<p>“WILL NEED FINANCIAL AID!!!”</p>
<p>To compare financial aid offers, you need to cast a wide net. Although a college may agree to meet 100% of demonstrated need, each calculates need based upon their own institutional formula. So, if you apply to 10 colleges, and are accepted to 10 schools, you will most likely get 10 different financial aid offers – some of them varying by tens of thousands of dollars a year.</p>
<p>Given that your GPA is out of sync with your test scores (colleges expect a student with a 98.56 GPA to have almost perfect test scores, so that may raise a red flag in the admissions process), my suggestion is to apply early to a large group of non-binding target and reach schools – schools such as UChicago, MIT, UMich, Georgetown (although they don’t give much $$$), Case Western Reserve, Northeastern, Ohio Wesleyan, your State Schools (SUNY Binghamton, Stony Brook) etc. Look through the members on this list for other EA non-binding schools: <a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/MemberRequirements.aspx[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/MemberRequirements.aspx</a>. Then, apply to HYPS and others in the RD round. In that way you will hopefully have at least one acceptance in your back-pocket come mid-December and still have a shot at all the rest come April.</p>