College suggestions?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'm a rising junior and currently have no idea where I want to go to college. I've been looking at colleges for a while and haven't found any that feels right. I'm considering applying to Rice, and maybe Duke or Vanderbilt, but I honestly feel no strong desire to go to any of those schools. Based on my stats (Information about 11th and 12th grade is predicted) what colleges would be a good fit? I'd prefer a college that doesn't require SAT IIs because for the nearest test centers are about an hour or more away. I would also like a college located in or near a city.</p>

<p>Gender: Female
Race: White
Location: Mississippi
Predicted Major: Biology with Pre-Med Coursework
Predicted Minor: Spanish
Predicted Career: ER Doctor</p>

<p>ACT: 33 (taking it one or two more times as a junior) E 34 M 34 R 31 S 31
Class Rank: 2/~250
UW GPA: 3.9</p>

<p>(For 9th grade my school was on a block schedule with 4 classes a semester and then in 10th grade it moved to 5 classes a semester)</p>

<p>9th Grade
Honors English 9
Algebra II
Biology
Honors MS Studies/Honors Intro to Geography
Spanish I
Band (all year)
STEM</p>

<p>10th Grade
Honors English 10
Geometry
AP World History
AP Biology
Band (all year)
Medical Technology (all year)
Anatomy and Physiology
Spanish II</p>

<p>11th Grade
AP English 11
AP US History
AP Euro History
AP Chem (all year)
Spanish III
AP Spanish (Spanish IV)
Band (all year)
Trig/Pre-Cal</p>

<p>12th Grade
AP US Gov/Economics
AP English 12
AP Physics (all year)
AP Calculus (all year)
Band (all year)</p>

<p>(I may gain new leadership roles my junior and senior year)
Admiral Anchors (community service club) 10, 11, 12
Beta Club 9, 10
NHS 11, 12
Interact Club 11, 12
Key Club 11, 12
Spanish Club 10, 11, 12
Spanish Club Treasurer 10
All Superior Marching Band 9, 10, 11, 12
Clarinet Section Leader 11, 12
All-Superior Symphonic Band 9, 10, 11, 12
1st Chair 10, 11, 12
All-South Wind Ensemble 10, 11, 12
All-State Band 11, 12
GCBDA Clinic (Regional Band Clinic) Gold Band 9, 10, 11, 12
Outstanding Concert Player 9, 10, 11, 12
Superintendent's List 10, 11, 12
Possible National Merit Semi-Finalist or higher</p>

2

<p>Stats alone are not a good basis for finding a good fit. Without junior year grades or your best test scores, they are not even a very good basis for estimating your admission chances at highly selective schools (which is hard enough to do anyway).</p>

<p>Your qualifications are strong enough that if you keep up your grades, few if any schools will be completely out of reach. Many very selective schools (as well as less selective ones) are located in or near cities. So, what other criteria are important to you? Size? Weather? Region (/ distance from home)? Specific majors? Research opportunities? Sports (as a spectator or participant)? Intellectual or social atmosphere?</p>

<p>What’s your budget? Can your family afford the full cost of expensive private schools ($50-60K/year)? If not, are you likely to qualify for need-based aid?</p>

3

<p>I’d prefer a medium sized college 5,000-7,000 people. Distance from home really isn’t that much of an issue as long as I know it’s the right college for me. Sports aren’t that important to me, however it would be nice to have a football team so that I could participate in the marching band assuming my schedule allows for it. If a marching band isn’t available then a concert band would be the next best thing. I’m also not sure how much financial aid I would qualify for. By the time I’m applying for colleges my parents will be divorced but I’m not sure how much that helps me out with financial aid, especially taking into account that both of my parents make six figure salaries. My mom has stated though that she will not be paying 20,000+ a year for college since I have two younger siblings. How much my dad is willing to contribute, I do not know.</p>

<p>As far as weather is concerned, I think I would prefer a moderate climate. One where it does actually snow, but it doesn’t get to be ridiculously cold (I don’t exactly know how well I could handle a really cold environment seeing as the coldest it usually gets during winter is the mid 40s at coldest). </p>

