Hi everyone, may you please chance me or give out advice for which school to Early Decision 1 (CWRU and BC) nursing major. They are both in very opportunistic cities and have great access to healthcare and amazing nursing programs. I love both of these schools and find myself arguing with myself, so any help is so appreciated.
General Info About me:
Asian American Female (Taiwanese American)
Public high school, can take APs until junior year
GPA UW: 3.8 GPA W: 4.2
SAT: 1430 (retaking this august)
APs/Honors (before senior year): Chinese 4 Honors 5 Honors, Algebra 2 Honors, Chemistry Honors, English 11 Honors, AP Chinese, AP Calculus AB, AP Psychology
Coursework this senior year fall: Anatomy & Physiology, AP Statistics, AP Government, Econ (required for graduation @ my school), AP Art History (I need to fulfill my art credit at school),
PE/Tennis
Extracurriculars:
Service Clubs in Schools: Volunteering at orphanages and senior centers, art/music with community service clubs. Due to COVID, my hospital volunteering opportunities were canceled, so instead, I did volunteering at senior homes
Camp Counselor for children from 3-4th grade
Music since 4 years old, won regional, state, national, and international competitions, also in outside state audition in an orchestra
Currently, I am worried if my stats are a little low for BC and CWRU.
Other schools I am applying to are Boston College, Purdue, U of Hawaii Manoa, USF (San Francisco), University of Portland, Seattle University, Emory, UPenn, Georgetown, Northeastern
Are both of these schools affordable for your family when you run the NPC? If you need financial aid, applying ED is not advised since you do not have the ability to compare finances.
Run the npc:
BC is punitive in its use of equity when calculating financial aid - would be especially difficult for high cost of living areas.
Cwru doesn’t meet need.
So, you can’t apply ED unless you run the npc and are sure your parents can afford to pay from savings and current income. You can take a 5.5k loan to supplement that+use any job earnings.
PSU, USF, Hawaii. Again, conjecture, but with UP and Seattle also on the list, my guess is that the OP is a west coaster, probably in the PNW and Purdue (for reasons unclear to me or you) is on the list likely due to name recognition. Personally I’d only consider Purdue from OOS for engineering.
OP, if you want to continue with Chinese, and you are indeed in a WICHE state, I’d strongly advise adding Utah to your list. They have a vast medical complex and the Chinese program is very good. It’s a pretty campus, easily accessible by air, with great outdoor activities and culture. In SLC the LDS presence is much lower than in the outlying state if that is a concern. They also have an awesome music department if you want to continue with your instrument. Best of all, if you stay over the first summer, they’ll switch you to instate. You could stay and get a NP and be even cheaper than WUE.
Just looking at the schools’ attributes and your interests, I’d lean toward CWRU because of their very strong music opportunities in cooperation with the Cleveland Institute of Music. (This works both ways - Case may weigh your strength in music more heavily in admissions that BC would, although of course that’s speculative on my part.)
If you’re applying to PNW Catholic U’s with direct-admit nursing, why not Gonzaga? (Perhaps because Spokane is not as appealing as Portland/Seattle/SF?) Agree that if Manoa is there as a WUE option, Utah deserves a look too - SLC would meet your implicit appealing-city requirement.
In Boston, how about Simmons for a less reachy direct-entry nursing option? In Portland, how about OHSU?
If you’re applying to UPenn in Philadelpha, also consider Temple (which has a great music school as well fwiw).
If you’re considering southern cities (i.e. Atlanta), how about Loyola New Orleans for nursing?
It doesn’t? Their tuition and aid website states, “As of fall 2017, we meet 100% of demonstrated need for all admitted students.” Can’t speak to whether their formula is any better or worse than BC’s but they do claim to meet need.
The more I read this list, the more I scratch my head. There are lots of nice schools on the list, but for nursing, healthcare of any kind for that matter, none of them make sense except Hawaii or Purdue IF one of those are in your home state. Even if your family can afford it, you have to consider the opportunity cost of that money. You won’t have better job opportunities or make more money no matter where you go. That money would make a nice downpayment on a house.
I get Case if you want to continue to study with someone there that you already have a masterclass relationship with. My son almost went to Case for that very reason, good engineering and his favorite teacher that he’d ever studied with was at CIM. It didn’t hurt that they gave him $100k too. There’s no way we would have considered it without that.
How did you develop your list? What things are important to you? Why do you believe Case and BC are the best two of the bunch? What’s your home state? What are your financial constraints? Only after answering those questions can anyone here give you meaningful input.
Really? The admissions page says, “Students applying to the B.S. program are asked to designate their choice for application to one of five OHSU School of Nursing locations throughout the state”… and Portland is one of the five.
I have no personal experience, so maybe you’re right, but if so it’s not obvious from their admissions page.
It’s not obvious at all, but nursing students have to fill prerequisites to enter the nursing program. At all but the Portland location they can do everything on the same campus. They can also complete their prerequisites at one of the CCs participating in the nursing consortium. Clear as mud, right?
oops sorry I forgot to put it in the post! But yes, my parents both did some calculations, and they said it’s okay. Honestly, they said to just do my best in the college applications, and they will figure out finances. if a school they know is out of their range, they will let me know.
Most parents say that they’ll “figure out finances” because they don’t want to hamper your potential with adult problems (money)… but that’s not how it works and that’s why many students end up at a college they didn’t really choose, after getting into their top colleges only to find out they’re too expensive and will get their parents into terrible debt.
So, your parents need to figure out how much, exactly, they can divert from their current income, each month, toward your college - and start putting that money RIGHT NOW in a 529 (to get used to it and also to give you a little buffer to pay for college). Then, they need to calculate how much that chunk of their salary + whatever they’ve already saved adds up to.
Add your work earnings and 5.5K loan, and that’s your budget.
Then, you run the NPCs and compare your budget with the colleges’ estimation. You cross out all universities that are out of budget, unless they clearly have specific merit scholarships you have a shot at. (Most financial aid comes from the universities themselves.)
It means you won’t waste time on colleges you can’t afford and therefore can dedicate more time to colleges you can afford and will require extra care to improve your odds of admission.
Have them run the NPC on Penn, CWRU and BC. Are those affordable “out of pocket”, ie., within budget as defined above?
It would be better if they figured out their financial plan and told you the price limit now, so that you do not end up with a bunch of admission offers that are all too expensive next April.
