College Searching from in the Middle of Nowhere

College Search & Selection
1

<p>First post, yay!</p>

<p>So I'm a high school junior in Mississippi with fairly good grades (3.75 unweighted GPA, perhaps a point above that when weighted), a fairly good ACT (32), and a fairly good PSAT (223). At this point I've begun to get a small deluge of emails and postcards from various universities: a couple of state flagships that my parents had me send ACT results to, and a number of single-word-name, fancy-looking "liberal arts" colleges that I had never heard of and no one here (including school counselors) talks about. These are the kind of schools which the folks here at CC seem to know a lot about on the other hand.</p>

<p>I see on CC that higher-up colleges, being pickier, try to get students to show an interest in them, and that visiting is a big part of that. I also read that visiting schools is an important part of deciding what college "fits", what with different cultures and climates and all. Therefore, as cool as it was to see that American had invited me to their Preview Day next month, it brought me to the realization that I can't exactly visit or network with people related to universities outside my bubble of Mississippi, Louisiana and southern Alabama. Compound this with the conflict between my mother who wants me in local community college, and I who would like more of a full school experience, and it seems like my chances of breaking out of the South and going to a good school are below average.</p>

<p>I can't live in the Northeast, Texas, California or even the Midwest, as 99% of all the people on here, who all are aiming for good schools, seem to. I ask, how much of a disadvantage do I have trying to get into higher-up schools, and how can I compensate for it?</p>

2

<p>It is tougher to apply when you can’t visit as many schools, but that does not stop a lot of students from doing so. The more research you can do prior to applying, the better. One good resource is the Fiske Guide to Colleges. College P r o w l e r has a website (they * it out on CC) that also has some interesting insights. Looking at the CC threads on the colleges, and reviewing the college’s own websites carefully should help you as well.</p>

<p>One good thing is that you come from a state that may not be very well represented at a lot of the schools in different parts of the country, so they may like that about you. It could improve your chances of admissions a bit, and sometimes can result in a bit of a bump in merit aid as well. You would be bringing what they call “geographic diversity” to their campus.</p>

<p>And given your PSAT, you may end up as a National Merit Finalist as well. Although don’t put all your eggs in that basket, as not everyone makes it to finalist (especially if you have any Cs on your transcripts they were pretty tough this year). But keep on top of that in the fall, especially if your school never has any semifinalists (watch the forums out here in late August/early Sept for discussion). And do the paperwork and stuff even if you aren’t sure if you will make it. NMF status can give you some nice scholarship options if you achieve that.</p>

<p>Be sure you get on each college’s email list (there is usually a way to sign up for mailings/etc on their websites in the Admissions section). If you have questions about the college, email the admissions office so you can establish a link with the admissions counselor for your region. I do think colleges understand that some students can’t visit.</p>

<p>Regarding your conflict with your mom, that is harder to help with. :frowning: A lot of students do spend 2 years at CCs, then transfer (since you CAN’T finish a four year degree at a CC, she can’t really argue with that plan). And it is hard to make it at a four year school without financial help from your parents. At a minimum they need to provide information to fill out financial aid forms. If your mom is willing, have her help you put data into some of the net price calculators on college websites (on the financial aid pages) to see what you might be expected to pay for some of the colleges you are looking at. Maybe start with those state colleges they had you apply to anyway, then branch out to a few more you are interested in.</p>

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<p>Many colleges like to be able to say that they have students from all 50 states. Since Mississippi is a state that sends relatively few students to out-of-state colleges, being from there can actually be an advantage. Your performance on the ACT an PSAT indicate you could probably handle the work at any college in the country, so you can be as adventurous and aggressive as you want in your college search. </p>

<p>Show your mother that your test scores put you into the top couple per cent of high schoolers in the country–even in Boston and New York City, even at the swanky private high schools around the country, there aren’t a lot of students who scored much higher than you did on those tests.</p>

<p>Also, with your scores, you should have a lot of colleges that will give you a lot of financial aid. Keep in mind that often the schools that are harder to get into have more money to give out as financial aid.</p>

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<p>Have your mother look at these threads to see what kind of schools will offer you good merit aid. It might even make it less expensive than the local CC when you add in your final years at a four year college as a transfer (transfers generally don’t get much merit aid, if any). As far as visiting OOS, that can be tough. You can get the feeling of a LAC vs. a large U if you visit any local schools like that.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

