OP, you need to get a better idea about what exactly your parents can contribute. Yes, a highly selective school whose financial aid is need based can end up costing less but I wouldn’t apply and just see what happens (as your parents are asking you to do). Please sit them down and ask them to go through NPC. I think that parents don’t like to face the inevitable but that is not fair to you. Better to have it up front then you can plan accordingly. Good luck. And no, for a child psychologist, the school does not matter as much as the graduate program.
@hs2015mom @goingnutsmom Okay - we’ll be sure to look through every school’s NPC to see where we stand. Thanks 
@hs2015mom @goingnutsmom So I told my mom today what you both told me, and her response was: “Well, there’s still no harm in applying, right?” I didn’t know how to respond to that… What do I say? I feel like she has a point.
There’s no harm in applying and seeing what you get as long as you don’t fall in love with a place that ends up out of reach financially. You sound pretty grounded and might follow what other kids have found successful --wait to fall in love until you know what your options are. I would echo suggestions for Case (lots of merit $) and CMU (great music program if you end up wanting to continue dabbling in that passion). Both cities are full of young adults, interesting food and lots of psych opportunities especially with great medical centers in the cities.
Well, yes there’s harm in applying if you waste your time writing essays, and money paying the application fee for, and maybe visiting, someplace that is a financial no-can-do, and was never going to work out. And there’s the opportunity cost - the schools you could have applied to instead that were actually do-able. Especially when you can run an NPC in ten minutes and get a rough assessment of affordability, why on earth would one not do that, and choose instead to leave it a mystery?
Case has a lot of merit, but the merit portion alone gets you to usually, at best, an EFC of $30,000. Which is fine if your parents can pay $30,000, but if they can pay more like $20,000, it’s a non-starter. If your parents don’t want to give you an exact number or even a range, can they give you a minimum? If it’s at least $30K, you have many many options, but if it’s less than that, you have a substantially different search.
@WestSeattleMom That’s what we’ve been thinking. My mom and I figured you never know how much merit the school is going to give until you apply. I was the starting to think we were the only ones that thought this way. 
And thank you so much for the suggestions I actually didn’t know CMU had a strong music program. I’ll have to look into them some more.
@hs2015mom I think the biggest problem we have with the NPC is that our financial stats fluctuate so much from year to year. We don’t know how much my high school is going to offer me this year in financial aid yet, or for my sister the next for years. (We both attend a private school.) My mom is a professor, so her salary depends on how many classes she teaches, which depends on how many students enroll in her classes. And my dad’s self-employed, so he doesn’t have a fixed income either.
$30k as of now is probably the maximum we’ll pay for college, but $25k or below would be best to account for any changes in financial circumstances. I think it’s pretty likely though that I’ll just be attending the school that ends of being of lowest cost, as there aren’t any schools on my list that I wouldn’t like to attend.
It’s not completely true that you don;t know how much merit you get until you apply; there is a ceiling. I believe that Case’s biggest merit award is $30k; Tulane’s biggest that doesn’t require a separate application is $32k. There are a few exceptions, but a safe general assumption is that at private schools, except for specific named scholarships described on the school websites, nearly always with separate applications, merit won’t exceed $32k-ish.
At many schools - Tulane, for example - for the big merit awards you’re competing with kids with 99th-percentile SAT/ACT scores and perfect or near-perfect GPAs.
And at the less competitive schools, the awards aren’t as generous. At Loyola Chicago, for example, the maximum award seems to be $20k.
http://www.luc.edu/finaid/scholarships_auto.shtml
Maybe that would be enough, but that’s what you need to find out from your parents.
@dragonfly26 That does sound tricky, but they should still run some NPCs based on a couple of recent years, just to see what comes out. Tulane. for instance, has pretty generous need-based aid. Merit aid there will under no circumstances get you to a net price of $25k, but a combination of merit and need-based aid might. It did for my daughter this past year; she got the $32k presidential and some need-based aid on top of that. She applied for and did not get either of the full-tuition scholarships, the Dean’s and Paul Tulane. She had a 34 ACT and was a strong applicant, but those scholarships are incredibly competitive.
It’s great that you’ve got the $25k number to work with, but it does mean that you’ll have to look carefully at each schol to see if there’s any conceivable scenario that gets you to $25k, or even to $30k. Loyola, for instance, looks like a no-can-do on merit alone, with a COA of $54k and the highest merit award $20k. But maybe you’re eligible for need-based aid beyond that, which is where the NPC comes in.
