getting in. They were the first school my D17 heard from and once she got in, she then actually pulled some schools from her list. some of the privates on the list will provide merit, and some like Emory as good with financial aide,but is 40K what you want/able to pay, or what NFC is showing as what you can afford. (there is a difference, in that our EFC was much higher than what was what we could realistically afford). WashU might be one that is a reach, and may not give enough $ even if you get in.
The list looks pretty good. For many of the schools, you need to apply to a specific college within the university. That’s the case with Cornell. There are a couple of different colleges you can apply to that fall under business umbrella. Research them. Fordham you apply to either Fordham College Rose Hill OR the Gabelli School of Business. You can switch between if you change your mind, but not sure how easy / hard that is to do as there’s a pretty rigid core curriculum. Check online to see which other schools on your list require you to apply to a specific college.
Think Ohio State could be a great safety for you and very good merit with your stats - think you could get tuition down to $12-15k - much less than Kelley and similar enough. May want to consider McGill as well.
Boston College only offers a single merit scholarship to the top 20 applicants, which, no offense meant (you clearly are a talented student!), will not be you given the caliber of the school. That would be at least one school that is guaranteed unaffordable.
If application fees are actually an issue, Columbia should probably be cut as well. Is it really a curiosity worth over $50?
For someone looking for merit, your list is pretty reasonable, so don’t make cuts you have a chance at. The application fees are very small in the grand scheme of college. Don’t cut a school you would want to go to and have any sort of reasonable shot at because of a small application fee when you plan on spending 40K per year for college. Overall you’ve got a pretty good list here.
Agree on IU, apply within the next couple weeks as direct admit to Kelley School, and you should be admitted, likely with some OOS merit aid. Unless you are interested in engineering, IU would be better fit than Purdue, so Purdue could come off the list.