I have a 2000 SAT and 3.6 GPA
I’m looking for schools where I would likely pay less than 20,000/yr (when merit aid is factored in) without compromising the quality of my education.
Any recommendations for schools where this would be possible or likely?
Also what do you believe are my chances of being able to achieve this goal at the following institutions: University of Dayton, Catholic University of America, American University, University of Delaware, USC Columbia,U of Georgia, UMBC or UMCP, and any of the Loyolas?
Thanks so much!!!
My son’s friends have had very good luck at Providence. I would look at St. Lawrence.
To get down to 20,000 on merit alone will be very hard. You should run the tuition calculators for the schools you are interested in. The state schools have very clear merit guidelines on their websites.
What is your M+CR score?
I doubt you’d be able to get your costs down to $20k at any of those schools. that would require practically free tuition, and your stats wouldn’t get that.
are you going to retest?
edit
680 CR, 650 Math, 670 Writing).
You have a 1330 M+CR. You’re not going to get costs down to $20k at any of those schools, unless you’re instate for UGA and you qualify for HOPE.
That said, there are other schools that might work. You’re not going to sacrifice education at those schools, either.
What is your major and career goal?
OP have you done the ACT? Some kids test better on ACT than SAT, and vice versa. Are you a rising HS senior?
What are you planning on studying? Do you/your parents want you to study within a particular geographic area? It looks like you are looking at more private schools? Have you visited a number of campuses to see what you prefer on different size campus and city locations.
If you ‘know’ what you want to study, or if you may think your major may change (so if you need to include a school that can accommodate a major change).
What do your parents think? They are comfortable with a $20K/year budget? Have you run NPC for various schools?
Based on the thread title alone: St. Lawrence, mentioned above.
I plan to major in communications or marketing but would still like to keep my options open by going to a school with a wide range of majors and programs
St. Lawrence offers three dozen majors, so the school would be quite suitable for you on that basis. However, I read elsewhere that rural locations are not of interest to you.
Yes, my hope is to be in the city but I’m very limited in places I would be able to afford. I have looked at the automatic full tuition page, but can anyone make recommendations for places where I would be competitive for high merit aid that is not guaranteed?
You could be competitive for merit aid at many of the CTCL schools:
Allegheny College is one of the CTCL schools.
In 2014-15, it awarded merit aid to 89 of 473 full-time freshmen (according to its Common Data Set).
So, presumably you’d need to be among the top ~19% of students to qualify for merit aid.
Allegheny’s 75th percentile SAT scores were 640 (CR) and 630 (M).
The OP (with 680CR/650M) might be in the top 19%, but probably not by enough to qualify for above-average merit aid.
Allegheny’s average merit grant was $17,266. Since its total COA was over $50K, the average merit grant would not be nearly enough to bring the net cost below $20K.
Other factors could come into play besides test scores and GPA, but you can expect those to be the big drivers. Therefore, if you want enough merit aid to get below $20K, you’ll probably need to look at less selective, less expensive schools. Some of the other CTCLs might work. Have a look, too, at public schools with relatively low OOS sticker prices. Minnesota-Morris or Truman State, for example.
If you give your SAT CR + M score (single score); saying SAT 2000 doesn’t give enough info on some guaranteed merit aid from some schools.
My 2000 is comprised of a 680 CR and 650 Math score
It’s not actually as simple as that.
I unfortunately couldn’t get the 2014-2015 CDS to load from Allegheny’s website, but I was able to get the 2013-2014 info from collegedata.com:
Financial Aid Applicants 528 (87.9%) of freshmen
Found to Have Financial Need 442 (83.7%) of applicants
Merit-Based Gift 153 (25.5%) of freshmen had no financial need
and received merit aid, average amount $16,665
From these numbers, the freshman class was 601 students (528/.879), and 442 were found to have need, meaning 159 had no need. Of those 159 with no need, 153 received merit aid! 96%!
Since these are enrolled students, there were likely many “no need” students offered zero merit aid who did not enroll. Still, at little LAC’s like this, we can’t really tell how the enrolled “merit” students line up with the enrolled statistics.
The method you described only makes sense when the percentage of “no need” students receiving aid is a small fraction, and therefore we can assume the pool looks something like the enrolled pool.
In addition, merit aid at many of these types of colleges is very holistic, so test scores and grades are often only a threshold to get you into the process, but then EC’s, volunteerism, leadership, essays, interviews, and many other “soft” factors may be the big deciders for merit aid.
Do you know of any larger schools that would be fitting to my situation? I ideally would like to go to a school with at least 10,000 undergrads.
You have a 1330 M+CR, which is equivalent to an ACT 30.
What do you want your net cost to be?
I would like the net to be 20,000. I can push it to 25,000 but that’s about it.
Perhaps you could list all of your criteria in a single post.
My have a 3.6 gpa with a super scored SAT score of 2000. I am undecided so I would prefer a larger coed university (at least more than 5k, preferably over 10k though) with more majors, but I am interested in marketing, business, communications, advertising- that general field. I would like the school to be in or within close proximity to a city on the east coast. I will not qualify for financial aid but can only spend a max of 25,000 on university per year, however I do not want to compromise my education by going to a not-so-decent university.
Merit aid is usually based on single sitting score, not superstore. What is your best single sitting M+CR score?