Help a confused first-gen student out! (Mt. Holyoake, Northeastern, Boston U, UConn....)

Chance Me / Match Me!
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<p>Gender: F
Ethnicity: mixed north Indian, bengali. I know that works against me at some schools, but I'm also first generation & my household income is around $1,440, so hey, economic diversity?
Location: East Bay, Nor Cal</p>

<p>High School: Public
I'm taking the hardest classes possible. At the end of high school, I'll have taken 10 APs (AP Euro, APUSH, AP Gov, AP Lang, AP Lit, APES, AP Bio, AP Calc, AP Psych, AP Macro/Micro)
GPA - Unweighted: 3.68 Yeah, low. I know. </p>

<p>Scores:
SAT I Math: 720
SAT I Critical Reading: 670
SAT I Writing: 670
SAT II Literature: 690
SAT II U.S. History: 700
SAT II Math Level 1 (IC): 730
SAT II Math Level 2 (IIC): 730
SAT II Biology - E: 720
SAT II Chinese with Listening: 740</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>Significant Extracurriculars:
National Council (Trans Gender Rights)
Full-time summer job (Summer camp)
(I love learning languages and am self-studying Inuktitut)</p>

<p>Leadership positions:
JSA- Cabinet Member, Assembly Representative, chapter secretary.
Science Alliance- Vice President
Founder & President of own club (women's leadership club)
Student Govt. / Leadership</p>

<p>Volunteer/Service Work:
Special Olympics
Animal Shelter
Feeding the homeless
Tutoring in Mandarin, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi.
400+ volunteer hours.</p>

<p>Honors and Awards:
Honor Roll
Academic Letter
Stud. Gov student of the month</p>

<p>Colleges of Interest:</p>

<p>Boston University
University of British Columbia
McGill University, Choice
New College of Florida
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mt. Holyoake
Northeastern
UConn,</p>

<p>I want to go into either Social Work or International Relations/Poli Sci (hopefully leading to foreign service). Any suggestions are welcome. </p>

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<p>UBC and McGill have lousy financial aid… have any problems with USC?</p>

<p>BU: Match
UBC: Safety
McGill Arts: Safety
UWI: Low match/Match
NEU: Match/High match
UConn: Safety
Mt. Holyoke: Low match
New College of Florida: High match</p>

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<p>Is your income stated correctly? Just over one thousand, four hundred dollars per year? Or is that your EFC? That might need some clarification to give you good advice re: financial aid, etc. If that’s one point four million, or 144 thousand, you’ll need merit aid, not FA, obviously, and that’ll change the picture…</p>

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<p>Catria, do they really :(? Oh well… I feel like USC isn’t a match for me :/!
Staceyneil- it’s stated correctly. For the past 5+ years my family’s only income has been around $1.4k (1400, NOT 144000) through my mom’s seasonal job, and I’ll be adding $2.5 this summer with mine! (As far as changing the picture goes, my father may be getting a job paying very well, $80k annually!!!)</p>

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<p>OK, your financial picture is going to complicate how folks can advise you on schools. I’d urge you to take the time to run the Net Price Calculators for each school, and then add into consideration that some schools (where you are above their average stats) may award merit aid above what the calculator says. (But many schools do not give out merit aid.)</p>

<p>Forgive me if you already know all this but we didn’t when we started and everyone assumed we did, so I’ll recap: some schools are “meets full need”, meaning they will “meet” the cost of attendance minus your federal FAFSA Estimated Family Contribution. They MAY do that entirely with grants and work/study (I think Wellesley often does that) but more often they’ll also use the maximum federal subsidized loans to meet the need, in addition to work/study and their institutional grants (Mount Holyoke does this.) Meets-full-need schools tend to be the most difficult to get into, of course. So if you’re shooting for a spot a school that’s a bit reachy for you, you’re unlikely to get merit aid on top of financial aid.</p>

<p>Then there are are schools that don’t meet full need. You can check their stats as to how much they meet on average, but the better plan is to run the net price calculators. You can also get a sense from these boards about how generous these non-full-need schools tend to be. For instance I’m pretty sure Northeastern is known for being very stingy with FA…</p>