<p>I’d like a school full of intellectual people, but I also don’t want everyone attending the school to be overly-cocky or preppy. I guess I’m looking for a school that’s a bit nerdy but still manages to have fun and take a break from studying. I also don’t want to have to spend all of my time studying to get good grades but I also don’t want the curriculum to be so easy that I can get an A in all of my classes without even paying attention. Additionally I’d prefer a pretty open minded school because coming from a highly judgmental area I’ve felt almost as if I couldn’t be myself and I’d really like to be able to change that in college.</p>

4

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<p>Unfortunately, two six figure incomes but with low willingness to pay (possibly due to divorce’s effects on both ex-spouses’ personal finances) means that you need to either look at colleges with low list prices (probably in-state public; even that may not be affordable if your parents are not willing to pay enough to get you within reach of Stafford loan) or generous merit scholarships, since need-based aid is likely to be minimal to none.</p>

<p>This thread may be of interest: <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>Will the two six figure incomes still hurt me as much when it comes to financial aid seeing as my mom is the only one I’m actually living with and so she’s the only one taken into account when determining how much financial aid I’m eligible for? I’m not sure exactly how much she makes (she doesn’t like to discuss finances with us) but I do know it’s in the six figure range, how high up in there I do not know.</p>

6

<p>Even if they only count one of the six figure incomes in calculating the expected family contribution, it is still likely that the expected family contribution will be significantly more than what your mother says she will contribute. This means that need-based financial aid is unlikely to be sufficient.</p>

<p>Remember that medical school is expensive, and biology majors do not have very good job and career prospects at the bachelor’s degree level. So minimizing or avoiding student loan debt should be rather important for you.</p>

7

<p>See [FinAid</a> | Answering Your Questions | Divorce and Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/questions/divorce.phtml]FinAid”>http://www.finaid.org/questions/divorce.phtml)</p>

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<p>See also:
[Financial</a> Aid and Divorce | The College Solution](<a href=“http://www.thecollegesolution.com/financial-aid-and-divorce]Financial”>Financial Aid and Divorce)</p>

<p><a href=“https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv[/url]”>https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

8

<p>WashU in St. Louis sounds perfect for you, except it might be a bit more conservative than what you are looking for. You might go over to the WashU forums and see if you can get more insight there.</p>

<p>If you are willing to reconsider colder weather, you should definitely look at Northwestern. You would get used to the winters–there are students from all over the country/world, including much warmer climates. Chicago is a fantastic city. And NU does its best to keep students from graduating with a ton of debt.</p>

9

<p>maybe college of charlestown in s.c.</p>

10

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<p>You need to find that out soon if you are interested in schools costing more than what your Mother is willing to pay.</p>

<p>Let’s say each parent is able and willing to contribute up to ~$20K/year, and that you do not qualify for need-based aid (a likely scenario, I think). In that case, you would probably want to focus on:</p>

<ol>
<li>in-state public universities (usually < $30K/year)</li>
<li>some out-of-state public universities ($20K - $40K/year for OOS students in many cases)</li>
<li>schools with generous merit aid (< $40K net in some cases for students receiving average merit grants)</li>
</ol>

<p>[Best</a> Values in Public Colleges, 2011-12](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/]Best”>Best College Values, 2019 | Kiplinger)
[Best</a> Values in Private Colleges, 2011-12](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/privatecolleges/]Best”>Kiplinger | Personal Finance News, Investing Advice, Business Forecasts)</p>

11

<p>^^^ Both WUSTL and Northwestern seem to require financial information from non-custodial parents. Presumably, this would make need-based aid unlikely for the OP. Both schools do award some merit aid, but the average amounts are well under $10K. Expect very strong competition for these awards, since both are among the most selective schools in the country.</p>

12

<p>Furman…right size. Would have to check out financial aid since they don’t stack scholarship money, but I know they give scholarship money to musicians even if you aren’t a music major. Also give some for national merit semifinalist but without need based, may be too much.</p>

13

<p>My mom is CEO/part-owner of a family business, if my mom’s business losses outweigh any money my mom made in a year, could that potentially increase the amount of financial aid she received? I know that on her tax form that she filled out she essentially had no income or something like that (I’m not entirely sure about the details she gave me) because the business lost so much money this past year.</p>