5

<p>Good advice given already, but with regards to your concern about showing interest to schools that you can’t visit you need to realize the not all schools value this. You can find out if expressed interest is important at a given college by looking at their response to question C7 of their Common Data Set. You can find most colleges’ CDS by googling the name of the college + common data set. Good luck!</p>

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<p>Admissions committees understand that not everyone can visit the school, especially if they’re coming from a long distance. I don’t think that will be a barrier at all, unless you make it one. There are plenty of other ways to show interest. Start by going to the “admissions” web pages of any colleges you’re interested in; they all have some way for you to sign up to get additional information from them. Many smaller schools will indicate on their web pages which admissions rep is assigned to your state. E-mail that person and ask if the school will be represented at any college fairs in your area in the coming months, indicating that you’d like to learn more about the school. Or better yet, ask if they have any plans to visit your high school.</p>

<p>I agree with the posters who say coming from Mississippi could be an advantage in admissions at a lot of very good colleges in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. They just don’t get very many applicants from Mississippi. For example, here’s how many freshmen from Mississippi enrolled at some top LACs in the Fall of 2010:</p>

<p>Williams 0, Amherst 0, Swarthmore 1, Pomona 0, Middlebury 2, Wellesley 1, Bowdoin 0, Carleton 2, Claremont McKenna 0, Haverford 0, Davidson 0, Washington & Lee 3, Wesleyan 0, Vassar 2, Hamilton 0, Harvey Mudd 0, Grinnell 1, Smith 1, Bates 0, Colby 0.</p>

<p>And the numbers aren’t much higher at top research universities. In the fall of 2010, a total of 21 Mississippians enrolled as freshmen in the 8 Ivy League schools combined (of which 5 at Yale and 3 apiece at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Penn, along with 2 at Cornell, 1 Brown, and 1 at Dartmouth). More Mississippi freshmen enrolled at Vanderbilt (14) and Emory (10), but even Duke drew only 3, and schools like Stanford (1), Chicago (2), Northwestern (1), and Johns Hopkins (2) were nearly shut out.</p>

<p>I’m not suggesting you can get into all these schools. I do think your stats are competitive for all but the tippy-top LACs. The 3.75 unweighted GPA is borderline for the most competitive schools. If I were you, I’d try to push that up this spring and next fall; I think it could make a big difference if you got it up to 3.8. The 32 ACT is a very good score but your 223 PSAT suggests your SAT scores could be even a little stronger (and perhaps that if you re-take the ACT you could push it up to 33 or higher, as a 2230 SAT, which is roughly what your PSAT score predicts, is about midway between a 33 and 34 on the ACT).</p>

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<p>In addition to emailing your local admissions rep, think about contacting a professor in a department or program that intrigues you. The LACs will see that as “demonstrated interest,” which will increase your chances, and you can learn more about the school at the same time.</p>

<p>You are a stellar student in general, and the fact that you’re from an underrepresented state could be your hook. Good luck!</p>

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<p>To be fair, I don’t know if colleges always know that you contacted a professor and count that “touch”. </p>

<p>It isn’t clear to me if you have any other hooks. Are you a minority student? Do you have any special extra curricular activities (sports in particular) that might make you desirable to schools? Regarding your finances, the financial situation depends a lot on what your parents’ incomes are and what assets they have – that makes a difference in what kind of aid you might receive to make some of these schools possible.</p>

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<p>I’d also encourage you to find the Net Price Calculator on the websites of a few schools you may be interested in. You’ll enter some information on yourself, including GPA and test scores, and some household financial information (you’ll need parental cooperation on this), and it will calculate an estimate of how much financial aid they’ll give you. It’s not an ironclad commitment on their part, but it will at least give you some idea what it might cost to attend some schools, which in turn could be the basis for a more realistic conversation with your family about what’s possible.</p>

<p>Just to give you some further idea about how few Mississipians apply to top colleges outside the South: a few colleges, notably Harvard and Princeton, require all applicants to submit SAT Subject Test scores, even those who submit the ACT instead of the SAT Reasoning Test. So at Harvard and Princeton, everyone who applies must send an SAT score report, and the number of students from any given state sending SAT score reports represents an upper bound on the number of applicants from that state (though the number applying might be lower than the number sending score reports, since some people might send their scores but not complete their applications). In 2012, 64 Mississippians sent SAT score reports to Harvard, and 49 sent score reports to Princeton. For some states, those numbers are in the thousands. (For example, Connecticut, with a state population only slightly larger than Mississippi’s, had 765 students send SAT score reports to Harvard, and 1,075 to Yale). And these are some of the most famous and most sought-after colleges in the country; the numbers of Mississipians applying to other top research universities outside the South is likely to be even smaller, and to top LACs smaller still.</p>