<p>As an example: Mount Holyoke is a “meets full need” school. My daughter’s FA package meets COA (tuition, room/board) like this:

  1. Estimated Family Contribution (their methodology but in our case it was close to the FAFSA EFC) - this is what we have to pay out of pocket
  2. Work/study (She works ~10 hrs/week)
  3. maximum federal subsidized Stafford loan ($3500 freshman year, increases after that)
  4. subsidized Perkins loan
  5. the rest is covered by MHC grants
    There is no “gap” between what we have to pay and the EFC, because it’s a “meets-full-need” school. That is not to say we can afford our EFC. We can’t, and it’s going to be very difficult. What they SAY your family can pay is often not what your family actually can pay.</p>

<p>You can use this tool on finaid.org (a very helpful site, by the way) to estimate your federal EFC. Note there are two methodologies, federal and institutional. You really need to be as accurate as possible, get your parents to help you! Then, use the same numbers on each college’s Net Price Calculator. The easiest way we found to do that is to open an account at the College Board’s BigFuture.com web site and use their interface to access the NPC’s. That way the information gets saved and auto-filled into each calculator so you don’t have to keep retyping it, which is very tedious.</p>

<p>*******Your situation, though, sounds very unique. I urge you to do this with your parents. For example, if your household income is really 1.5k right now, clearly there is other financial information that needs to be reported. Either your family is being supported by someone else, or there is savings, or some other type of income that you are living on. You will have to report that all carefully, and it’s going to affect your EFC It’s not just about the 1.5k income number, it’s all the peripheral stuff too. Don’t omit it now or you may find yourself in for a big surprise next spring when the FA offers come in much worse than you expected.</p>

<p>And you need to keep in mind that even if you get a WONDERFUL financial aid package your first year from a meets-full-need school, if your dad gets that $80k job next year, you’re likely to lose a lot of that.</p>

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<p>UW-Madison is a match OOS. It’s a great school featuring a strong sports and party/fun atmosphere. Looking at your list, with respect to the other schools, UW is the most academically well-rounded… maybe along with BU. But UW has more national and international prestige. </p>

<p>If you want the LAC type experience, Mount Holyoke is the clear choice among the schools you’ve listed.</p>

<p>You mentioned Social Work. My dad got his BS in Psych and then MS degrees in Social Work and Health Care Admin from the University of Wisconsin. He’s done very well.</p>

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<p>staceyneil, super post.<br>
OP, UConn and Madison are going to look at you as OOS. And isn’t New College also part of the FL publics? Generally, that doesn’t lead to substantial aid. You have to run the Net Price Calculators, as said. Re-read SN’s post. In general, except for the finaid issues, I think you’ve chosen a tier that should work. But we can’t predict and the colleges’ needs (including geographic diversity) will play a part. I’d say search for finanacial safeties.</p>

<p>And, someone else probably knows more, but BU’s aid is tricky- when looking at possible merit, you have to clearly understand the conditions/circumstances and how many awards they make.</p>

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<p>Apply to "Meet 100% need " schools. Definitely include schools in the Midwest or South (where you would be “urm” not “orm”) - for IR, I’d suggest Macalester. Apply to Tufts, Georgetown, Scripps, Wellesley, etc. Those would be reaches but you may have a shot due to your excellent scores and curriculum rigor.
Are you attending a magnet school? A Charter? A private school on scholarship?
Do apply to UCLA since they have special extra scholarships for very low income students.
For IR, also include Occidental and don’t discount USC.
Remember to pick up your fee waivers (you can also download one from NACAC and have your guidance counselor sign it, then copy it and send it to the different schools).
If you are interested in a school, email the Admissions’ office, explaining your situation and how you’d like to apply to their school but would need a fee waiver, would they be so kind to grant you one? - most will say yes.</p>

<p>Are your parents migrant/seasonal workers housed “on site”? Or are you homeless? You do not need to let us know on this website but you should include it in your commonapp’s “additional information” section.</p>

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<p>I realized I forgot to link the FAFSA EFC calculator from finaid.org. It’s really super helpful. Here: <a href=“Expected Family Contribution (EFC) Calculator - Finaid”>Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid;

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<p>I actually love you guys, thank you so much! Staceyneil, kudos for your amazing post!!</p>