This particular price point is one I know all too well 
Is that $25k out of pocket for the parents or does it include willingness to take loans?
That’s a good question; I’ve obviously been assuming no loans, but a willingness to take them would change things.
CUNY hunter seems pretty unnecessary. Why not other big 10 schools? I’m sure UW Madison and UMich would have great programs, and your scores put you in the running
@TempeMom $25k would be without loans. The goal is to get through college with minimal, if any, loans.
@hs2015mom I actually ended up taking Tulane off the list. I felt like there weren’t really any major assets other than the city and the free application. As far as Case, I do really like the school, and I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but my dad went there, and I’ve heard there are scholarships for legacies. It is also close enough to commute to, so that would save us a lot of money.
I’m not a fan of Loyola, but many seniors at my school have been attending because the application is free and I’ve been told their generous with scholarships. My school is Jesuit, so there is an automatic scholarship for that. We’re going to stop for a visit (since it’s on the way to Minneapolis) before I make any decisions, but for a number of reasons I don’t see myself there.
@shk909 I was thinking the same thing just yesterday. I originally put it on because I had a strong preference living in New York and figured that was a cheap option, but I think the price tag of New York far outweighs the benefits. I might end up kicking that one off the list. I’ve considered U of M, but the OOS price seems really high, and I’ve heard it’s hard to get into from OOS. Haven’t looked into UW though, but I’ll check it out.
Okay, so my current (still tenative) list looks like…
Schools with Developmental/Child Psych Concentration or Major:
-UMN Twin Cities*
-Boston College - We’ll be visiting Boston in mid-August, so figured we’d add this as a might. I’m a legacy, and I go to a Jesuit high school, which should help my odds.
-DePaul*
-Pitt
-Northeastern
-Carnegie Mellon
Schools that don’t, but have related majors/minors:
-Case Western
-George Washington
-Boston University*
Starred schools I already sent my ACT scores to, if that serves as a factor in any way.
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Why not other big 10 schools? I’m sure UW Madison and UMich would have great programs, and your scores put you in the running
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@shk909 In the running for what? I’m not aware of either of those schools having big merit scholarships for OOS kids.
It’s helpful to look at your list in terms of admission safeties, matches and reaches. I knew some of the ACT percentiles offhand and checked a few at collegedata.com, and I think it falls out roughly like this:
Safeties: UMN-TC, DePaul
Matches: Pitt, Case, GW, BU (Case is financially a safety because you can commute)
Reaches; Northeastern, CMU, BC (at each of these, the 25th percentile ACT is 30)
That would be a nice spread if affordability weren’t an issue. But since it is…
- you need to run the NPCs for the reaches. They all have merit aid, but the big awards require higher stats than you've got. NU and BC meet full need, so if the NPC comes out right, those could work. CMU is not able to meet full need, and is open about using financial aid strategically; if they really want you, they'll make it work. This is something they're more likely to do with kids at the top of the applicant pool.
- for the matches, again run NPCs and also learn specifics about merit aid prospects. GW's website doesn't say anything specific, but collegedata,com, which uses the Common Data Set #s, shows that the average merit award was about $18,000 a couple of years ago: http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1537
- DePaul's maximum merit scholarship listed on the website is $17,000, so though it's an admssions safety, it may not be a financial one. There are additional leadership scholarships, and maybe other possibilities; you should talk with them and find out what might be available; until you can see a clear path to affording it, it's not a financial safety http://www.depaul.edu/admission-and-aid/Pages/scholarships.aspx
- UMN-TC starts with a low cost of attendance for out-of-state ($35k), which is good. It was one of my daughter's safeties until she visited and found it too urban for her. At that point she'd gotten a Gold National scholarship of $8k, which didn't get us to where we wanted to be, but there may have been more forthcoming from her department or some such, but she declined so we didn't find that out. There's no way to know for certain that you'll get enough to get to your $25k target. My daughter's safety ended up being the University of Alabama, though we're from the midwest, because with an ACT of 32 or above, you get an automatic full-tuition scholarship.
This is a tough price point, made harder when you want universities and an urban setting. There are a lot of great scholarships, both merit and need-based, at liberal arts colleges. At many/most of the CTCL schools, your ACT is the 75th percentile.