<p>Contrary to popular wisdom on CC, there’s no actual evidence that admit rates at these schools are higher for Mississipians than for residents of other states, or that admission standards are lower; you need to have the great grades, test scores, ECs, essays, teacher recs, and so on, just like any other applicant. (That’s why I wouldn’t describe your state of residence as a “hook”). But if they’re looking for at least one from each state (as many schools are), and your credentials are in the ballpark for that school–well, let’s just say there may not be that much competition from other Mississippians to be the one that’s chosen.</p>

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<p>To start off, thanks to everyone for the advice. A lot of these things I hadn’t thought of at all, especially colleges wanting geographic diversity, and how little of it there ends up being at some of those places. You’ve also all eased my concern about demonstrated interest; I guess that topic intimidated me because I hear about it here. Thanks also for what you’ve said about numbers of applications to various schools from here and CT; that was most interesting. And, I’ll be sure to check <em>all</em> the resources you’ve thrown out. I appreciate them.</p>

<p>My stats are probably not Ivy tier, but I have to look more into it before I say for sure. My mother also would like the idea of me going Ivy because of their great amounts of need-based aid, since that’s her main concern, the money. I don’t need to worry about her refusing to fill my FAFSA or anything; maybe I made too big a deal out of my concerns with her. Also, I actually got my GPA calculated again; it’s a 3.89 at the moment, but would be at 3.8-ish if my two year-long IB classes were factored in right now. Anything can happen there, and I’ll keep working my best on that front. I’ll look to retake the ACT, too.</p>

<p>So far as hooks, I’m not a minority and I’m not good on ECs. I’ll be a president of one club and an officer in a couple more, but I haven’t found much volunteering or sport opportunity. I’d love to go to Dartmouth (who wouldn’t?). However, it’s just not a goal for me and most folks here don’t know how much of a reach that really is.</p>

<p>You mentioned that Harvard and Princeton require SAT Subject Test scores from applicants, so that has me wondering, should I definitely take the SAT in order to get more attention from certain schools? I don’t want get waitlisted or rejected because I took the wrong test. Is that a big deal?</p>

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<p>I am almost certain that with that PSAT score in MS, you’ll be named a NMSF, and if you take the SAT and get a decent score (required to advance to finalist), you’ll get plenty of offers that could alleviate many of your mother’s financial worries.</p>

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<p>Gloworm is right. You SHOULD take the SAT to validate your PSAT score and advance to NMF. There are many NMF scholarships out there which should alleviate your mother’s (reasonable) concern about college cost.</p>

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<p>Every college now accepts the ACT and SAT equally, but the two previous posters are correct, to become a National Merit Finalist you need to take the SAT. Some people do better on the ACT and some do better on the SAT; others are about the same on both. You won’t know which category you fall into unless you take both tests. Your very strong PSAT scores suggest you could do very well on the SAT, but that’s no guarantee. Between going for NMF and wanting to submit your strongest scores, you have two good reasons to take the SAT.</p>

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<p>Each college is different regarding the SAT subject tests. Some require a certain number of them; some don’t require any; some don’t require them if you take the ACT, etc.</p>

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<p>^ Usually that’s the ACT with writing. Check the websites of the schools to be sure.</p>

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<p>Anotora, you’ve made a great start on your college search by coming here and reading and asking questions!</p>

<p>Even though I live in the Northeast, I was surprised at how uninformed my kids’ high school counselor was about the college application process. I was also surprised at how many of my kids’ friends had no guidance through the process. Their parents assumed the school would do it, and the school assumed the parents would do it! </p>

<p>You may need to talk with your mother about how much the process has changed since she was your age and encourage her to read here and to go to the bookstore and see the advice that’s available. There’s a blog at the New York Times called “The Choice” that has a ton of information.</p>

<p>Spend some time digging into the websites of colleges you’re curious about. Every site is different and you’ll figure out when you need to click on the tab for “Admission” and when on “Academics.” With my own kids and with all the kids I helped, I found that they got very impatient when the information they wanted didn’t immediately pop up! It took some time for me to convince them that they really had to be patient and dig (and often try several different paths) for the information they wanted.</p>

<p>What I really want to say to you is this–don’t settle. You’re clearly very bright! You can figure out how to work this process and end up somewhere great!</p>