Hi everyone I am currently looking to major in political science…any suggestions? Thanks!
(This list might be a little broad, I didn’t get too specific)
White male
Top 30% at a pretty good public high school
3.65 GPA (UW)-All accel/AP with high grades in English/History/Spanish/AP Gov. (A’s) and lower grades in Chem/Math (Mostly A’s/B’s with one C+)
4.05 GPA (W)-4.8 scale
1300 SAT
200 service hours
Spanish honor society
FBLA-Placed #1 in state for intro to public speaking/top 10 at nationals, board member, several awards for community service
TASC-A community service club to benefit the jewish community, board member
Habitat for Humanity-President
Model UN-Member
Class secretary
Counselor-For kids summer camp
Swim instructor-For kids at YMCA
Basketball-1 varsity letter
Football-2 varsity letters
Track-2 varsity letters
Some that come to mind are Holy Cross and Clark University, both in Worcester, MA. Holy Cross is a reach–your GPA would be lower than average–but I think everything else looks really good and maybe you could put it all together in a way that deemphasized the lower scores in math/science. But, yes, a reach.
Maybe also Dickinson College in PA.
These schools all have excellent academics and are strong in political science/government. Holy Cross claims to meet full financial need, though I would not be overly optimistic on that. The others often offer pretty generous aid that might take you somewhere near the $40k mark but I’m guessing not below. But these are guesses, run the NPC, if any of the schools look good, to see what the numbers look like for you.
Certainly look to at least a couple of NJ public schools. It is important to end up with a good AND affordable choice at the end.
Out-of-the-box ideas, for a NJ student–Midwest state flagships like Kansas and Nebraska. Why? Offer merit aid to OOS students like yourself. KU in a great college town, Nebraska is an urban campus and blocks from the state capital, so internship/job opportunities.
Or Willamette University, also a few blocks from a state capital, Salem, Oregon. If you like the idea of a smaller school, look through the colleges that change lives. Most will give aid AND are going to probably be around your max amount, or above, so might not work. But maybe a little exploring might be fun and informative.
Your GC would have the best info as to chances at your state schools. You look to me to be solidly midrange for acceptance for Arts and Sciences at Rutgers, NB. You should ask about the advantages of applying early there and do so ASAP if there is, and if you’re happy with that, you are done.
You SAT is average for that school. Your GPA is slightly lower than the average 3.75 but your extracurriculars are pretty great so I think that its a great target school that you should apply to, (especially since your in the state).
James Madison University - mandated to have @70% Virginian residents but a healthy contingent hale from New Jersey/PA and New England. “Affordable” OOS tuition (total with Room/Board and fees is just under 40K) and solid Poli Sci dept with huge alum network in DC area. Washington, DC semester option - http://www.jmu.edu/polisci/washington.shtml
Rutgers should be a solid admit, but be sure to have a safety as backup. The College of New Jersey, while technically not a safety, should be a very solid admit for you, and it’s quite a bit smaller than Rutgers (that can be a good thing!). A truer safety would be Montclair State or Rowan.
Really, though, you probably need to do more research. Are you open to private schools? Some liberal arts colleges have been mentioned, but these are much smaller than Rutgers. Are you looking out of state? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, I recommend that you buy or borrow the Fiske Guide to Colleges. It has in-depth profiles of 300 schools, and though few people read the introduction, you should, for it covers all this basic stuff like how to decide which college is right for you.
Otherwise, we could throw the names of hundreds of schools at you: big, small, medium, public, private, in-state, out of state, rural, urban, suburban, known-to-give-merit-awards, not-known-to-give-merit-awards, etc.