I realize that this may look a little wacky and obsessive, but I worked really hard on the financial side of my daughter’s list, and it’s truly not easy.
@hs2015mom I’m suprised, I didn’t think that UMN would be a safety, or that Northeastern would be a reach. Shows how little I know.
I did read somewhere that being a legacy can increase your chances of being admitted by 45% - should this be factored in? Do you think that’s accurate?
We ran through the NPC’s today, and Northeastern and Boston College seemed doable enough. CMU was kinda low on my list to begin with, and although the estimated price wasn’t absurd it wasn’t convincing enough for me to keep it on the list.
Everything else seemed good (“good” - my parents just gave everything a shrug, and said we’d decide later) although BU was kind of concerning. But my mom still wants me to visit, because why not. (This whole “why not” philosophy of hers has been really stressing me out.)
I know someone who goes to DePaul for under $10k a year - she’s smart, in the honors program, and her family isn’t drastically in need or anything. I do plan to apply for the community service scholarship, which would add on $8,500 if I do receive it. While I know that doesn’t make it a safety for me, I’m confident enough in their aid that I still plan to apply.
I did get a letter from UMN that I would be receiving a special application that would give me “maximum scholarship consideration”, etc. I have no idea what “maximum scholarship consideration” means to them. NPC was toeing the boundary here, but it’s definitely one of my favorites.
The $25-$30k price limit could be expanded depending on how much my grandparents decide they want to contribute (my father’s parents said they want to help), and any scholarships I can snag from my school or church. My school has a couple generous scholarships for students involved in the artsthat I plan on applying for, and my grade has significantly less art students than the rest, so that’ll be an advantage.
I keep forgetting to put this on the updated lists, but my main financial safety is Akron. If I can’t end up finding an affordable option, I definitely think that’s an acceptable back up, at least for a year or two.
Thank you so much for all of the effort you’ve been putting into this. I really do appreciate it
Ooh, also - I just found out both Northeastern and Boston College superscore the ACT, which bumps me up to a 31. Not sure how much that will help, but I feel a little better knowing I’m not just hanging off the 25th percentile.
Yay on running the NPCs, and their results! You should know they stats for the colleges you’re applying to or considering. There are many sources, but collegedata.com is probably the most comprehensive.
Yes, being a legacy gives you a boost. I’m not sure about quantifying it, but 45% seems on the high side. Some schools make it explicit that if you want a legacy bump you have to apply binding ED - I know that Penn says that - but in the case of BC, they have non-binding EA. You should do that in any case; it’s just a good idea. Someone in the BC forum should know more about how legacy plays out there. Case and Northeastern have non-binding EA also, so you should do those as well, and neither school has a supplemental essay. My daughter applied to both of them, though not to BC, and they give you a full financial aid decision with your Dec 15 acceptance if you get in. I believe I’ve heard from friends that BC doesn’t give you the financial aid package for EA until sometime in February or March. But if the NPC came out well, you have a very good chance that the real thing will also.
If you’re in Boston to see Northeastern, you may as well visit BU while you’re at it; they’re a short trolley ride apart. But with no disrespect to your mom, I’m with you on the ‘why not?’ thing.
That’s great news about the person you know at DePaul; find out, if you can, all the pieces that her scholarship is made up of. Their 75th percentile ACT is 28, so you’ll be a rock star there, stats-wise, which should help a lot.
UMN-TC is a bit of a mystery to me. My daughter did the special application for ‘maximum scholarship consideration’ too, and quite early, and still just got $8,000. As I mentioned above, maybe more would have been forthcoming eventually if she hadn’t declined her acceptance early on. I have certainly read here on CC of oos kids getting good scholarships there. It’s a great school in an awesome city. It’s right on the river - on both sides of it - and very much open to the city. She wanted a closed campus-y feel, so it didn’t resonate.
And great about Akron, additional scholarships to apply for, and your grandparents’ offer to help! You’re going about this really thoughtfully and are in great shape. Now, get started on that Common App essay! You’re a good writer.
@hs2015mom I definitely plan to early action where I can - because why not
I feel pretty confident about my list now - of course, we’ll be doing plenty of visits throughout the rest of the year, so they’ll probably narrow things down some more. Still, again, thank you a bunch! You’ve been super helpful.
Luckily for me, I attended a workshop in early June where I wrote a polished draft of my college essay. So all that’s left is to wait for the common app to go live so I can get the rest taken care of.