Help! Any advice on other schools?

College Search & Selection
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<p>I am the first kid in our family going to college in America, and while researching a few schools I kept seeing this site pop up. So, I decided to sign up and ask a question or two.</p>

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<p>A little about me, I am half Kaqchikel Guatemalan and half German, born in North Carolina.</p>

<p>I have taken the SAT 3 times, and have scored a 720 in Math, 750 in Critical Reading, and 610 in Writing, and am waiting on results from the 3rd Test I took on Oct 1st.</p>

<p>I am 15th in my Senior class of about 530 students, and have a 4.8125 weighted GPA (Our school awards a 5 for an A in an honors class, 6 for an A in an IB/AP class).</p>

<p>I am taking the IB program at our school as well.</p>

<h1>I have only made As and Bs in HS, and consider my gradess ok I guess.</h1>

<p>I have applied to NC State and the Colorado School of Mines. I plan on applying to Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Clemson, University of Arizona, University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas at Austin, and Penn State. </p>

<p>I was just curious if you all think I could make the colleges I am considering, and if you think I am being too safe/too risky or any other colleges I should consider looking at.</p>

<p>Any help is much appreciated! Advice, etc, and thanks in advance anyone who does post help!</p>

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<p>Oh and as I forgot to mention, but should still be evident, I want to go into Engineering schools.</p>

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<p>Apply to Minnesota, unlike all the out of state schools you chose, Minnesota is actually affordable.</p>

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<p>Do you need financial aid? How much? If you don’t know, you need to talk to your parents about what they can afford.</p>

<p>And to see how competitive you are, google the Common Data Set for each school and see you stack up (grades, test scores, class rank) against the admitted students. Being Hispanic will help since you are a URM - and there may be scholarships that you are eligible for as a result so do a search for those too.</p>

<p>And consider adding Harvey Mudd to your list, in Claremont, CA: It’s part of the Claremont consortium, so you have a small engineering school with all the personal attention that affords you, but because it is part of a larger campus of 5 schools, you have the resources of a mid-sized school.</p>

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<p>Case Western Reserve in Ohio gives pretty generous aid packages . My son got merit aid of 17k as a freshman , and now gets 22.5 k for Junior year . This is based just on grades . Maybe you would get more .</p>

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<p>Yea financial aid will be important to me, my mother is unemployed, and my father just lost his job. He is close to getting a new job though. And I will google the Common Data set now, thanks.</p>

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<p>You would prob. be competitive for the Levine Scholars program at UNC Charlotte.
[Welcome</a> to the Levine Scholars Program at UNC Charlotte | Levine Scholars Program | UNC Charlotte](<a href=“http://www.levinescholars.uncc.edu%5DWelcome”>http://www.levinescholars.uncc.edu) It’s a full-ride with a lot of perks.<br>
Even without it, UNC-Charlotte would be a good instate option for engineering.</p>

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<p>Also, I have about 15k in a college fund, but not sure if thats just peanuts.</p>

<p>I just googled the Levine dates, and it seems that the date to apply for nomination from one’s highschool has already passed.</p>

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<p>I forgot to mention, and am not looking at my transcript atm, but my Unweighted is at like 3.82 or such.</p>

<p>I have heard a lot of conflicting reports on IB too. From some senior friends who got into schools last year I heard it can be a boon or a curse. A friend of mine last year got into UNC with a much lower GPA and list of courses than I had, and said its because IB is heavily weighted at UNC. For the colleges you all are listing, is IB also as influential there?</p>

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<p>If you have any questions about Clemson, feel free to let me know!!</p>

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<p>UT (Austin) will be extremely unaffordable. I would drop that one.</p>

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<p>The thing is though, while strong Financial aid would be optimal… I still want a good education, and I would find a way to make things work.</p>

<p>Alright… what about credentials? Purely on credentials what would you suggest (I will of course take this advice with a grain of salt, but just theoretically).</p>

<p>Some Exam scores:</p>

<p>AP World- 5
AP Statistics- 4
AP Environmental Science- 5
IB Biology SL Exam- 6
As I am doing IB, most of the exams will be taken at the end of Senior year.</p>

<p>AP/IB Courses I have taken (and am taking this year):</p>

<p>AP World History, AP Environmental Science, AP Statistics, AP Physics, AP Spanish, IB Biology SL, IB English 11th Grade, IB English 12th Grade, IB Calculus AB/BC, IB Business Management, IB TOK, IB History of the Americas, IB Twentieth Century Topics.</p>

<p>Some other courses, Genetics Honors, German 3 Honors, Civics and Economics Honors, Geometry honors, Alg II Honors, Pre Calc Honors, Spanish 3 Honors, Chemistry Honors, Physics Honors, Biology Honors, English 3 Honors.</p>

<p>The rest of my courses were Academic and then therefore irrelevant.</p>

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<p>For OOS public schools, Minnesota, Virginia Tech, and Cal Poly SLO have relatively low full list prices. But they may not be that generous with financial aid to OOS students.</p>

<p>Alabama may throw a lot of merit money at you for your stats (Presidential Scholarship plus additional engineering scholarship); this may bring the cost of attendance down to about $11,000 per year:
[Scholarships</a> - Undergraduate Students - The College of Engineering - The University of Alabama](<a href=“http://eng.ua.edu/undergraduate/scholarships/]Scholarships”>Scholarships – College of Engineering | The University of Alabama)</p>

<p>Some super-reach schools like MIT and Stanford are generous with financial aid for the few who do get admitted. Cooper Union gives students a full tuition scholarship, but that still leaves about $20,000 in living expenses in New York that may or may not be covered by other financial aid.</p>

<p>Duke and UNC-CH applicants may try for the full ride Robertson Scholarship:
[Robertson</a> Scholars: Opportunities](<a href=“http://www.robertsonscholars.org/index.php?type=static&source=12]Robertson”>http://www.robertsonscholars.org/index.php?type=static&source=12)
Duke has engineering; UNC-CH does not (although it does have CS).</p>

<p>Try putting “cost of attendance” and “financial aid estimator” in each school’s web site to see what kind of cost and financial aid you might get at each. Then you can figure out what schools are financially safe (a safety needs to be safe for both admissions and finances), and what schools are not worth applying to because they will be unaffordable no mater what.</p>

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<p>Pierre, what is your knowledge about Clemson’s fsae program?</p>